More information about our 2013-2014 Accelerator Fellows

A brief look at the innovative solutions our new fellows will be working on.

29 August 2013

September 3rd is just around the corner! Our 2013-2014 Accelerator Fellows will be joining us at the Propeller Incubator after Labor Day, but we couldn't wait to tell you a bit more about them. Here's a brief look at the innovative solutions they'll be working on for the next 10 months.

• Crescent City Connections (Zach Cheney, Monique Labat, Teddy Nathan) creates valuable community impact opportunities for socially responsible businesses.

• Farm City Initiative (Sanjay Kharod), NOFFN’s 500-lot project, intends to help communities citywide that want to start farms, to grow gardens and to create spaces where neighbors can interact.

• FitLot (Adam Mejerson) is a nonprofit organization committed to building outdoor fitness parks in communities across America, founded in the belief that every individual can and should enjoy the health benefits of a more active lifestyle.

• Gradient (Brandie Burris, Alex Gallagher) is an online platform for writing and tracking high quality goals for students with disabilities that also allows school administrators to evaluate the programmatic success of special education and intervention programs. [Formerly LEO]

• Griffin Law Group (Robyn Griffin) aims to provide children with mental and/or physical disabilities with the tools they need to make connections with others and lead healthy lives by receiving proper medical treatment, SSI and Medicaid benefits.

• I Heart Louisiana (Katrina Brees) provides a model of economic, ecological and cultural sustainability through parading.

• iSTEMNola (Deborah Anderson, Howard Conyers, Jaime Wright) will bridge the gap between young people and the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) industries by exposing, inspiring, and motivating youth to pursue opportunities in this burgeoning New Orleans economy.

• Limited Times (Elizabeth Townsend Gard, Ron Gard), a Tulane spin-out social venture company, is developing the Durationator(r), a software tool that will allow users to easily and affordably determine the copyright status of works worldwide.

• Our NOLA Garden (Ica Crawford, Hilary Nicole Ervin, Jarlyn Johnson, Zane Kenney) works to increase access to and the affordability of locally grown, fresh, organic foods, and provides agricultural and environmental skills and technique training to at-risk youths and marginalized populations in under-served New Orleans Communities.

• Pelican Bomb (Amanda Brinkman, Cameron Shaw) is a hybrid arts organization dedicated to increasing New Orleans' cultural capital and sustainability by cultivating multiple platforms for contemporary art discourse, engagement, and education.

• Social Vaccine Strategies (Richard Witzig) strives to discover treatments and prevent transmission of important Infectious Diseases (IDs) through medical and social vaccine (SV) technologies.

• TrueSchool (Amy Vreeland) creates new, hybrid roles in schools -- part-teacher, part-innovator -- through design and innovation studios and ongoing training.

• Urban Lands Initiative (Bridget Kelly) is working to build healthy, safe and resilient neighborhoods by offering protection of urban land in perpetuity to community-led efforts to preserve open space.

• Werkly (Eric Bernstein, Alix Keller, Kristie Weatherford) is an online community marketplace where you can Find, Hire and Pay local labor.

• Where Y’art (Catherine Todd, Collin Ferguson) seeks to unite our local art community and expand infrastructure for independent artists, craftsmen, and designers by being a curated digital gallery, a social shopping marketplace, and an educational resource, driving sales and furthering entrepreneurial efforts for the unique crop of talented artists and creative professionals in the great New Orleans area.

Tune in next week for more information about the fellows themselves!