John Jay College Social Innovation Fellows Win at 2018 Competition

Joseph Mahmud and Steven Pacheco present CONNECTr, an app to assist formerly incarcerated with employers, at John Jay College in New York City.

Last year on this blog I mentioned that I’ve partnered with John Jay College to create the Ron Moelis Social Innovation Fellowship. The Fellowship is meant to support students who are already on a social impact path to consider business or entrepreneurial endeavors as well. Though most students of John Jay College of Criminal Justice go onto careers in nonprofit or public sector, I wanted to work with the College to create an opportunity for students who maybe hadn’t really considered a career in business, and show them that there are ways to foster what I call the double bottom line – doing well while doing good.

CONNECTr Winners at the Echoing Green event, May 9, 2018: from left Steven Pacheco, Donauta Watson-Starcevic, Joseph Mahumud with Elizabeth Corner of Barclays.

I’m excited to share that three of the first cohort of Fellows, Joseph Mahmud, Steven Pacheco and Donauta Watson-Starcevic, are doing just that. After their Fellowship concluded, these students came up with a business plan to launch an app called CONNECTr, a mobile app that will help people with criminal records find employers open to hiring them. Joseph, Steven and Donauta were invited to present their idea at Echoing Green’s The Future of Work Social Innovation Challenge on May 9^th. The Echoing Green competition traditionally draws students from schools like MIT, Penn and Columbia, and this marked the first time a team from John Jay participated. And I’m very excited to share that they won!

You can watch their winning pitch, and other competitors in the video above (CONNECTr presenter, Steven Pacheco, presents from 16:32-20:00) and this article has a great Q&A with the students and advisor, and goes into detail about their inspiration, the path and next steps.

In short, I am really proud of these three Fellows. Congratulations Donauta, Joseph and Steven on your win, and I look forward to using CONNECTr when it goes live.