B2B's Impactathon

Soka’s Bridges to Business (B2B) program hosted over 30 students and alumni as they self-organized into eight teams over 24 hours on November 1-2 to explore pressing local and global issues, map root causes, and begin developing business model-driven solutions. The group elected to dedicate Friday night and all day Saturday to participate in the B2B IMPACTATHON, where they heard candid insights from social entrepreneurs, impact investors and the manager of the diversity and inclusion program at The Walt Disney Company.

IMPACTATHON participants experienced a fast-paced mini ‘social enterprise bootcamp’ where they were introduced to legal structures, business models, impact measurement frameworks, and funding options before doing design-thinking exercises to dive deeper into the issues they were seeking to solve. After a storytelling and pitch workshop, they dove into “hackathon” problem-solving mode, where they had the added benefit of speaking with “Impact Catalysts” from the social impact sector, who were on call to give participants critical feedback on their ideas. The feedback and research were then integrated into the simplified pitch slide decks they designed.

The eight teams mustered their courage to pitch their social enterprises to a panel of experienced and thoughtful judges, including social impact attorney Shaheen SheikSadal, Lake Forest Economic Development Manager Carlo Tomaino, and urban planner Stephanie Roxas.

Three teams won seed funding and mentorship as a vote of confidence, and all teams were urged to keep refining and improving their ideas. All participants will be invited to a global community of IMPACTATHON participants to support their continued growth as social impact leaders and entrepreneurs.