Santosha

The Pitch

A sustainable, self-regulated transitional village of small homes focused on providing affordable housing to the homeless community of New Orleans.

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Haiyan Khan, Vicki Judice, Kimberly Vanwagner & Eva Sohl

Haiyan Khan, Vicki Judice, Kimberly Vanwagner & Eva Sohl

The Entrepreneur

Haiyan Khan (Founder)
Haiyan Khan, a graduate of Kellogg Graduate School of Management is the founder of Never Homeless Again & Santosha Village. He hopes to be part of creative solutions to address the homelessness. Haiyan has extensive experience in development and analytics and hopes to use these skills to fight homelessness in New Orleans.

Vicki Judice
Vicki Judice is the Executive Director of the Harry Tompson Center, a day shelter for the homeless in downtown New Orleans which provides a variety of services including hygiene, housing, case management and medical treatment to 150-200 persons daily. She has held this position since 2013. Prior to that she served as the Deputy Director of UNITY of Greater New Orleans for 8 years and held other positions with the agency since 1994. She holds a LMSW and has advocated for low-income and homeless individuals for over 30 years. She presently serves on the Louisiana Housing Trust Fund Advisory Council and believes that one of the solutions to the pressing problem of continued homelessness in New Orleans is an increase in low-cost housing options for the poor.

Kimberly VanWagner
Kimberly VanWagner serves as the Executive Director of the Uptown Shepherd’s Senior Center where she applies over 15 years of professional nonprofit experience to help older adults in New Orleans maximize their quality of life and independence. She also works with area nonprofits as a consultant, grant writer, and researcher. After graduating from Newcomb College at Tulane University, Kimberly worked as a community and labor organizer throughout Illinois. She returned to New Orleans after the federal levee failures and became the founding director of the Freret Neighborhood Center, an innovative community space with programs for and by neighborhood residents of all ages. Kimberly holds a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of New Orleans with a Certificate in Hazard Policy and is passionate about building resilient communities through education and accessibility for everyone. She lives in the Freret neighborhood with her husband and two-year old son.

Eva Sohl
Eva Sohl has 12 years of experience working with community development and nonprofit initiatives that promote the dignified treatment of marginalized communities. She is currently the manager of Tibetan House, a cultural gift store and meditation center that supports Tibetans living in exile throughout India and Nepal. She is the co-founder of One World Family International, an initiative that provides ethnic refugees from Myanmar access to education in Thailand. For five years, Eva Sohl worked at the Freret Neighborhood Center, a community gathering space that engaged residents of all ages in programs that focused on leadership development, civic engagement and strengthening social ties within the Freret/Milan neighborhood. Eva Sohl is originally from the Lincoln, Nebraska where she earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from the University of Nebraska.

Class

2016 Startup Ventures

Sector

Structure

Non-Profit

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