Young Impact
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Try this at least once a day
My friend suggested that I try this everyday for a week and closely monitor results:
- Find a place to sit quietly, preferably alone.
- Induce yourself into a bout of uncontrollable joy and appreciation.
- Hone in on the source and let it overhaul everything you do (phone calls, email exchanges, meetings, etc.) the rest of the day.
This exercise is uniquely human. The goal is to rescue zombie'd brain capacity from the digital piranha preying upon our dwindling patience, care, and attention. Remember what it’s like after forcefully unwiring yourself Day 2 of a 5-day vacation? The importance of important things is amplified.
I know it's played-out like Atari, but this double-rainbow guy must have it down.
I'll Share Mine if You Share Yours: The StartUp Scramble Story
Award-winning filmmaker and 1992 US Olympian, Mary Mazzio, invited me to share the StartUp Scramble story with the Babson startup community. Mary and the 50 Eggs production team crafted a video that captures the origins of Young Impact and showcases a few of my more vulnerable moments (I choked up when I spoke about Eric's passing and how it shifted my life's direction). The interview and photo shoot were an uncomfortable amount of fun. More stories from Babo-affiliated execs, entrepreneurs, and innovators are available here.
Please enjoy the reel and I hope you'll share your stories and comments with me below (despite the constipated look on my face =)!
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Hosting an "Everything But Moderate" Student #SOCENT Panel
"I was asked to moderate this panel. This panel will be everything but moderate."
Moderation has little elbow room at the table alongside hungry student founders whose mission is to build ventures that rail on social ails.
In the backdrop of the Occupy protests, I had the privilege to moderate the panel, "Seeding, Nurturing and Growing Student Innovations," at TiE Boston's Forum for Social Entrepreneurship 2011 (#ForSE2011). Along with four student founders, we had 45 minutes to explore the process of transforming ideas into entities across campuses and society.
If You Could Ask Harvard Luminary Howard Gardner One Question...
This week marks a personal milestone: The opportunity to meet Dr. Howard Gardner, world-renowned education luminary and fellow Scrantonian, one-on-one. Dr. Gardner is the founder of the theory of multiple intelligences (MI) and chances are, like me, you've been affected by his breakthroughs.
Elementary school never felt right. My "creative capacities" landed me in time-out or the principal's office more often than I care to recount. It is rumored that my second grade teacher requested permission from my mother to use instances of my contrarian, unruly behavior as case studies in her Master's thesis. (Mom neither confirms nor denies the allegations to this day.). From kindergarten to third grade, I dreaded going to school and felt stuck, held in educational contempt of court, when domiciled in a classroom. In fact, I was the first student in my class to be suspended (for fighting a much larger classmate on behalf of two lesser-equipped peers, albeit for a damn good cause).
Then I witnessed something that literally changed my life’s trajectory:
How to Always Win a Game of Chicken in 2011, Theoretically
Overview: Thank you, the year ahead, and a potent 2011 New Years Resolution
BREAKOUT!
A special thank you for keeping up with our tweets, updates, and posts. 2010 was truly a breakout year for our young company. Our chemistry continues to evolve and we’re booking tight into 2011.
What's driving YI’s growth? It's people: People searching for substantive and adaptive programming options at the university level. Nearly 100% of our StartUp Scramble (SUS) attendees report that they will do “it” (“it” being our intense venture creation and problem-solving process) again. Attendees leave exhausted (by design), but energized and truly prepared to build off of the momentum.
There’s no “I” in team, but there is a “We” in...
We teamed up with organizations such as Ashoka, Startup Weekend, Microsoft, NYU Reynolds Program for Social Entrepreneurship, SRA Touchstone Consulting, and more! YI’s headquarters moved to Babson College’s Olin Hatchery. We are exploring U.S. expansion opportunities, as well as abroad. YI's StartUp Scrambles and consulting engagements are delivering at every level. We return to Washington D.C. from February 4-6th for the StartUp Scramble DC University Challenge with Ashoka’s Youth Venture, Touchstone Consulting, Community Wealth Ventures, mtvU, and more!
Life, Death, and Chicken: A New Years Resolution for 2011
There are many lessons I learned over the years about commitment and risk-taking as a youth activist, elite gymnast, and investment banker. But a few weeks ago my strategy professor, a stalwart and rather jovial Indian fellow, prodded our class to answer the question, “How do you always win a game of Chicken?”
75 New Incubatees On-Board @CompassPartners: Here is What's Happening Across College Campuses
Before trekking to Babson, I sat down with Compass Partners' Co-founder, Neil Shah, at their headquarters in Washington D.C. He and I connected through StartUp ScrambleTM alumni, James Li (Re: Action Strategy Group). Neil is a successful young business entrepreneur who unsurprisingly decided against a lucrative job offer at top-notch tech company. I say "unsurprisingly," because Neil's calculation show his personal return on investment (PROI) of endeavoring to launch and grow a social venture could (not "will") have a higher return than jumping into the corporate sector. We dove head-first into a very real discussion about opportunity cost. What resonates about Neil is the blunt manner in which he acknowledges the sacrifices he (and his team) will continue to make in order to pursue the path of a startup social venture. Now Compass Partners is making inroads across college campuses nationwide. Their most recent announcement had us fist-pumping Jersey style and giving hi-fives all around:
Compass Partners, the college-focused social business incubator and training program, has selected 75 college Freshmen hailing from five universities across the US as the next social entrepreneurs in the Compass Fellowship. Following a rigorous application and interview process that started with nearly 700 college freshmen, American, Georgetown, George Washington, Indiana and Tufts University each now have a passionate group of 15 new Compass Fellows who will work together over the next two years to develop innovative solutions to some of the world’s greatest problems. Meet the 75 Compass Fellows.
Through the Compass Fellowship, students engage in personal growth and business skill modules where they will grow and learn from leaders in the community. Fellows will receive guidance and mentorship from upperclassmen students who coordinate the program at their schools. They will be connected to internship opportunities that allow them to gain hands-on experience in areas of passion. Finally, Fellows will each receive the resources necessary to launch social business ventures that encompasses their passions and enable them to develop financially sustainable solutions to pressing social issues. To learn more about the Compass Fellowship, visit www.compasspartners.org.
Here's a quick 3 minute video introduction to the fellowship: http://vimeo.com/13114520.
Young Impact Featured in Scranton Times-Tribune
This article--featured in the Scranton Times-Tribune leading up to the July 30th - August 1st Startup Scramble NEPA Challenge at The University of Scranton's Kania School of Management--dives into the origins of Young Impact!
Clarks Summit native to teach budding entrepreneurs how to grow
Clarks Summit native Stephen Douglass [picture] left a lucrative job in finance to do what he does best - work with young entrepreneurs.
After years of working with ambitious young people throughout the country, Mr. Douglass, 27, is bringing his intensive, weekend-long Start Up Scramble to budding entrepreneurs in Northeast Pennsylvania.
From July 30 to Aug. 1, a group of hopeful youth will pitch ideas, brainstorm, develop business plans and collaborate with successful business people at the University of Scranton. By the end of the weekend, their businesses should be off the ground.
The guest mentors include founders of well-known websites, Peter Kamali of Meetup.com, and Blake Jenelle of MyDunkTank.com. Local figures such as Pepperjam founder Kristopher B. Jones and Andrew Cornell of Cornell Iron Works are also on the roster.
Blaze a New Approach to Economic Development and Innovation in Smaller Communities
Tier 2 & 3 communities (smaller regional economies) in search of a new
economic lifeblood must scrupulously assess how/where their economic development efforts, energy, and resources are c
If over 99% of startups never see a first term sheet from a venture capital (VC) firm, then why do economic
development leaders in "transitional" Tier 2 and 3 communities—regional economies struggling
to reconfigure and revitalize economic identities--allocate precious time
and resources to courting VC investment and committing capital to so-called innovation funds? Many regional leaders flaunt soft-core track-records of driving scalable change in any capacity. Peel away this pasty approach to economic development; find communities partaking in hot 'n heavy burlesque shows to lure large companies to town with subsidized club entrance fees and private dances of financial incentives. Motorboat approaches (that is, venture capital and Company Town strategies) to economic vitality are severely flawed...
Where's Your Executioner Mask?
What You Lack in Execution, You Can't Make Up at Business Plan Competitions
You are intent on starting something--a business, an organization, a social enterprise, a project. Google "start a business" and you are bombarded with entrepreneurshiporn full of half-truth information advising that you need loans and venture capital, or a list of business plan competitions.
Confident that you need cash, business plan competitions appear to be a quick fix. Show up with an interesting idea and hockey-stick projections, drill down your competitive advantage, a few jokes, and savvy deck of slides and you just may leave with cash. How about the wave of social enterprise competitions, a la Pepsi Refresh? Goodwash your three degrees of social-network-separation with pleas to recruit an army of clickers and you just might win.
Re-Writing Your Community’s History
When survival is on the line, we instinctually focus on our immediate needs – food, shelter, and family. Survival is the least common denominator of life: It is a necessary condition in a sufficient world. Across the evolutionary continuum of human survival, humankind realized the benefits of working together. Thus, hierarchies emerged, governments formed, and modern communities arose. The survival of a community is dependent upon its ability to evolve. Community survival happens in three ways: Leadership adapts to new realities, leadership relocates/disbands, or leadership becomes extinct. Adapt, move, or die. Looking within our communities, local leaders are confused as how best to overcome challenges such as mounting debt and divisive viewpoints. Though we’re dealing with the age old social problems – education gaps, healthcare deficiencies, and lagging local industry prospects – standard tools of yester-year have evolved and the current generation of community leaders seems thoroughly unprepared, perhaps even unwilling, to adapt, which leaves us with limited alternatives.