Welcome to the August BfE newsletter! 🎉 (excuse the slight delay...) | |
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Dear BfE family,
I hope this email finds you well! Hopefully your summer wrapped up nicely and you're looking forward to the start of the academic year (or work picking back up for those who've graduated).
I wanted to write today's (brief) newsletter about climate change, a topic that's vital to our collective future. The latest report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released last month ahead of the upcoming COP26 climate negotiations in Glasgow, makes grave remarks about how climate change will affect all of us. The report unequivocally confirms that humans are responsible for rapid and large scale Greenhouse gas emission (GHG) increases, leading to a world unable to adhere to the 1.5C or 2C warming above pre-industrial levels, as specified by the 2015 Paris Agreement. Key messages in the IPCC report, which are drawn from over 14,000 scientific studies, indicate that changes to Earth's climate are already underway and may be irreversible. Indeed, sea level rise, extreme flooding, droughts, wildfires and erratic weather patterns have all played out around the world over the past year. As conscious citizens, I imagine you've read about these events on the news, so hopefully this doesn't come as a shock.
How will we adapt to a warming world with more frequent extreme weather events? This is the defining question of our generation, in my view. It's increasingly clear that climate mitigation is not going far enough to address the urgency of this crisis; indeed, governments and businesses need to invest more into climate adaptation now too. Adapting to the climate crisis is a space where the social enterprise business model has particular relevance, given its unique ability to leverage market innovations for social good. If economists agree that climate change is caused by market failures, and social entrepreneurship purports to address market failures, then social enterprises in agriculture, waste management, clean energy and more can be important catalysts for driving forward a more sustainable planet. Harnessing the power of social enterprises to collaboratively reimagine and redesign the world we want to live in will enable us to take steps towards making our planet more livable, both for ourselves and the next generation. We're in this together 💪
With lots of gratitude,
Jordan |
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Missed something within BfE this month? Here's what you need to know:
- We successfully wrapped up our summer internships! The 8 summer interns presented their final deliverables at an hour-long session on August 7, which culminated in the second iteration of a BfE summer internship programme. The interns tackled various projects, all with weight at the global level, including talent strategy, graphic design, impact investment research, (business) development and public relations
- We're engaging AMNIe, a Vancouver-based sustainability consulting firm led by Irina (BfE Advisor), on an impact research project to improve our framework for social enterprises to assess their impact in accordance with the UN SDGs. The project intends to harmonize the impact data that social enterprises submit with the data that we (BfE) collect and communicate into our forthcoming annual impact report. Stay tuned 👀
- ICYMI: The BfE Technology Division hosted their latest monthly division meeting, which you can view here. The session features updates on some educational initiatives, global projects and chapter tech team recruitment
- We've released a summer update on our global impact! Check out this slide deck to learn more about some of the exciting ways we've catalysed global impact for our three core stakeholders (students, startups and mentors)
- Due to recruitment challenges and other factors, we have unfortunately closed the BfE Rotterdam Chapter. However, thanks to the ambition of four talented students at the University of Delhi, we have decided to pilot a new chapter in New Delhi! We're super excited to see continued interest in BfE among students from other parts of the world
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We've continued to make steady progress on various initiatives at the global level. This month was a busy one. Here's what each division was up to:
📊 Incubation
- Technical Advisory (TA) finished interviewing startups for this cohort, and decided on admitting two startups – Toolkit iSkills and GraviLog. The two software development / data analysis startups will be supported by the BfE Cambridge and BfE Singapore TA teams, respectively. Albert (Global Technical Advisory Manager) and Xin Zhe (Singapore TA Director) are currently working on the project proposals. Recruitment for GraviLog has now concluded, with three new TA student members onboarded to work with the startup
- We onboarded Arnas (Global Academy Manager) to lead on building BfE's Incubation Programme training and knowledge retention repository
- We started headhunting for the Global Programme Manager role, a newly established position to source and execute partnerships that empower BfE's startups
- Sidley, a highly respected international law firm, agreed to advise BfE on internal legal issues as our pro bono partner. Shoutout to Hui Zhen (BfE Alum) for initiating the partnership!
- We organised a brainstorming session with Aparupa (BfE Advisor) on building a new 'diagnostic phase' before moving BfE startups into the Incubation Programme. Discussions also revolved around doing a future trial for a flexible Consulting/FA joint engagement in the Spring 2022 Cohort
🤝 Outreach
- Communications: We onboarded Tiana (Global Communications Manager; former Communications Associate at BfE New York) to the team, who will help to expand BfE's global social media presence and brand engagement
- Partnerships: We have drafted a framework and set of step-by-step guidelines for initiating partnerships (to be released soon). This framework will be leveraged by Chapter Growth & Partnerships teams to help determine which potential partners should be contacted, how they should be initiated and what benefits different organisations can offer BfE.
🔋 Strategy & Operations
- Strategy:
- Internships: We wrapped up with the management of the Talent Strategy Internship, which concluded with the presentation of a talent strategy deck. This was a summer-long project focused on advising the Global Team and Chapters on their talent strategies. We're now currently managing a Graphic Design Internship, which is creating a slew of important graphic collateral for the global team.
- New Chapter Onboarding: We are opening a new BfE Chapter at the University of Delhi (please welcome the New Delhi Chapter!). Annie and Jordan are currently leading the onboarding process with their amazing leaders.
- Operations:
- Welcome Event: In early August, we hosted an introductory event to welcome the 9 new startups into the BfE Incubation Programme! Missed the event? You can catch it on our YouTube channel here
- Mentor Allocation: We successfully allocated professional mentors from our growing mentor database to the Autumn 2021 engagements, including 9 Consulting mentors and 6 Finance Advisory mentors (among others)
- Compliance Manager: We've kickstarted recruitment for a Global Compliance Manager, who will serve as the touchpoint for document write-ups, procedural agreements and partnerships
👩💻 Impact Research
- We have published an end-of-summer 'impact update' – this is a short deck that contains the latest info about the impact we have seen in BfE and our startup community. Shout out to Esther for preparing this update!
- Based on the feedback we have collected and analysed, we are working to identify improvements to be made to the Incubation Programme to enhance the startup and student experience. Fareeha is doing an excellent job at this!
⚙️ Technology
- We hosted our latest divisional meeting on August 29! Watch this video to explore all the latest happenings across our division and its ongoing projects
- Omar (Global Technology Volunteer) and Pranav (Global DevOps Manager) recently concluded the GitHub Action Lock DevOps project! This was a multi-week infrastructure project to build a more seamless way to deploy tech projects across different users
- Hua (Global Software Development Manager), Xue Hui (Global Technology Volunteer) and Xiaodong (Global Tech Lead) successfully wrapped up the Investor Selector 2.0 project. They created an NLP algorithm to rank and recommend impact investors to BfE startups in our Incubation Programme
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Our chapters have been busy this month, as they head into the academic year.
🇬🇧 Cambridge
- On the Incubation Programme side, our teams have started engagement calls with our 3 startups: NjordFrey (Rwanda), The Baby Bank (Nigeria) and Sellox (The Gambia)
- We’ve strategized on some project deliverables for our clients, including
- User Acquisition and Retention Strategy (Sellox)
- Enhancing Inbound Marketing (The Baby Bank)
- Market Research and Commercial Due Diligence in Rwanda’s Aquaculture Space (NjordFrey)
🇺🇸 New York
- Please welcome Shruti Chennammaraja and Hanray Liu as they step into their new roles as Co-President and VP of Incubation, respectively!
- We started reaching out to professional mentors to coordinate communication and expectations for the forthcoming set of semester engagements
- We initiated preliminary communication with our three clients: Toolkit iSkills (Consulting, Kenya), She Wins Mexico (Finance, Mexico), and PathtoGrowth Centre (Finance, Nigeria)
- Coordinated with Gamecock Consulting Club to kick-start their engagement with Imara Art Design (Rwanda)!
- We also started reconnecting with other members of the NY Leadership team to get ready for a great semester!
🇸🇬 Singapore
- We finished our fall recruitment cycle! The recruitment went smoothly and we are so excited to onboard the 15+ new members to the Chapter!
- We hosted our first Townhall, where we invited Aurelien and Angela from Eskewlabs to have a sharing session. Check out a photo from the event below 👀
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- Our Consulting and Finance Advisory (FA) teams are currently in the process of delivering training sessions to new PLs and members in our team
- We’re planning to co-organise a webinar with SMU Impact Investing Club. Stay tuned for more details!
🇨🇦 Vancouver
- We have recruited, confirmed, and are currently onboarding 6 new BfE members: 1 Consulting Director, 4 Consulting Associates, and 1 Communications Associate (we’re going to try recruiting for a Communications Director closer to September). If we’re successful with that, then our chapter will be made up of 10 members, representing 50% growth over last year!
🇳🇱 Rotterdam
- The Rotterdam Chapter has officially closed due to student recruitment issues
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We are so grateful for the outstanding contributions made by the following BfE members this month. Thank you and well done! 👏
 From the BfE Global Team:
- ⚙️ BfE Technology: Shoutouts to Brenda (Global Product Manager), Kathi (Global Tech Programme Manager) and Brie (Global Tech Strategy Manager) for going above and beyond in their work! We'd also like to give a shoutout to Xiaodong (Tech Lead for the Investor Selector 2.0 project) for his dedication over the years and bringing the prototype to completion!
 From BfE Cambridge: We would like to highlight Qistina Hamid for her amazing work as the Startup Recruitment Director! Of the 5 startups she conducted due diligence on, 4 were selected to join BfE’s Autumn Cohort. We are excited to be working with them! Qistina’s attention to detail and presentation of startups in the Global Review Committee was also critical to developing a practical and precise scope for our projects- 🇺🇸 From BfE New York: Shoutout to Hanray Liu (VP of Incubation) for seamlessly stepping into his new role right away. Hanray has been working on kickstarting our communications with mentors, clients, and our external partner Gamecock Consulting Club (GCC)!
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Curious what our startups have been up to? This month, we're spotlighting a few in our portfolio for their impactful work:
- She Wins Mexico: Founded in 2015, She Wins Mexico is an organization that strives to attain gender equality and women empowerment through its professional and athletic programming. Some of the programming includes sports clinics with soccer professionals, English as a second language, and sports diplomacy and service-learning exchanges.
- She Wins Mexico worked with the New York Consulting team last semester on its impact tracking and social media strategy.
- The Founder, Cecilia Vales, is actually an NYU alum!
- Feel free to check out their Instagram account!
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Nothing planned for the month of September...but stay tuned for another event with Stepchange Africa in October! |
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🗞 News, Resources and Jobs | |
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