My mother immigrated to the United States when her home country of Nicaragua was embroiled in a civil war. She traversed hundreds of miles with my brother – who was only a baby at the time- before entering the U.S. …
As a third-grade teacher in the South Bronx, I witnessed firsthand my students’ dedication to school and their joy of learning. But I also witnessed how the systemic challenges of poverty and the overarching demands of high-stakes testing left many …
Jenna Weinberg I believe strongly in harnessing the power of market forces to achieve equity and empower communities. In his “Gospel of Wealth,” Andrew Carnegie asserts that inequality is an inevitable cost of progress. I unequivocally reject this view, believing …
Michael Pukala Having grown up in a suburb of Chicago my entire life, I would have never imagined I would have spent most of my career thus far in the Middle East, living in three different countries. I have spent …
On a sweltering hot southern day in October 2019, Nathan Hixson, a Center for the Advancement for Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) Scholar and first-year Daytime MBA student at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, attended his first impact investing class. Having …
Utkarsha Bhardwaj Since childhood, I have been most passionate about exploring and solving the multi-faceted problems encountered by millions in a developing country like India. This is because I have always been around inspiring people who work together to address …
Patrick Pierson-Prah I co-founded two related companies with the mission to more meaningfully improve the lives of others and to provide people with increased economic empowerment. The first company, Procap Investments, which is an investment management firm, focuses on raising …
Meghan Spell I began my career as a healthcare attorney in a large defense firm in Louisiana. I left a comfortable, but unfulfilling, career in the corporate legal world to work in nonprofit, safety net healthcare systems, where I partnered …
Ineza Mutimura I am an education intrapreneur who is passionate about eliminating unemployment in Africa. Having lived in four African countries and traveled the continent extensively, I have always considered myself a Pan-African at heart. Thus far, my career has …
Nathan Hixson Within a 20-minute drive of the small town in Tennessee where I grew up, I could be in either an exclusive neighborhood of golf-course-adjacent mansions or in a rural area nearly absent of paved roads, good public schools …
