IMPACT VENTURERS - Change-makers Share their Stories

Anvit Goyal is manager of business process improvement at 'Vital Strategies', where he has served as member of the DEI Task Force, a cross-functional group with the task to guide and champion change and serve as the foundation for sustained work in diversity, equity, and inclusion. He is also a co-founder and Strategy Lead at "Legacy Impact Ventures Africa', an impact investing company providing Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) services and working to drive capital to African, women-led businesses and gender-balanced teams. He is a passionate change-maker with years of experience leading innovations for the greater good and empathizing with stakeholders to design solutions for societal impact across industries- manufacturing, retail, healthcare, and non-profits. 

Nikos Ververidis is a founder of a cultural platform ελculture and co-founder of 'Aephoria', a sustainable business incubator, with its trademark project - annual innovation competition in blue economy BlueGrowth. He is also a co-founder and shareholder at Medculture and Openfarm.gr (a spinoff of Medculture). 

Caroline Weinberg is the Founder of Plan A, a non-profit organization offering a variety of healthcare services for free to uninsured people in the Mississippi Delta area. Caroline has extensive experience in public health and policy  and is passionate about confronting the social determinants of health. She has a BA in Psychology from UVA, got her MD at NYU, where she was a Reynolds Fellow, and a Masters in Public Health from Columbia University. 

Building value in a neighborhood, which tends to bring the neighborhood out of economic and social decline, cannot be considered bad! Yes, some of the effects, major effects, may be negative, including the impact on affordability, however, value creation is something that can only be generated thanks to the fact that some people are looking out for their own self interest, which is their incentive for creating something that will bring value, which in turn will trickle down to the rest of the population of the neighborhood. So perhaps we are asking the wrong questions here. Is the right question “why do local low income renters get displaced”? Because I would say it is not! In my view the question should be “why do local renters, who are currently getting displaced, not OWN a residential property in this neighborhood”.

Antonia Bowring was named to 2021 Top Coaches List, NY. She is a highly credentialed consultant, executive coach, and strategic facilitator with comprehensive experience in early-stage and corporate settings helping leaders reframe their opportunities and challenges, and then execute on them. 

In this episode I am joined by Anu Gupta, who is the Founder and CEO of Be More, a company dedicated to unleashing human capital by breaking bias.

Anu is an expert in mindfulness and unconscious bias.

With a background in Philosophy as well as Law, he developed Be More’s methodology through multidisciplinary research that lasted over a decade and has brought his methodology to over 15,000 professionals nationwide, in sectors like healthcare, finance, law, technology and government.

We discussed how Be More brings together mindfulness and technology to help heal communities from the damaging effects of unconscious bias.

Ian Marvy is an award winning social entrepreneur with 25 years of experience working at the intersection of community/economic development, food systems change and youth empowerment. As a social entrepreneur and urban farmer he works locally, nationally and internationally on initiatives that build stronger, healthier, more just and equitable communities. 

In this episode, we discuss 'Added Value', a non-profit organization Ian co-founded over 20 years ago, and the way in which farming and producing food can be used as a vehicle for the social and economic redevelopment and even spiritual healing of of low income communities.

Andrew Greenblatt has spent his career as a Social Entrepreneur and teacher who creates for-profit and not-for-profit businesses with a social mission. He is the Founder and current Executive Director of IDG Benefits Fund. IDG Benefits Fund is working with government entities, companies, and labor organizations to help low-wage workers get access to benefits usually reserved for traditional employees.In this episode, Andrew discusses IDG Benefit Fund's model for providing benefits to low-wage workers of companies like Uber and Lyft. 

Interviewed by Evangelos P. Limpantoudis

Hiba Tagelalla is a Rotational Project Engineer at a Structure Tone, a General Contractor in Manhattan. She is also an African American woman in an industry of white men. Her promising career in the world of construction started with a dream at a young age to one day become an architect. Today, her dream has adjusted, but she has not compromised, even though there have been several moments in her academic and professional career so far, when compromise seemed inevitable. In this episode, we discuss her perspective on racial and gender (in)equity in the academic and professional world of architecture and construction.

Hiba Tagelalla is a Rotational Project Engineer at a Structure Tone, a General Contractor in Manhattan. She is also an African American woman in an industry of white men. Her promising career in the world of construction started with a dream at a young age to one day become an architect. Today, her dream has adjusted, but she has not compromised, even though there have been several moments in her academic and professional career so far, when compromise seemed inevitable. In this episode, we discuss her perspective on racial and gender (in)equity in the academic and professional world of architecture and construction.