“I always love to be involved in the local community, but Big Ideas especially felt like a great fit with the skills I have to offer and how I want to be connecting with others,” Lipsett says.
Master of Development Engineering students Victor Okoro, Daniel Huang, and Joshua Iokua Albano, teamed up to found Madojo, a platform that connects Nigerian university graduates with employers in the technology space.
Kira Erickson and Ivan Jayapurna, Founders of High Tide, were awarded the 2022-2023 Rudd Family Foundation Big Ideas Grand Prize of $10,000.
Following months of designing, workshopping, mentoring and pitching, High Tide, a student team working to produce a bio-based coating for compostability and recyclability, took home top honors at the 2023 Grand Prize Pitch Day and Awards Celebration, the Rudd Family Foundation Big Ideas’ annual finale. Judges gave High Tide, one of 23 finalists to appear at the May 3 event at UC Berkeley’s Blum Hall, the $10,000 Grand Prize.
Read more about Grand Prize Pitch Day here!
Since 2020, Takataka Plastics has transformed Uganda’s discarded bottles and packaging into tiles, face shields, flower pots, chairs, coasters and phone holders. (Engineering for Change)
Since 2020, Takataka Plastics has transformed Uganda’s discarded bottles and packaging into tiles, face shields, flower pots, chairs, coasters and phone holders. (Engineering for Change)
By Anehita Okojie
Last summer, Louisa Keeler was in her home state of Texas researching ways the government could support survivors of intimate partner violence. Navigating available resources was difficult, “but trying to get those services while going to school, or raising children, or getting to work — that was much more difficult,” Keeler says. Two colleagues, Ruth Ferguson and Sohail Kamdar, also noticed related themes working with survivors of sexual harassment and discrimination, but also ways in which technology could empower individuals to access secure community services.
Keeler, Ferguson, and Kamdar are all Master of Public Policy students who developed the idea of Sepal, “a simplified, safe haven for finding the care you need by thoughtfully connecting you to knowledgeable providers.” The three, who will graduate this year, had worked on a class project with a couple peers that focused on support for survivors after traumatic events. After the completion of the project, Keeler, Ferguson, and Kamdar all wanted to continue building on the concept and “were encouraged to apply to Big Ideas as a launchpad to engage with our curiosity and energy to create something bigger!” After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Sepal team, who had met in Mark Coopersmith’s social entrepreneurship class, examined the effects of the Supreme Court’s decision from a policy perspective and identified an opportunity to reduce barriers to access healthcare resources.
Their idea secured them one of the 19 final-round spots in the 2022–23 Big Ideas Contest, UC Berkeley’s flagship social innovation program. This year, the contest received 160 applications from UC Berkeley students and alumni — representing more than 500 students, 80 disciplines, and 15 countries — and addressing pressing social issues in everything from food insecurity to workforce development to social injustice. Of the final-round teams, half of the projects are led by women and half have a URM co-founder.
Working alongside Big Ideas finalists in the next stage of the competition will be teams from two additional programs that are partnering with the Big Ideas Contest. Four teams from the Lab for Inclusive FinTech (LIFT) “FinTech for Social Good” Initiative are advancing innovations that can unlock the potential of digital financial technologies to benefit underserved populations around the world. This initiative is made possible thanks to the generous support from Binance Charity and Ripple Impact. Six UC Berkeley alumni-led teams will also take part in the final round of Big Ideas through the Mastercard Foundation Alumni Scholars “Impact Fund.” This program, led by the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies, supports social innovations anchored in African countries that focus on creating economic opportunities for their communities.
Another Big Ideas finalist, the Sofreh Salamati team, is made up of sisters Nazineen Kandahari (BA) ’17 and (MSc) ’20 and Nilufar Kayhani ’22, as well as Fareha Moulana Zada ’23 and Anisha Chandy ’23. The team came together because of the sisters’ “shared commitment to creating an equitable and inclusive world,” says Kandahari, now at the UC Berkeley–UCSF Joint Medical Program. In 2020, the sisters founded Afghan Clinic, a public health initiative for Afghan people, and Sofreh Salamati is one of the projects that the initiative focuses on. Sofreh Salamati is a novel gathering specifically designed to meet the needs of Afghan refugee women through health education, social networking, and spirituality, addressing misinformation and myths. In the Afghan community, sofrehs are gatherings “held by Afghan women for spiritual, cultural, and social reasons,” Kandahari says. Sofreh Salamati will host gatherings to pair together cultural traditions with health education to address the needs of refugee communities as they transition to the United States. The team plans on using sofrehs as a public health intervention by bringing Afghan refugee doctors to gatherings who can educate women about healthcare in a way that is tailored to their needs as Afghan women.
Three of the four Sofreh Salamati team members are Afghan refugee women and their inspiration for the project “comes from living through the journey of being forcibly displaced from our home, establishing life in a new country, and experiencing how many American institutions — political, economic, social, educational, healthcare — are not built to serve everyone equally,” Kandahari says.
During the pre-proposal application period, the Big Idea Contest provided teams with resources such as entrepreneurship skill development workshops, team-building and networking opportunities, and startup advising. The finalists, who emerged from an extensive review by a network of over 150 experts from academia, industry, and the startup community, will receive ongoing support, including personalized mentorship.
In Sepal’s case, this contributes to its goal of connecting and empowering users with navigable healthcare options to identify and address traumatic experiences. The platform’s trauma-informed approach helps users figure out the first step in their healthcare journey by connecting them to knowledgable providers. Users are presented with questions on what health issues they want to address. Based on the information provided, Sepal presents them with tailored resources that are both available and accessible. On the other side, Sepal gathers information from providers such as health clinics and social workers and shares this information on its platform, allowing users to make informed decisions about their health.
Sepal, Sofreh Salamati, and the other finalists have been paired with mentors who will support the development of their ideas during this last stage of the competition. In addition to mentorship, teams will have access to feedback, networking opportunities, and resources. The Sepal crew found the Big Ideas competition rewarding because of its relationships with its mentor, Olivia Nava, an Oakland-based design, strategy, and organizational development consultant, as well as its existing network, “who have taken the initiative and time to give us feedback and thought partnership.” The three have worked closely with Nava; their advisor, Bay Area entrepreneur Bilal Mahmood; and social entrepreneurship professor, Mark Coopersmith, to fully conceptualize the Sepal platform.
“Coming into Big Ideas we knew our greatest challenge would be building the business side of our ideas,” the team says. By engaging with their mentors, along with feedback from both healthcare providers and individuals, the team has been able to combat challenges, and through the contest, they’ve found a supportive and encouraging community and critical resources needed to build their knowledge base and gain confidence to create their product.
“The most fun part of this competition was reading the judge’s feedback!” says Sofreh Salamati’s Nilufar Kayhani. “Since the judges are from varying professional backgrounds, it was nice to have perspectives outside of medicine and public health on our project to promote health broadly.”
This year’s Grand Prize Pitch Day and Award Celebration will be May 3 at UC Berkeley’s Blum Hall (RSVP Here!)
In the US, there are 70 million baby boomers who own 2.34 million Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) in the country, employing more than 25 million people. Small businesses are the backbone of the American economy and have generated 64% of new jobs annually. Unfortunately, up to 70% of current owners will not be able to sell their businesses when they are ready. The large number of retiring owners, coupled with the uncertainty of successful exits, poses a threat to millions of jobs and jeopardizes the owners’ safety net for a comfortable retirement. 2ndWind aims to create a more efficient platform to facilitate SMBs’ transitions, helping retiring owners achieve their retirement’s goals, whilst continuing the creation of job opportunities and prevent layoffs associated with SMB closures.
The US is currently in a maternal health crisis. Even though 84% of maternal deaths in the US are preventable, the maternal mortality rate steadily rises, disproportionately affecting Black people who are currently 3-4 times more likely to die in childbirth compared to their White counterparts. Birth By Us is an innovative technology that provides comprehensive check-ins at sequential points in pregnancy and postpartum through quality questionnaires that give Black birthing people personalized health insights and top-tier, culturally responsive, and Black–specific resources. Upon completion of each questionnaire, the app analyzes and uncovers users’ top concerns, yielding tailored visit preparation and recommended resources. In addition to this, Birth By Us plans to include auxiliary healthcare providers such as doulas, lactation consultants, etc. to help mothers build their best, holistic care team. With this, BBU empowers Black mothers and birthing people to shape their birthing experience while giving providers and hospital systems the necessary insights to best support their birth. We intend to expand to other marginalized populations to help everyone achieve their best birthing experience.
As cities expand, keeping up to date records of properties becomes harder and harder. Municipal governments simply don’t have the infrastructure to maintain accurate and timely geospatial data to help them carry out public services. Current methods for land mapping require costly airplane flights, complex drones, expensive LiDar equipment, and a team of geospatial analysts to parse the complex information into usable data. This is why BlackPrint created mapping-as-a-service, a subscription based product that allows municipalities to obtain the most up to date information about their land on a yearly basis. All of this while maintaining low costs, rapid delivery times, and seamless integration into current softwares. The BlackPrint team leverages computer vision algorithms to extract 3D building footprints from satellite imagery, essentially creating a digital twin of the terrain from across the world.
Café con Cariño is a specialty coffee business and hub dedicated to carving a new path within the coffee industry by creating opportunities for economic freedom for migrants and BIPOC workers. We have identified three significant hurdles that impact the entry of BIPOC individuals into the coffee business–a toxic food service industry, overrepresentation of white leadership, and a business landscape that prioritizes profit over creativity. We will address these hurdles by curating an experience predicated on 1) worker collaboration, 2) educational and literacy building, and 3) culinary experimentation to ensure that immigrant and BIPOC workers are allowed the opportunity to cultivate comprehensive skills in the foodservice industry. The Café Hub will host a comprehensive support network for rising service industry professionals by facilitating direct access to industry specific skills-building, legal advice, and knowledge shares that are focused on empowering individuals to lead, innovate, and push for a cultural shift in the industry.
Protein therapies are front and center of medical treatments with over 80 drugs approved worldwide and over 170 in active clinical development. Downstream processing of protein products accounts for 50 – 80% of the total cost of production, with a large portion of expenses going towards the protein extraction process. With the protein production industry currently valued at $284.5 billion, there is a demand for a cheaper, more sustainable, and energy-efficient alternative. Using genetic engineering, Cellyse proposes a novel lytic technology which offers researchers and fermentation companies a way to extract recombinant proteins with only water. Our technology can expand biologics production through its ease of use and nontrivial cost reductions—paving the way for more affordable and equitable healthcare globally. Beyond optimizing extraction, our genetic construct also allows for valuable nutrients otherwise lost in purification to be recycled in the fermentation process, eliminating waste from over 255 million liters of cell culture media annually.
Dementia is one of the costliest conditions for society. Last year, $321 billion was spent in the US on dementia healthcare, 3x more per person than someone without dementia. One in three caregivers suffers from depression which is 7x more prevalent than the general population. This problem will only continue to grow as the number of Americans living with dementia doubles by 2050. Although the market has several potential solutions, all of them fail to effectively reach and engage caregivers. Comenta Care reimagines dementia care by providing dementia care coaching to family caregivers as a service in partnership with clinicians. They leverage a telemedicine model built around trained dementia care coaches backed by a core clinical team of dementia specialists. By doing so, Comenta Care hopes to change the current paradigm of care that leaves families feeling overwhelmed with nowhere to turn and clinicians feeling helpless with finite resources and limited time.
While Endometriosis, a chronic disease that causes aberrant endometrial-like tissue growth outside of the uterine cavity, affects more than 200 million women worldwide and can lead to severe symptoms impacting reproductive health, the current diagnostic methods available are primarily invasive and costly, making the diagnostic inaccessible to women in pain. EndoDetect team sought to create a novel, noninvasive diagnostic for endometriosis using menstrual effluent that can both qualitatively and quantitatively measure the presence of these biomarkers in menstrual effluent. In addition, a predictive model to predict the likelihood that a patient has endometriosis based on demographic data and clinical symptoms will be developed based on the data gathered. The team works with gynecological and endometriosis specialists, menstrual cup and endometriosis foundation corporate representatives, endometriosis advocates, local K12 teachers, and college professors to create educational materials and tools to raise people’s awareness of such disease.
Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is one of the leading contributors to malnutrition around the world, causing blindness, stunted physical and mental development, and disease vulnerability. South Asia has one of the highest rates of VAD in the world, especially among children and pregnant mothers. Vitamin A supplementation has been cited as one of the most effective ways to combat VAD, but current methods, including high-dose injections every 6 months, dietary diversification, daily vitamin A supplements, and biofortification of crops, fall short because of a lack of strict government regulation and cultural incompatibility. This team’s yogurt-based, engineered probiotic starter is able to integrate into the existing culture of South Asia, increasing the likelihood of adherence and giving families power over their own nutrition. Once consumed, the engineered probiotic, S. boulardii, will continuously synthesize the vitamin A precursor beta-carotene in the gut, providing constant supplementation to vulnerable populations and reducing the need for government intervention.
Seventy-four percent of Uganda’s population is under the age of 30. Many of the youth are idle, waiting for work to come their way. It does not! By 2021, 41% of the youth were neither employed nor in education training, and the unemployment rate was 17%. Youth employment in Uganda is mainly attributed to limited education, which leads to a critical skills gap and mismatch between the workforce and schools, negative attitudes towards specific types of work, and general factors related to poverty and inequalities. management. Enjuba initiative aims at using a savings approach as an alternative to address some of these challenges. Enjuba initiative aims at socio-economic empowerment among youth of all genders. The initiative will bridge the skills gap and enhance young people’s competitiveness through vocational skills development, mentorship, social capital development, partnerships with local businesses, entrepreneurship, and digital skills. Participants will be introduced to business management and social capital development skills, thereby enabling them to establish and expand the market for their businesses.
There are two main issues affecting bee survival today. Varroa mite, a parasite which is difficult and laborious to detect and treat, and climate change, causing more drastic temperatures and temperature changes, making winter survival more difficult for bees. These issues have caused a year-over-year population declines of 40-50% in bee colonies, a far greater number than the 30% of decades prior. HexaHive aims to solve these problems by utilizing technology to empower beekeepers and help them fight against these issues decimating bee populations. HexaHive will easily integrate into existing beehives and beekeeping practices and utilize novel technologies to detect varroa mite, monitor internal hive metrics, including temperature, and have climate control systems to warm or cool hives as necessary. Through the use of HexaHive, both seasoned and novice beekeepers will have a greater degree of control and understanding of what happens in their hives, leading to greater bee survival.
Over 7 million tons of plastic-coated paper are produced annually. Nearly all of which is destined for landfill. Paper can be recycled up to 25 times, but when it’s coated in plastic to protect against leakage, it is not compostable or recyclable. High Tide aims to solve this pervasive problem by producing a bio-based coating from renewable resources that enables compostability and recyclability at end of life. High Tide is designing materials for current and future waste management systems. Its coatings will comply with existing recycling and composting infrastructure, as well as degrade harmlessly in natural ecosystems and landfills. High Tide’s long-term vision is to be a leading material company helping move the world away from petroleum-based plastics. A successful future will be one where highly recyclable and degradable materials like paper can replace plastic packaging, and be discarded in blue AND green waste bins.
In India, three out of every five individuals are victims of groundwater contamination. 67% of rural Indian households do not have the wherewithal to treat their drinking water owing to financial constraints. Only 21% of the population living in major cities can afford a safe and clean passage to drinking water. The current solutions prevalent are either wells and piped drinking water from government institutions, bottled water jars, or RO water purifiers. Paanio is a $1 water purifier that uses graphene-based nanotechnology-enabled 5-stage dual purification to remove microbial contaminants, heavy metals, fluorides, and other organic/inorganic pollutants. Inspired by a simple bottle cap, Paanio is ultra-portable and extremely easy to use. Paanio’s non-electric purification mechanism purifies over 75 liters of groundwater for just a dollar, or less than Rs 1/liter. Paanio is an inexpensive and easily maintainable solution that can result in filtered groundwater for over 70% of rural India.
Systemic inequities manifesting through language, caste, geography, religion, and literacy have kept powerful women leaders across rural India from accessing resources to end violence in their own communities. One in three women faces violence in her lifetime. 50-67% of Dalit and Indigenous women in rural India, one of the most oppressed group of women in the world, face sexual violence. Parity Lab is an innovative community accelerator for rural women-led organizations that foster community-driven solutions to end gender-based violence. Parity Lab is an embedded support system that provides capacity building, coaching and community for 1.5 years. Parity Lab aims to support grassroot organizations through Organization Capacity Building (Fundraising; Data; Communications), trauma-informed coaching in local languages for founding teams, and access to a subscription-based 24*7 legal helpline
Whether looking for personal, sensitive reproductive care or crisis support, there is a need for an easy-to-use platform that helps you connect to the care you need. Sepal is a helping hand that guides and empowers you through everything from navigating healthcare options to identifying and addressing a traumatic experience. Its trauma-informed approach meets users where they are, and doesn’t require them to have the answers before getting started. Sepal doesn’t begin by asking, “What do you want to do about this?” Instead, it says, “Let’s figure out our first step.” In a sea of confusing and overwhelming information, Sepal is a simplified, safe haven for finding the care you need by thoughtfully connecting you to knowledgeable providers. Its mission to assist care seekers and providers alike makes it a valuable tool for the entire market.
Despite the large and increasing population of forcibly displaced Afghan immigrants in the U.S., there is limited information about their health status and health service utilization. Among this already marginalized population, women are at a higher risk for worse health outcomes given their unique sociocultural barriers to health and healthcare. With over 66,000 Afghan immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area as of 2019, there is an unaddressed need to ensure Afghan women are supported with attaining health and obtaining healthcare services in the U.S. Sofreh Salamati is a novel gathering, designed specifically to meet the needs of Afghan refugee women and created by Afghan refugee women. With our initiative, we facilitate health education and the health benefits of spirituality, address pervasive misinformation and cultural myths, and uplift the strengths that Afghan women already have. As a result, Sofreh Salamati will address practical and sociocultural barriers to healthcare and empower women to feel confident in imagining, seeking, and maintaining good health.
SurMice aims to facilitate closer collaboration between universities and zoos by using surplus lab mice as “feeder mice” for zoos in order to cut costs, resource waste, and energy usage for both parties. It is focused on the development of a platform that can standardize this practice across multiple universities, rather than isolated instances of partnerships. This larger platform allows for more detailed matching of prospects and rerouting mice in the event of a supply issue. It also allows other institutions to get involved more easily, potentially averting some portion of the 18,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gasses released in 2011 from a singular Boehringer Ingelheim facility in Connecticut, or the 15 tons of animal waste produced by a single Novus Pharmaceutical facility in 2011. SurMice’s goal is to help educational institutions and wildlife centers undercut the abusive practices of the billion dollar feeder mouse industry, while curtailing lab related biological waste.
More than 85% of social enterprises shut down within the first three years of operation. A major reason for this is limited access to specialized technical expertise and talent, which is essential in the initial, crucial stages of developing a solution. Emerging and early stage social enterprises either lack the required resources or direct them to other pressing needs to stay afloat. These services are costly largely due to the need for highly skilled and technically trained people. This results in institutional and operational hurdles, and limited growth for these impact organizations. Simultaneously, there is a rapidly growing pool of students and industry professionals looking for social sector learning opportunities. The Impact Collective harnesses this opportunity and embodies the value of building a network and ecosystem for collective action – the collective mobilizes and matches students and industry professionals with social enterprises who have technical needs. It brings together industry professionals, domain experts, and students from various disciplines and technical areas to form interdisciplinary technical consulting teams to serve impact organizations for social change.
Farmers in poor countries such as in sub-Saharan Africa tend to have low incomes for reasons that are outside of their control. These problems will only grow more difficult in the coming years, as climate change, urbanization, and growing populations combine to increase demand for food while putting more burden on the suppliers. While many different solutions will be needed to address these problems, they all have a common denominator: they must make farmers more productive, whether by increasing access to capital, technology, or know-how. Poultry is an under-exploited path to prosperity for farmers around the world. To address this gap, Umodzi—a for-profit social enterprise—provides off-grid, turn-key poultry hatcheries to agricultural co-ops, starting in rural Malawi. Umodzi finances and sources startup capital (such as solar panels, batteries, and incubators); trains the co-ops in standard operating procedures; markets and sells the poultry; and shares revenue with the co-ops. In addition, other benefits include clean drinking water for the co-op and the surrounding community, cooking gas, women empowerment, and a nutritious source of food.
Constraints on the availability of electric power limit the number of vehicles that can be deployed at one location by EV fleets. Commercial properties pay demand charges based on the fifteen minute period of highest power consumption each month, which determines 30-70% of their power bill. As a result, there are substantial barriers to EV charging at multifamily residences. By using a proprietary, AI-based charging scheduler and advanced charging hardware, WattConnect delivers energy savings when the power grid is most reliant on expensive, nonrenewable energy, then pays EV owners for providing power from their batteries back to the building during times of peak demand. WattConnect promotes transportation equity by providing a revenue stream for EV drivers that offset the higher costs of EVs relative to gasoline vehicles. At the same time, WattConnect facilitates the transition to renewable energy by reducing the strain of EV charging on the power grid.
Xavier Aguirre Villarreal’s father is a farmer in Coahuila, Mexico. “We get to work with a lot of people from very different places in Mexico,” the senior exchange student says. That includes individuals from very poor communities in the northern state. Aguirre Villarreal’s family does its best to give its agricultural workers the best work and wages it can, but the very small towns they live in, he says, “are disconnected from the cities. They don’t have grocery stores, they don’t have big stores; they just have local stores,” like tortillerías, butcher shops, and hardware stores.
Seventy-four percent of Mexicans don’t have access to credit; only a third have received education in financial matters. Their financial options are limited.
Aguirre Villarreal, who’s majoring in law at Tec de Monterrey in Mexico and minoring in business at Berkeley, came across UGBA192N.4: Berkeley Changemaker™: Big Ideas, a course on financial inclusion: “ensuring access to affordable financial services such as savings, payments, insurance and credit in both the developing world and in more developed markets like the US.”
“I’ve always wanted to make a change in these communities,” Aguirre Villarreal says of his father’s workers, “and I thought it would be a good idea to take this class and maybe develop a project to implement in Mexico.”
The social entrepreneurship course, the first topic-oriented curricular offering of the Big Ideas program, is a partnership with the Center for Social Sector Leadership at Berkeley Haas School of Business. It is an integral part of the Berkeley Changemaker™ initiative, a campus-wide initiative designed to activate undergraduates’ passions for social change and help them develop a sharper sense of who they want to be and how to make that happen. The Big Ideas Contest is a UC-wide innovation ecosystem, housed at Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies, that provides training, networks, recognition, and funding to interdisciplinary teams of students with transformative solutions to real-world problems. The course ran the first eight weeks of the Spring 2022 semester and was taught by Joe Dougherty, a partner at the social-impact consultancy Dalberg Advisors and an instructor at Haas.
“Financial inclusion doesn’t get the recognition it should as a vehicle for improving well being and lifting people out of poverty,” said Big Ideas Director Phillip Denny. “This class is a perfect cauldron for producing actionable solutions, what with Berkeley students’ passion for improving the world, Joe’s deep expertise in this field, and the resources of Big Ideas, Berkeley Changemaker, Haas, and the Center for Social Sector Leadership.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” added Rich Lyons, chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer and part of the Berkeley Changemaker team. “The financial inclusion focus makes room for progress across all three sectors — private, public, and civic — and the changemaking skills this course develops are pivotal.”
The course follows Fall 2021’s first-ever Berkeley Changemaker: Big Ideas class, taught by Jorge Calderon, in which teams of students identify a social or environmental problem, develop an impactful solution to implement through a business model, and ultimately pitch their startup concept to a panel of expert judges.
Going forward, the topics of spring-semester Berkeley Changemaker™ Big Ideas classes will change year-to-year based on student priorities. For the first year, “we looked at the student interest in the Big Ideas categories and noted financial inclusion was getting more and more interest,” said Nora Silver, a Haas professor and founder and faculty director of the Center for Social Sector Leadership.
The goal is to maximize learning and social impact.
“It seems to me that there are a number of ways to learn information,” Silver said. “One I favor is learning by doing, so anything experiential has a learning advantage to it. And since there are many ways to learn how to do something, why not learn it over a topic in which you have interest or concern? It was from that orientation that the idea emerged to have a class in which students learn how to have a positive social impact on an issue they cared about.”
It turned out the right instructor to teach making a social impact also had deep experience in financial inclusion. Dougherty has spent much of his career working in financial inclusion in developing countries, and has taught undergrad and graduate courses at Cal for several years.
In addition to covering financial inclusion in the US and low- to middle-income countries — what it is, how financial systems work, how people get excluded, what can be done about it — the class covers the three C’s of any Berkeley Changemaker™ class: communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. Early in the semester, students started working in teams, which culminated in final presentations where they shared either an idea for a financial-inclusion program or an assessment of an existing system or business. Dougherty brought in guest speakers in the financial inclusion field, including Cal alum Radha Seshagiri, director of Bay Area nonprofit SaverLife, and Courtney Cardin, co-founder of Aura Finance.
“It’s pretty awesome for students so we can get in touch with these successful people,” said Xeyu Wu, a junior studying civil engineering whose group did an analysis of TomoCredit, a credit card with no interest, fees, or required credit history.
Only a minority of Dougherty’s students were business majors: others came from STEM fields, political science, and development studies. “It was like a breath of fresh air to start this class,” Dougherty said. “The students were really engaged, really asking good questions. They’re a really diverse group, coming from several countries and lived experience related to the financial inclusion space.”
Financial inclusion is a very timely topic, he added. “Just in the last decade, the number of people who were served by a formal financial institution has skyrocketed because of technology. From a financial inclusion point of view, it’s a tremendous opportunity because it means the transaction cost for financial service providers has dropped radically and allows them to serve people affordably.”
Students also learned fundamentals for themselves, given that basic financial literacy is not typically taught at any level of schooling. “People get well into their 20s without knowing how compound interest works,” Dougherty said. “People get into their 50s without knowing how compound interest works! These are really important life skills that people are not always given an opportunity to learn.”
Aguirre Villarreal’s group project was called NamaCard, with “nama,” he said, a Nahuatl word that can mean “protect” or “progress.” People in small towns in Mexico, like those who work for his family, would use NamaCard at their local stores much like a debit or credit card.
Given how difficult it is for many Mexicans to access credit, NamaCard won’t require a credit check. “We are trying to incentivize these marginalized communities, inside these little towns, to migrate from a cash system to a card system,” Aguirre Villarreal said.
By using machine learning to analyze users’ social media and their spending with the card, NamaCard would begin to build a credit score that users can then leverage in the larger financial system. And as they build their credit score, a user can access perks from their bank, such as a better credit line or an in-app financial-education class about, say, stocks or investing. It would be a positive feedback loop, where building credit unlocks better financial education, which informs better financial action.
In Mexico, Aguirre Villarreal explained, in order to receive a deposit from someone, a place has to be registered as a bank. NamaCard would partner with a bank like Banamex, which would act like a community development financial institution, lending money to local businesses like tortillerías, butcher shops, and hardware stores, from which card users could then withdraw and deposit money, making their lives easier. (These actions would be backed up by a mobile authentication process). And a fee paid by these stores that accept NamaCard would allow the stores to see customer spending trends, which could help make the businesses more targeted and efficient.
Amid learning the ins and outs of insurance and savings, credit and loans, and all the steps needed to build a financial startup — and putting that to use in the setting of a small town in Mexico — what stuck with Aguirre Villarreal the most was the hardship and exclusion faced by everyday Americans.
“I was really shocked by the situation around the world,” he said of financial exclusion and insecurity, “but I was most shocked about the situation here in the US. Being Mexican, we have always looked to the US as a successful country; I believe most people around the world have this view of the US.” The reality, he learned, was that nearly half of Americans cannot pay a sudden bill over $400.
“The class really puts you in the shoes of people who unfortunately are excluded or banned from financial systems,” he said. “You get to think about how lucky we are. That was what I most liked about the class.”
In its annual Pitch Day event, the 2022 Big Ideas Grand Prize went to “SMART Cookies” from UC Irvine
BERKELEY, May 6, 2022 – In its annual Grand Prize Pitch Day and Awards Celebration on May 4, judges of the UC-wide Rudd Family Foundation Big Ideas Contest awarded the 2022 Grand Prize to the “SMART Cookies” project from UC Irvine, a community-based solution to iron-deficiency anemia. The Grand Prize award winner takes home $10,000 on top of any earlier awards earned in the past year.
SMART Cookies is the brainchild of UCI fourth-year medical student Daniel Haik and Ghanaian partners from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Dr. Marina Aferiba Tandoh and Abigail Owusuaa Appiah. Through this collaboration, their team has developed “a bioavailable, plant-based, iron-supplemented biscuit” made from turkey berries, a tropical fruit packed with iron, antioxidants, and vitamins A and C. In a randomized, controlled trial at a school in Ahafo, Ghana, the fortified biscuits were found to be far more effective than a UNICEF initiative similarly aimed at lessening iron-deficiency anemia in adolescent girls.
“Working with Big Ideas introduced our team to a vast network of experts in international development economics and clinical trial design in the earlier stages of our growth,” said Haik. “Their support will enable our team to begin a nationwide distribution of SMART cookies, which is a dream come true.”
The other big winner of the night was the Madojo team, inventors of a blockchain-certified recruiting platform enabling Nigerian students to close the gap between job seekers and employers. They won the inaugural Binance Charity — LIFT Initiative Award. The Binance Charity – LIFT Initiative, powered by Big Ideas, seeks to empower students by nurturing new ideas and social entrepreneurs working on Fintech and Blockchain-empowered credibility/legitimacy, banking, remittance, financial literacy, gamification solutions, workforce development, among many others.
The Lab for Inclusive FinTech (LIFT), established with generous support from Ripple Impact and Binance Charity, is a research partnership led by IBSI aiming at unlocking the potential of digital financial technologies to benefit underserved populations around the world. LIFT has three major thrusts: research, experiential learning, and community building.
“This is only the beginning for Madojo,” said Victor Inya Okoro, a Master in Development Engineering student on the all-MDevEng Madojo team. “We plan to use the network we built during the program to continue to iterate on our idea, and the funding will help us get started in the right direction.
Other Grand Prize finalist teams included UC San Diego’s Algeon Materials, creating biodegradable and sustainable bioplastics from kelp to replace traditional petroleum-based packaging; the Foot Powered Cooler from UC Davis, a low-cost, energy-efficient cooling system designed to reduce post-harvest food losses at marketplaces in Uganda; and Carbon Pricing DAOs from UC Berkeley, a decentralized autonomous organization tool that enables the most accurate and scientifically rigorous pricing of carbon.
Of nearly 200 Big Ideas applications received last fall — from 700 grad and undergrad students representing every University of California campus and more than 70 disciplines — 16 finalists were selected in February, across the Social Impact Tracks of Global Health, Food and Agriculture, Financial Inclusion, Energy and Resources, Education and Literacy, Cities and Communities, Data and AI, and Art and Social Change.
“The multidisciplinary focus was incredible — all of the finalists harnessed the power of their teammates to provide powerful solutions,” said Rhonda Shrader, Executive Director of the Haas Entrepreneurship and NSF I-Corp program at Berkeley Haas School of Business and one of three Grand Prize judges. “So inspiring to see the energy, imagination and connectivity across all of the UCs — we’re stronger together.”
Founded in 2006 at UC Berkeley, and managed by the Blum Center for Developing Economies, Big Ideas has grown from an annual contest at Berkeley to an innovation ecosystem that serves students at all 10 campuses across the University of California, with year-round programming including industry and alumni speakers and mentors, toolkits, and courses and workshops on innovation and social entrepreneurship. Over its history, Big Ideas has supported over 3,000 innovations, involving more than 9,000 students, and awarded $3M in funding to 500 winning projects that have gone on to secure approximately $1B in additional funding.
Abigail Woolf was reading a research paper in her AI for Healthcare class about the success of a convolutional neural network — artificial neurons used to analyze visual imagery — that could detect referable diabetic retinopathy, a preventable but major cause of blindness around the world. The paper impressed her, but it was mum on actually utilizing an algorithm with so much potential in clinical settings. “I asked in class why the technology hadn’t been deployed,” said the UC Berkeley Master of Development Engineering student, “and the professor said that it was complicated to standardize the data and processes behind everything.”
Her aunt, who has diabetes, has to make frequent treks to the doctor’s office to get her eyes checked. Woolf also knew there were cheap lenses that could be attached to iPhones for use in clinical settings. What if she could combine these powerful algorithms for detecting diabetic retinopathy — which can be more accurate than doctors — with these lenses that diabetics could use at home? It would save folks like her aunt time and money, while allowing ophthalmologists to spend more time on treating cases and less on diagnostics. Woolf, a member of Berkeley’s Health Tech CoLab, envisions “a data/camera package that can be sold or donated as a single unit to clinics for automated DR diagnostics.”
The idea earned a final-round spot in the 2022 Big Ideas competition. Of the nearly 200 pre-proposal applications that were received in November from students across every campus of the UC system, sixteen projects were selected from a diverse portfolio of innovations spanning a variety of social impact tracks, including global health, food and agriculture, financial inclusion, energy and resources, education and literacy, cities and communities, data and AI, and art and social change. UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Merced, UC San Diego, and UC San Francisco all have projects in the finals. Half of the team leads for the finalist projects identify as female. A quarter of the projects are led by undergrads.
During the pre-proposal application period, students had access to a vast array of resources, including information sessions, entrepreneurial skill development workshops, a Big Ideas Alumni speaker series, drop-in advising hours with Big Ideas staff members, and industry networking and feedback opportunities.
“Big Ideas forced me to take a perspective and commit to a solution,” said finalist Divya Menon, a grad student at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and the founder of Maiden, a trading application for single-family home equity. Maiden seeks to make full and affordable homeownership possible to middle-income people by combining property laws with financial practices to isolate the speculative market from homeownership.
That speculative market “operates like a shadow market built on imaginary numbers because speculators base their bidding on predicted values, not actual ones,” she said. “Those of us in the real world are competing with the algorithmic imaginations of permanent-wealth speculators.”
She faced this problem a few years ago, when she was looking to buy a house on the Westside of Los Angeles, where she worked. “I could not afford to live in the very place in which my effort and money kept the economy thriving,” she recalled.
Working with Big Ideas program manager Karenna Rehorn helped her turn her findings and research into a practical idea. Contest director Phillip Denny connected her to Saira Qureshi, solution leader at McKinsey & Company, who led her to a more efficient product angle, and to past Big Ideas winner PJ O’Neil, co-founder of Nomad. “As a solo founder, getting to lean on the Big Ideas staff and their network helped me develop this as though I had an all-star co-founder team,” Menon said.
“Being thrown into this ecosystem of innovation, creativity, and competition encouraged us to focus on our social impact, continue to learn how to best develop and present our innovation, and have fun along the way,” said Daniel Haik, a medical student at UC Irvine who’s collaborating with Dr. Marina Tandoh and Abigail Appiah from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana to study how turkey berries can be used to address iron-deficiency anemia, a major cause of sickness and death in adolescent girls in lower- and middle-income countries. “The Big Ideas environment provided us with the perfect blend of autonomy and support: We received invaluable mentorship from experts in the field, such as Dr. Julia Schaletzky, and cultivated not just a motivation for scientific rigor but also an inspiration of the positive social change that a well-developed initiative can impact on the world around us.”
A network of experts from academia, industry, and the venture community undertook an extensive review process to narrow down the field to sixteen very impressive finalists who are on their way to translating their Big Ideas into action.
Now, the sixteen teams will be paired with industry mentors who can support the development of their projects during the final round period from mid-February through mid-April. They will also have access to additional skill-development resources and opportunities for feedback and networking. Winners will be announced in May — with awards ranging from $5,000 to the Grand Prize of $20,000.
Menon’s looking to test her model with an institutional partner like a local government or bank. Haik plans a second, larger trial of distributing turkey berry-fortified biscuits in Ghana. Throughout this final-round period, Woolf will continue her research and look for partners for her diagnostic innovation. She’s reaching out to some of the researchers who worked on that paper from her AI for Healthcare class and asking them why the algorithm “hasn’t been deployed in the wild.”
“I am waiting for someone to tell me, ‘this idea is impossible because…’” Woolf said. “But until then, I will believe that it is possible.”
Algeon Materials is on a mission to fight climate change and reduce plastic pollution. Plastic manufacturing contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and plastic pollution is a serious threat to the environment. 90% of petroleum-based plastics have never been recycled and can take up to 500 years to degrade. Companies need access to materials that help them meet their business needs (mechanical properties, ESG goals, consumer desire), plastics manufacturers need access to a reliable material supply that works with their existing machinery, and consumers want products that don’t pollute the environment. Algeon Materials is creating sustainable and environmentally friendly bioplastics from kelp. Kelp, a macroalgae, has properties that lend themselves to plastic creation. Kelp is the ideal solution because it’s a regenerative resource and farming it requires virtually zero inputs: no land, fresh water, or fertilizer. This solution supports 7 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Unemployment for those living with Autism — at 85% — is a significant barrier that many are unaware of. Such individuals have a difficult time joining the workforce because of a mix of social-emotional skills and sensitivities. Yet, the adaptable device industry for assisting those on the spectrum remains outdated and clearly ineffective, especially for those with noise sensitivity — affecting 65% of the population. ASD Independence seeks to help those with Autism in the work environment by creating a personalized glassware device that alleviates noise sensitivity. By capturing the voiceprint of a customer or any person that is conversed with, the adaptable device can mitigate environmental noises, so anyone with noise sensitivities does not experience the anxiety and other effects that come with hearing. Compared to the current solution of earmuffs and headphones, ASDI can be used in numerous settings where a conversational focus is prioritized.
Black Girls Dreaming is a multimodal sensory art installation that epitomizes the value of art for social change. The installation brings to life the multiple and often contradictory experiences of Black girls. It is a place for Black girls to hear, see, smell, taste, and witness their own lived experiences. As suicide rates among Black girls continue to rise we are compelled to create this space as a communal healing space for Black girls and allies to join us in our efforts to make the world a more livable and safe place for all Black girls. Further, this silent art exhibit features interactive art rooms exploring topics related to the multiple experiences of Black girlhood. Each room in the exhibit is a carefully created space that features the art work of Black girls across the African Diaspora.
Every year, millions of people suffer brain injuries, yet diagnosis and treatment guidance is limited by traditional healthcare options. Confidence aims to improve the experience of brain injury patients and healthcare professionals by using a patient’s smartphone data to provide optimized and personalized care. After a suspected or known brain injury, healthcare professionals will direct patients to download the Confidence application to their smartphones, which will allow the application to locally access and analyze the patient’s data to analyze for changes correlated to brain injury, such as cognition, mobility, emotional stability, and general activity. A summary of this information will be provided to the healthcare team so it can be used to assist in diagnosis and guide treatment options. Ultimately, Confidence will give each patient customized rehabilitation that increases their recovery and opportunities to continue thriving in their community.
Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a major cause of blindness globally, even though it is completely preventable. Currently, DR is diagnosed through retinal images, taken at regular expensive intervals, and manually evaluated by an ophthalmologist. These check ups are non negotiable for healthy vision, and DR prevention for diabetics. This is where AI can help save time and cut costs. There exist numerous machine learning algorithms that accurately, sometimes more accurately than the doctor, identify and diagnose DR from photos. There also exist small, cheap iPhone attachable lenses that can take photos in clinical settings. There is currently a disconnect between these two available technologies. When combined, the ophthalmologist can be freed from diagnostics, allowing them to focus on treating existing cases of eye disease. This innovation will be a data/camera package that can be sold or donated as a single unit to clinics for automated DR diagnostics.
Traditional speech therapy is often implemented years after a child starts speaking and has been diagnosed with a speech disorder, rather than aiming for early intervention and ameliorating a speech disorder immediately. For many families, traditional speech therapy is inaccessible, whether it be due to financial constraints or inaccessibility to therapists familiar with their dialect (ie AAVE). Without speech therapy, children can suffer from a diverse host of social issues and problems later in life with job interviews, communication, and academic success. Fluency aims to mitigate these issues by offering affordable, AI-powered speech therapy that adapts to the needs of every child. Through Hidden Markov Modeling and Neural Networks, Fluency can both keep a child’s attention and accurately diagnose a disorder versus a simple pronunciation issue. Fluency has the potential to change the lives of millions of children, and promote equitable speech therapy for every child.
About 37.8% of food produce is lost at Kampala markets before reaching the end-consumer. This is partly due to improper storage and preservation methods, where market vendors currently store their fresh food produce in wooden cabinets, which don’t have a cooling element to curb the short shelf-life enigma of fresh produce. The existing electricity or fuel powered refrigerators cannot be implemented at Kampala markets due to the operating costs, which cannot be afforded by the market vendors. Also, solar-powered refrigerators cannot be adopted due to their unreliability while it’s raining or at night, and have questionable power requirements to suffice the large market. Hence, FPC is the proposed solution, which uses energy from the footsteps of people at markets to power the coolers, which increases the shelf life of food without any operation cost requirement (fuel or electricity) — and hence, reduces food wastage at market level.
Our big idea is to develop a low-cost, fast reaction, quantification method of sensing soil carbon in practice. The overall goal of this proposal is to determine the biochar being used in a site-specific agricultural application in order to mitigate GHG emissions, using a mobile platform to enlarge the detection range for monitoring carbon emissions in practice. Furthermore, our goal is to improve the quality of life in low-income and disadvantaged farming and adjacent communities and to use it as a sustainable best practice for California agriculture.
In growing metros, 20% of homes are bought by someone who never moves in — institutional speculative buyers who buy for the sake of trade alone. Millennials cannot keep up with the home price increases generated by speculative buying, forcing Gen Y to compete in low-income housing markets for shelter. That pressure contributes to a growing homelessness crisis to the extent that some local governments have begun implementing middle-income housing programs typically reserved for low-income housing. Maiden is a trading application for single-family home equity that blends property laws with financial practices to isolate the speculative market from homeownership, providing housing affordability and full homeownership access to middle-income classes. By focusing on down payments and utilizing a contract type known as a tenancy-in-common to split-off speculative buying from an income-adjusted home value, Maiden provides affordable, accessible homeownership for middle-income, Millennial urbanites — taking us from American decay to the American dream.
Every year, 120 billion single-use cups enter the landfill in the US alone, 45% of which are paper coffee cups. Meanwhile, the number of coffee shops in the US has grown 16% percent between 2012 and 2017, speaking to the growing demand for to-go cups contributing to the climate crisis. MatterCup is a deposit-based, circular-use system for coffee to-go that replaces the single-use cup with a reusable alternative, rendering the disposable cup obsolete. Customers can order their coffee to-go in a reusable cup for a $1 deposit, enjoy their coffee on-the-go, and then drop off the empty cup at any partner location to get their $1 deposit back. By using MatterCup, coffee shops save money after only 35 to-go coffees sold per day and position themselves as sustainable and innovative trailblazers, as every MatterCup prevents the waste of 1000 single-use cups from entering the landfill and harming our planet.
Over the past 20 years, vaccinations have prevented over 2 million deaths. This triumph, however, has not been a panacea. Today, 1 million children in low- and middle-income countries continue to die from vaccine-preventable diseases each year. This inequality is largely fueled by technical challenges surrounding the administration of vaccines using hypodermic needles. The MEDiRoller, consists of a novel, handle applicator, containing a spring-loaded delivery system and one of our two types of single-use polymeric microneedle cartridges. The two types of cartridges include a novel cartridge containing a hexagonal solid microneedle roller, that can raster across skin to treat larger surface areas, as well as a MNP cartridge containing a sterile biomedical sponge for sterile vaccine or drug containment and loading, followed by delivery through hollow microneedles. This Big Idea, if successfully developed, will revolutionize vaccine and drug delivery in low-resource communities.
In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that approximately 15% of the global population (1 billion people) have some form of long-term functional disability. People with disabilities or special needs tend to receive less oral health care, or of lower quality, than the general population. We want to innovate the delivery of oral hygiene intervention to fit the needs of the patients with special needs. We propose MyAriel Health, an integrated easy-to-access mobile application combined with an intraoral scanner for patients and their caregivers. With MyAriel, we believe proper oral health management at home will improve quality of life of the patients and their caregivers in a number of ways, such as halting or reversing the progression of existing dental conditions, lowering the costs of future treatments, and minimizing trauma from invasive procedures.
Iron-Deficiency Anemia is the major cause of illness and death in adolescent girls in developing countries, weakening an already vulnerable population and contributing to the cycle of poverty and gender inequality. Unfortunately, attempts to address iron-deficiency anemia in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are often limited by bottlenecks in access, distribution, and community and cultural acceptance. These issues commonly bring well-funded, national-scale global public health initiatives to a halt. By utilizing naturally growing turkey berries, this initiative mobilizes a ubiquitously accessible, culturally integrated, and uniquely bioavailable plant-based iron supplementation solution to address iron-deficiency anemia in LMICs. In a first-of-its-kind randomized-controlled trial held in Ahafo, Ghana, turkey berry–fortified biscuits outperformed UNICEF’s nationwide initiative by a factor of triple, six times faster, and at a cost of roughly US$15 per adolescent girl over a month and a half.
Portland cement concrete is the most widely used man-made material in the world and its production is responsible for 8% of all industrial carbon dioxide emissions. Hence it is of paramount importance to reduce these emissions to avoid the disastrous effects of climate change. The traditional process of cement manufacturing involves the use of fossil fuels to process limestone which generates large amounts of greenhouse gases. Using electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind, it is possible to convert limestone into calcium hydroxide in a device called an electrolyzer. In the further stages of processing, the use of calcium hydroxide completely eliminates CO2 emissions. The electrolyzer also generates high-value gases like hydrogen and other hydrocarbons which are widely used in industry. This technology has tremendous potential to transform cement and chemical manufacturing into a carbon-free, zero-emissions industry.
The worldwide outbreak of Covid-19 has resulted in the deaths of over five million people and changed modern life forever. Experts warn that another pandemic is likely and that rapid vaccine development is crucial for preventing another mass loss of life. There are two major challenges in vaccine production and distribution. First, vaccines are usually grown in suboptimal 2D cell culture, and the growth of large quantities of vaccines takes months. Second, it is difficult to transport the virus culture from lab to lab and have the cells survive. New technology developed by researchers at UC Berkeley has the potential to overcome these challenges and thus accelerate virus research and vaccine development. The technology combines 3D printing and freezing to create a ready-to-use 3D cell culture product that can be easily shipped all over the world.
Hygiene is one of the many problems the 160,000 people experiencing homelessness in California face on a daily basis. There are fewer than 15 public showers available to the public for only a few hours a week in the Bay Area. Recently, the East Bay Municipal Utility District approved the use of hydrant meters for non-commercial purposes, allowing metered access to water hydrants for unhoused individuals and families. Using these hydrants, the Curbside Spa will provide private showers within the dimensions of a parking space. By deploying an easy to use kit of shower parts, we can utilize Oakland’s 30,000 hydrants to bring dignity to the homeless population.
Anvitha Tummala sees many unhoused people on her walks to class, and it raises an uncomfortable thought for her: She and her peers are earning a world-class education at UC Berkeley with access to all sorts of amenities, while those living on the streets in her neighborhood constantly live without stable sources of food or shelter.
“Seeing that every day opened my eyes, and I wanted to do something about it,” she said.
Tummala found an outlet in UGBA 96-2: Berkeley Changemaker™: Big Ideas. The class, a social entrepreneurship course and the foundational curricular component of the Big Ideas Program, is offered in partnership with the Center for Social Sector Leadership at Berkeley Haas School of Business. It is an integral part of the Berkeley Changemaker™ initiative, a key campus-wide initiative designed to activate undergraduates’ passions for social change and help them develop a sharper sense of who they want to be and how to make that happen.
In the Big Ideas course, teams of students identify a social or environmental problem, develop an impactful solution that can be implemented through a business model, and ultimately pitch their startup concept to a panel of expert judges. Teams also draft applications to the Big Ideas Contest, a UC-wide innovation ecosystem, housed at Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies, that provides training, networks, recognition, and funding to interdisciplinary teams of students with transformative solutions to real-world problems. The course runs the first eight weeks of the fall semester.
“Berkeley students care deeply about addressing intractable social issues, and developing viable solutions that will make tangible impacts is no easy task,” said Big Ideas Director Phillip Denny. “This class really creates the foundations for these students to enter programs like Big Ideas and turn their social missions into reality.”
“This partnership between Big Ideas, the Center for Social Sector Leadership, and the campus-wide Berkeley Changemaker™ Initiative is such a lovely example of synergy,” said Rich Lyons, Berkeley’s chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer and a key figure behind the creation of Berkeley Changemaker™. “The gateway Berkeley Changemaker™ course touches roughly 1,000 undergraduates each year, and typically in the summer prior to the first year, so the ramp from that to this new joint programming is rapidly advancing our impact.”
Early in the class, Tummala and her classmates pitched problems they wanted to solve. Tummala’s made it to the final round of ideas, where classmates who shared her deep concerns joined her to tackle it with a social startup.
Thirty percent of those who become homeless fall down that path after losing a job, explained her teammate, Fernando Campos. The stresses, difficulties, and failures to find a job can lead to substance abuse and other problems that exacerbate homelessness.
Their solution starts with a form unhoused people can fill out that will connect them with job-seeking and healthcare resources. It would be available in shelters for those who end up there, as well as on their startup’s website, which would be aimed at individuals and families who still have internet access but who recently lost a job are thus facing potential homelessness. In addition to connecting folks to vital services to get them back on their feet, Tummala, Campos, and their team would create a curriculum to assist users with the difficult job hunt.
For at least a year, Big Ideas and the Center for Social Sector Leadership had been batting around ideas for experiential social entrepreneurship classes when they learned about the Berkeley Changemaker™ initiative. “I was concerned that we inspire and motivate students for social change, and then what?” said Nora Silver, a Haas professor and the founder and faculty director of the Center for Social Sector Leadership. A Berkeley Changemaker™ Big Ideas course would put that inspiration and motivation to work while giving Big Ideas a better on-ramp to its challenging annual competition.
Silver said a gap exists throughout the whole field of social entrepreneurship between people with great ideas and creating institutions that can carry out those ideas. “We didn’t want to set up our students for that kind of hitting-the-wall full-force — running ahead excited and then, boom, ‘What do we do?’”
Silver had a professor at her center who taught a variety of launch classes, Jorge Calderon, who agreed to teach a Big Ideas class. Adapting from his slate of courses and the “purpose-driven design” frameworks he had developed over years, Calderon set up a step-by-step process for his new students to follow: ideation, working through problem discovery, developing and validating a solution and business model, communicating and pitching the concept.
“That sequencing is really important because it starts with really diving deep into what they’re trying to solve for, rather than going the other way around, where they generally come with a solution and then try to figure out where the need is,” he said.
Lessons from lectures, readings, media content, class dialogues, and industry guest speakers are put to work during lab sessions, where students do the hands-on work of developing their social startup concept. Though most of the students are first and second years, much of the curriculum comes from graduate courses.
“We don’t hold back our pedagogy because of their level — because they can keep up,” Calderon said. “I’ve always been impressed with students’ ability to engage and be able to follow through with the process, especially that early in their academic journey.”
As with Tummala, the genesis for many of the topics students tackle are personal, which makes for compelling team-building. “That’s a very powerful opportunity for folks to address things that are meaningful to them and then rally and engage others around that cause,” Calderon said. Communicating and selling complex ideas as simple narratives is paramount in this business. “By the end of the course they do a very good job of that process,” he added.
The Berkeley Changemaker™ Big Ideas class is held in a spacious, modern classroom on the fifth floor of Haas’ Chou Hall. On Wednesday, Calderon was prepping the 10 teams for their final pitches in a week’s time: advice for pacing their presentation perfectly, understanding the emotional arc they would take their audience on, nailing down their “Wow!” fact.
“You want this to be well choreographed,” Calderon said, “like a ballet.”
When lab time rolled around, Nitya Sri Adapala and her teammates began discussing the aesthetic of their presentation’s splash page, where they’d kick off their pitch for addressing food waste.
“One-third of the world’s food is being wasted,” she said. All while homeless and low-income folks struggle to afford food.
Sri Adapala and her team’s startup would transport excess food from the source — say, a family that knew they couldn’t finish their groceries or a restaurant that had whole foods they didn’t get to — to pantries where those most in need can access it. To increase the sustainability of their venture, the food would be transported by bicycle in biodegradable storage containers.
Signing up for the program and scheduling pickups and deliveries would all be done through an app, which would also highlight to diners restaurants that donate their excess food. The service would also alleviate restaurants’ costs, too, explained Riya Patel. She said the team found that dumpsters can start at $500 or $600 a month, and restaurants often fill them with excess food. Diverting that to pantries would reduce the size and cost of the dumpsters restaurants need.
The startup’s revenue would come from a $450 base fee — cheaper than the cheapest dumpster — that establishments would pay for all their pickups.
Though taking their venture to the next level would require more business acumen, not to mention a software engineer to make the app, the team expressed an interest in returning to their social startup a few years down the line, after acquiring more expertise in business and food waste.
“The past eight weeks, though, have been invaluable in starting the process,” Sri Adapala said.
The class is not a one-off incursion of Big Ideas into the classroom. Coming to Berkeley Changemaker™ this spring is a Big Ideas “Special Topic” Innovations OnRamp class about financial inclusion and “the challenge of ensuring that all people have access to affordable, helpful financial services such as savings, payments, insurance and credit in both the developing world and in more developed markets like the U.S.”
For a while, Silver had been wanting to offer a class wherein topics change term-to-term based on what issues students are concerned about. (Without a previous cohort to inform Silver and her teaching team, they decided on financial inclusion for the inaugural “Special Topic” class.) While Silver envisions two instructors — one with extensive topic knowledge and one with deep social-entrepreneurial experience — she discovered that Haas colleague Joe Dougherty had both, and will be teaching the class in the spring 2022 semester. Dougherty, a partner at Dalberg Advisors, has worked at a variety of consulting and professional services firms, including Kearney and Cardno, and has taught at UNC Wilmington’s Cameron School of Business and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies before coming to Haas. Building on his spring class content will be team-based projects that utilize entrepreneurial skills.
Given how fall’s class has gone, Dougherty has much to be excited about.
“One of the great things about this class is seeing the ingenuity from the next generation,” Calderon said. “I think that is something that you can’t necessarily see from the outside of school. But once you’re in these classes, you get to see how creative they are and how passionate they are.”
