Work
I am passionate about building entrepreneurial communities. I aspire to be entrepreneurial as much as I strive to learn about impactful, social ventures.
Pick-Me-Up, LLC.
This is the current venture I am working on to improve and expand mental healthcare. We are currently participating in the University of Virginia's VentureLab summer incubator program to gain funding and mentorship. Learn more about our company here.
Social Entrepreneurship@UVA
New Hill Development Corporation
New Hill Development Corporation is an African American led social enterprise established to build a community that is prosperous, inclusive, diverse, and equitable. We will expand and strengthen Charlottesville’s African American middle class by honoring our legacy and the heritage of the once vibrant Vinegar Hill community.
As a research fellow, I helped them build their Starr Hill Small Area Plan.
Impact Investing in Appalachia
As part of a January term class, I along with eleven other students immersed ourselves in materials covering the history of the Central Appalachian region before meeting with impact investors and social entrepreneurs in the area. On returning, we studied blended finance models used by the entrepreneurs as well as their social and environmental impacts, and the information gathered was shared with UVA's Batten Public Policy School's investor network.
We were recognized as a winner by AshokaU’s #MillionsofChangemakers award.
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
In the summer of 2019, I helped design and publish NASA's 2020 Technology Taxonomy with senior leadership at the Office of the Chief Technologist to develop and roll out the strategic investment framework for communicating NASA technology developments to industry and international partners.
I also engaged the NASA community through their internal NASA@WORK platform to assist in the promotion of the 2020 Technology Taxonomy to help standardize technology communication across the agency. We asked NASA employees (contractors and civil servants) to develop a short video that describes their work with a technology that falls under an area of the 2020 Technology Taxonomy.
Check it out here. My citation is on page 226.