29 January 2016
NEW ORLEANS (Jan. 29, 2016) – Last night, Thursday, Jan. 28, 10 semi-finalists took the stage at PitchNOLA: Community Solutions in Tulane's Freeman Auditorium to pitch their entrepreneurial solutions to pressing community issues in workforce development, children and families, social justice, and the environment.
The night opened with a keynote address from Peter Ricchiuti, professor of practice at Tulane’s A. B. Freeman School of Business and host of WWNO-FM’s Out to Lunch. Ricchiuti also served as one of the competition’s judges alongside Leslie Jacobs, CEO of the New Orleans Startup Fund, and Carmen James, vice president of programs at the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
Three winners took home a total of $10,000 in cash prizes, generously provided by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, along with the $500 Audience Favorite Awarded, funded by audience donations and determined by a live text-in vote.
First place winner Young Creative Agency returned to the stage to win after pitching at PitchNOLA: Education, hosted by Propeller and 4.0 Schools this fall. PitchNOLA: Community Solutions is a part of Propeller’s PitchNOLA series, a string of issue-specific business pitch competitions that has contributed over $90,000 to 30 ventures.
PitchNOLA: Community Solutions is co-hosted by Propeller and Tulane University and
sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Albert Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking at Tulane University, and EMH Strategy.
PitchNOLA 2016: Community Solutions Winners:
1st Place – $5,000 + Technical Assistance from EMH Strategy
Young Creative Agency | Alberta Wright
Young Creative Agency provides youth across socio-economic boundaries with the keys to self-sufficiency through paid employment in the creative economy.
2nd Place – $3,000
Fund 17 | Haley Burns
Fund 17 combats opportunity inequality in the seventeen wards of New Orleans by providing micro-entrepreneurs financial and educational tools for self-empowerment.
3rd Place – $2,000 + Audience Favorite Award – $500
Food Justice Collaborative | Chika Kondo, Arieanna Knight & Ron Triggs
The Food Justice Collective (FJC) is a youth of color farmers’ cooperative growing food as a way to build food sovereignty and practice cooperative economics and self-determination to address the root causes of why the communities we live in are not able to access fresh local produce and accumulate our own wealth.
Media Contact:
Catherine Gans
(504) 302-3747
cgans@gopropeller.org