Impact Entrepreneur - the premiere global network for entrepreneurs, investors and scholars of social and environmental innovation
The Impact Entrepreneur Center for Social and Environmental Innovation Presents:
Sustainable Food & Agriculture: Innovations & Finance
We at Race Brook Lodge are proud to be hosting Impact Entrepreneur's 2-day thought leadership summit and solutions design forum, focusing on Sustainable Food & Agriculture Innovations and Finance. This is the inaugural event of IE's XVii program.
Official Press Release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Impact Entrepreneur Center for Social and Environmental Innovation, based in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, has launched a new business incubator focused on advancing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The Center's new initiative, called XVii, is aimed at strengthening the social entrepreneurship and impact investing movement around the world, and bringing attention to the Berkshires as a gathering place for the movement's luminaries and practitioners. The initiative begins on September 20-21, 2017 with a thought leadership summit and solutions design workshop, held at Race Brook Lodge in Sheffield. The program focuses on SDG 2 — "End hunger, achieve food security & improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture."
Participating organizations in this invitation-only gathering include leading impact investors, food and agriculture business and incubator CEOs, and scholars from prominent educational institutions. These include: AgroSmart, Babson College, Boston Impact Hub, Casey M Foundation, Centered Wealth, Charles River CFO, Clean Feet Investors, Commonwealth Kitchen, Mission Point Capital Partners, Networking Action, New England Impact Investing Initiative, Slow Money, among others.
Among the partnering organizations for this event is HeroX, a crowdsourcing solutions design and challenge platform based in California that grew out of the XPrize. An important goal of this inaugural XVii program will be to design and articulate a solutions challenge associated with SDG 2 that will be featured on Impact Entrepreneur’s own branded page on HeroX’s web platform, and promoted to Impact Entrepreneur Network’s 15,500 members around the world. The best ideas that emerge from the challenge(s) will be incubated by the Impact Entrepreneur Center and its partners from concept to viable business.
"Two of the biggest pain points in unlocking the potential of impact investing and systems-minded entrepreneurship that we hear about from members of the Impact Entrepreneur Network are that of weak 'deal flow' and 'investor flow," said Laurie Lane-Zucker, founder and CEO of the Impact Entrepreneur Center (IEC), in announcing the new initiative. "This experimental program provides a chance for entrepreneurs and investors to co-create solutions — forming a new business-birthing dynamic, and dissolving some of the principal obstacles faced by both. The new XVii Initiative also helps put IEC and the Berkshires on the national and global radar as a gathering place for leading impact investors and entrepreneurs."
The Impact Entrepreneur Center plans to commence its second XVii program, focused on SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), in Spring 2018, following the same, innovative incubation process.
For more information on the program visit the Center's website at www.impactalchemist.com. To make a donation to the XVii Sponsors Fund to support nonprofit leaders' and entrepreneurs' attendance at this and future XVii programs, follow this link.
The Impact Entrepreneur Center for Social and Environmental Innovation is a regional & global epicenter for entrepreneurs, investors, scholars and students of social and environmental innovation, as well as others passionate about creating, accelerating and scaling profitable enterprises that drive measurable, impactful change. IEC is active in education, incubation and the overall building of the social impact space — partnering with thought-leading companies, organizations and institutions in an effort to transform the business landscape so that it is more responsive to the epochal social and environmental challenges facing humanity. The Center's work is supported by the Impact Entrepreneur Network, the premier global network for systems-minded entrepreneurs, investors and scholars of social and environmental innovation (15,500 members), and Impact Entrepreneur, LLC, a consulting company that works with early and growth stage impact companies, impact investors and educational institutions.
The Sustainable Development Goals: In September 2015, 193 world leaders agreed to 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development. If these Goals are completed, it would mean an end to extreme poverty, inequality and climate change by 2030.