Dear BfE family,

Can you believe that March has already passed us by?!? It feels like 2022 just began. The year is rolling by and BfE continues to make progress in a number of areas. I'm personally excited about our new partnership with IIX, our recent webinar with CliMatr on ESG integration for startups, and the steady advancement of the internal portal development by BfE Tech. While things may naturally seem to proceed a bit slower in the lead-up to summer, I'm nevertheless grateful for the continued learnings, interactions, opportunities to develop skills and create impact within BfE. We've come a long way since our founding days and I know we have exciting times ahead. Thanks for taking the plunge and being on this journey with us, whether you just joined or have been a part of BfE for years!

I hope you all have a happy and healthy April. As always, please reach out to me via email or Slack if you ever want to chat!

With lots of gratitude,

Jordan

Missed something within BfE this month? Here's what you need to know:

• ICYMI: We've launched our new Coffee Chats initiative. Join us to connect with other BfE members across chapters and divisions in casual 1:1 chats facilitated over Slack. Our next Coffee Chat pairings will be allocated on 10 April, so make sure to sign-up by 9 April
• ICYMI: The BfE Tech Division hosted their March divisional meeting last weekend! If you're keen to learn more about what the division is up to, you can watch the recording of the session here
• ICYMI: Ahead of our upcoming deadline for startups to be considered for the Autumn 2022 Cohort, we hosted an information session about our Incubation Programme earlier this month. Please refer to this video if you have any questions about our core offering (or want to share it with any eligible startups!)
• The BfE Partnerships team formalized a partnership with Impact Investment Exchange (IIX)! As one of the leading pioneers in the impact investing space, IIX has created platforms to help improve impact measurement and dealflow for early-stage social enterprises around the world 🌍
• We're recruiting for a number of open positions on our global team. Please take a look and share widely with your networks! Referrals are always appreciated

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

• We discussed with Jeson (Global Operations Head) about engaging BfE mentors more effectively, specifically focusing on the potential of organising global programmes to enhance mentor engagements within BfE chapters. Our main agreement is that we should allow chapter teams to have higher autonomy and ownership of mentor engagement initiatives – as opposed to creating top-down global programmes – but we should crystallise channels for chapter associates to engage with mentors
• We performed Incubation Programme engagement checkpoints with Finance Advisory (FA) and Legal Advisory (LA) directors to determine points of improvement

🤝 Outreach

• Partnerships: 
  • We held a very engaging event with CliMatr about integrating ESG last week (recording here). A big shoutout to Melissa (Global Events Manager) for helping us put it together! If you liked what you saw, stay tuned as we will begin working with CliMatr on an ESG training program for BfE startups this summer
  • BfE is now an Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) Impact Partner on IIX's Pitchfest Series 2022! Starting with the APAC region, the Pitchfest Series is now open for applications until the 8th of April. Through our partnership, BfE startups are also invited to join Impact Partners 3.0, a fintech crowdfunding platform that connects impact enterprises and impact investors
• Communications:
  
  • We're planning events for mentors and students. Look out soon for surveys to tell us what types of events you’d like to see and what exactly you’d like to gain from them 👀
  • We onboarded two new Global Content Managers to help us publish more content for our Medium publication! Read more about our new division members below in the Members Corner section
     

🔋 Strategy & Operations

• Strategy:
  • The New Chapter Handbook for incoming chapter leadership members is currently in the works! Stay tuned for more updates on how this develops in the coming months
  • We held the monthly Chapter Presidents & VP meeting alongside the Global Incubation Division earlier in March
  • We're collaborating with the Global Impact Research Division and Global Communications team to publish BfE's first-ever Annual Impact Report in Q2!
  • Stay tuned for a BfE student testimonial video that we'll be publishing soon 👀
• Operations:
  • The Autumn 2022 application deadline for the BfE Incubation Programme has been pushed back to 15 April
  • We're recruiting for a new Global Mentorships Manager to work on coordinating and improving our mentorship offer to students and professionals. If you know anyone who may be a good fit for the role, please get in touch!
  • We're working on co-creating events with Melissa (Global Events Manager) to better engage our global network of mentors

👩‍💻 Impact Research

• We collected feedback from various stakeholders regarding BfE’s Impact Wheel, and are now in the final stages of completing this foundational initiative
• Yuan (Global M&E Manager) has been diligently leading efforts to revamp the pre-engagement and post-engagement surveys critical to gathering key impact metrics
• We're continuing to focus on building our first-ever Annual Impact Report to demonstrate the ways in which BfE has impacted startups, students, and professional mentors

⚙️ Technology

• Our Division hosted our monthly update meeting this past weekend! If you missed it and would like to get the full run-down on what BfE Tech has been doing, feel free to watch the recording
• We are thrilled to welcome Matea Golem as the new Global Tech Outreach Manager to initiate and oversee tech partnerships, lead strategic tech events, and drive tech content creation strategies. With her numerous experiences in event management, and her creative event ideas and systematic planning, we’re excited about the upcoming vibrant events and initiatives Matea and her team will bring!
• The Admin Portal UI project on Volunteer and Startup Management flows has been successfully wrapped up with the handover and walkthrough of UI/UX resources to software development teams on 20 March. We thank all stakeholders involved in planning, designing, auditing, and providing feedback on our mockups over the past 6 months
• It is with a heavy heart to announce that Ian will be stepping down from the Global UI/UX Manager role this month. Ian has made great contributions to BfE, especially with the setting up of BfE's Design System on Zero-height, Intranet Material UI Kit, and leading two UI mockup projects to design very professional screens for our new system. We thank Ian for his dedication and hard work for BfE and hope to welcome him back for individual UI projects in the future!

Our chapters have been busy this month, with the academic year kicking off recently.

🇬🇧 Cambridge

• Lent term Projects: As we come to the end of the engagement cycle, we would like to thank all of our project teams for their hard work over the past term. We have successfully engaged with 6 startups across our 3 divisions, and are hoping to see as many existing team members as possible join us for our next round of projects in Michaelmas

🇺🇸 New York

• Incubation: Our three incubation teams made considerable headway creating their mid-engagement deliverables, with mid-engagement client calls all scheduled for the last week of March or the first week of April. Regular client and mentor check-ins have continued for the past few weeks, and the clients are pleased with the quality of the progress
• Programme Development: Startup Recruitment (SR) has completed preliminary interviews with startups and has sent out numerous outreach emails to startup support organisations. Our Growth & Partnerships (G&P) team has completed their first professional panel with guest speakers in consulting and social impact, and is working on a friendship bracelet community service event and professional workshop. Lastly, our Communications team completed a Canva workshop with IDM student Vicky Gao, and has designed improved templates for our Instagram account. Stay tuned for new posts coming soon!

🇸🇬 Singapore

• All our teams are working hard. Most of our Consulting and Finance Advisory teams have completed their mid-point calls with clients. Our Technical Advisory team will begin to engage Njordfrey, a new client, with two projects related to IoT enabled smart farming! We look forward to developing best practices that future Technical Advisory teams can adopt. Lastly, our Startup Recruitment team has finished interviewing their pipeline of startups, and will begin shortlisting some to present to the global team
• Quite excitingly, our Growth and Partnerships team is formalising a new partnership with Social Impact Catalyst, a youth-centric organization in Singapore with shared interests in promoting social entrepreneurship and innovation. Like BfE, they are deeply involved with students from various local higher education institutes, and they have impacted more than 15 startups thus far. Hopefully we get to kickstart some meaningful collaborations soon!
• The Singapore Chapter hosted our second townhall session this month with all our members joined by Sushmita, a current freelance consultant with 15 years of experience in the social impact space. We received wonderful feedback from her about what we do at BfE!

🇨🇦 Vancouver

• Consulting: Our Consulting associates have conducted great research and analysis for Beyond Solid Waste Management (Kenya) so far, and we have charted out a roadmap for our final client deliverables. We are expecting to have our mid-point engagement call with Dorothy, our client, on 2 April!
• Communications: Our Vancouver website updates are live! We’ve also launched our Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn accounts, and the team has done a wonderful job keeping up a consistent weekly posting schedule. Please feel free to check out our pages and give them a like/follow! 
• General: Our chapter had a couple social events in the past month. Earlier in March we had our first in-person social at Earls Restaurant. Last week, we also hosted a 'Meet the Mentor Q&A/Virtual Social' session, where our team had the opportunity to ask career questions to our consulting mentor, Matt, and bond with him through a virtual game of Skribblio!

🇮🇳 New Delhi

• We held an offline icebreaker recently (informal meet with the entire chapter to bond better)
• We started 'Case Bootcamp,' which is a series of weekly sessions about consulting case interviews led by seniors for first-year students
• We regularly communicated and updated Segun (Founder of Ladewin Educational) via e-mail about the consulting project progress

We are so grateful for the outstanding contributions made by the following BfE members this month. Thank you and well done! 👏

•  From BfE Cambridge: Jermaine Wong (Communications Director) has done a great job this term helping to successfully promote several events and manage the new social media accounts for the chapter
• ⚙️ From BfE Technology:
  • Kudos to Kathi (Global Tech Programme Manager) and Tiffany (Global Tech Volunteer) for launching the inaugural BfE Tech Leaders Fellowship programme successfully, and preparing comprehensive useful guides to ensure the best learning experience for mentors and mentees throughout the mentorship journey
  • Shoutout to Hua (Global Software Development Manager) and Pranav (Global Software Development Manager) for going above and beyond through their dedication, time commitment and huge efforts in preparing the Intranet React-Django template repository to kickstart development projects
• 🌍 From BfE Communications: We are thrilled to welcome our two new Global Content Managers to the division!
  • Nashipai (R) is pursuing a PhD and is based in Copenhagen, Denmark. She enjoys writing and is excited about contributing to BfE's Medium
  • Marie (L) is pursuing a career in UX writing. She received a certificate in grant writing, and was a curriculum developer and chef at Seattle Culinary Academy!

We're excited to announce that we published a new article on our Medium publication – this 'Startup Spotlight' piece focuses on Kineer Services, a social enterprise in India empowering the LGBTQ community. Our Cambridge Chapter worked with Kineer to help them secure an investment and improve their marketing. Please give it a read below! 📚

There are no organization-wide BfE events scheduled during the month of April! But stay tuned for future events coming soon 👀

Reads

• A Gender-Smart Renewable Energy Transition: Why Climate Change Solutions Can't Overlook Inequality (The Next Billion)
• The race to be India's electric vehicle capital (Rest of World)
• Buy or get bought: African tech is on a mergers and acquisitions space (Rest of World)
• Can blockchain tech help farmers get climate insurance (Fast Company)
• The first year of China's carbon neutrality pledge, in numbers (China Dialogue)

Roles

• Digital Product Manager @ Radish Lab
• IRIS+ Product Summer Associate @ GIIN (Global Impact Investing Network)
• Portfolio Associate @ Autodesk Foundation
• Climate Strategy Research Analyst @ World Resources Institute
• Grants Manager @myAgro

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