The NEXUS Impact Accelerator
In March of 2020 we launched our inaugural NEXUS Impact Accelerator to support incredible social entrepreneurs within our community who are working on critical global challenges. Little did we know that 2 weeks later, the world would grind to a halt under threat from a global pandemic. The start date proved to be unexpectedly auspicious and an especially valuable time to work with our inaugural cohort and provided the founders with dedicated support, guidance, and a sense of community as we all navigated the uncertainties and evolving challenges of the global pandemic.
This year we launched featuring another 6 fellows working across social and environmental thematic areas to accelerate impact in the fields of renewable energy, new sustainable materials and economic empowerment in traditionally underserved communities.
We are proud that this 2021/2022 cohort is powered by H/L Ventures, a NEXUS member led venture studio that invests in diverse founders working on solutions to support people and the planet.
We are also grateful for our partnerships with our title sponsor BNP Paribas Wealth Management and our other partners Acru Solutions and DLA Piper, without which we could not offer robust support to our fellows.
A Brooklyn-based energy technology startup working on greening American cities. Since its founding in 2012, the company has completed energy projects in nearly 1,000 buildings by utilizing its proprietary software for analysis, leasing, project management, and monitoring of urban clean energy projects and its customers are saving 20-40% on their energy bills each year.
Donnel Baird
Created by two women with decades of experience working in finance, venture capital, and private equity to prove that financial innovation could be used as a tool to close the wealth gap, not exacerbate it. CNote is helping unlock fixed income products, including CDFIs that focus on female-run and small businesses, into which institutional and retail investors can deploy socially-responsible capital.
Yuliya Tarasava
Catherine Berman
A seaweed materials company, LOLIWARE has pioneered the world’s leading seaweed technology to replace single-use plastics. LOLIWARE’s products harness LIST (LOLIWARE Intelligent Seaweed Technologies) to create single-use items designed to disappear. LOLIWARE’s straw looks, feels, and acts like plastic, but is made from 100% food-grade materials.
Chelsea Briganti
A technology that harnesses ocean wave energy to produce fresh water in areas where large-scale seawater desalination plants are too expensive and take too long to build. RME’s mission is to significantly improve access to water for coastal populations in developing countries and small island developing states and to displace the diesel-electric desalination systems that are currently in wide use worldwide. The Wave2OTM technology is a cost effective, highly scalable “renewable water” solution..
Olivier Ceberio
Bill Staby
Solstice was founded on the belief that every household can be powered by affordable renewable energy, regardless of their income, their rooftop, or other markers of privilege. Solstice connects households and businesses to shared renewable projects in their community, and their software manages the customer experience for the life of the 20-year project. By giving ordinary Americans access to clean energy at a guaranteed discount, Solstice unlocks the market for the 77 percent of households that cannot install rooftop solar on their homes.
Sandhya Murali
Steph Speirs
Spry is an NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) technology company that solves the unique needs of both athletic departments and student-athletes in one comprehensive platform. Designed by former collegiate athletes that went pro, Spry empowers Student Athletes to find and manage NIL opportunities and compliance and gain a foundational financial education for a “richer” future, while providing Administrative Departments, Compliance Departments, and Coaches tools and resources to successfully manage their NIL opportunities.
Lyle Adams
Thanks again to our partners for making this happen:
Support the NEXUS Impact Accelerator Cohort
Interested in serving as a mentor?
Let’s mobilize the incredible talents, resources, influence and access of our NEXUS Community to support our amazing fellows. We invite you to join us! If you are interested in serving as a mentor please get in touch! Email: Davidd@nexusglobal.org
Interested in investing or offering certain partnership opportunities?
Our fellows are always appreciative of partnership opportunities and investor interest. If you would like to learn more about a company and/or have an exciting opportunity for one of the fellows, email: Davidd@nexusglobal.org
Other Support?
Interested in supporting the Accelerator program or the cohort in otherways?
You can email: Davidd@nexusglobal.org
NEXUS Impact Accelerator Alumni Fellows
Our 2020 Inaugural Cohort
Our inaugural cohort was selected after a highly competitive application process due to their talents, progress to date, and vision for impact. They represented the spirit of the NEXUS Community. The entrepreneurs work on a wide variety of critical challenges including regrowing coral in labs to save reefs, increasing health equity and inclusion in media, using robotics to better connect the elderly and immobile into society, using a plant based technology to lock beaches and prevent coastal erosion and mapping the brain to solve Parkinson’s Disease.
Archive
2020 Cohort 1 Interviews
NEXUS HQ interviewed each of the Fellows from our first cohort to learn more about their motivations for starting a company, their aspirations for growth, and the challenges they faced during the era of COVID-19.
