IDEAS that Inspire

Carlos Mercado-Lara and John Sutor are MIT-IDEAS award recipients and Co-founders of SciTeens.⁠ SciTeens is an organization with a mission to bridge the gap between education and opportunity by providing students with mentorship and community on a free online platform.⁠

Rebeca Hwang is a graduate of MIT’s Chemical Engineering Department, IDEAS'01 award recipient, and Founder of Pure Water.⁠ She is currently a Professor of Practice at Thunderbird and the Senior Director for Thunderbird's new Center for Global Entrepreneurship and Family Business. She is also a Managing Partner at Kalei Ventures.⁠

Emily Young is a graduate of the MIT’s Mechanical Engineering Department, IDEAS 2017 award recipient, and Co-founder/Executive Director of 'The Okoa Project'. Her nonprofit focuses on connecting families to healthcare when they need it most, and works with communities to design and manufacture ambulances that specifically cater to their needs. They are working in Ghana to create emergency systems in areas that do not have any and are pushing the boundaries in more ways than one. 

Celi Khanyile-Lynch is an MBA graduate of MIT Sloan School of Management, IDEAS 2020 award recipient, a sustainable investor, and founder of Green Source. Based in Cameroon, Green Source is revolutionizing the palm oil industry in West Africa by providing smallholder producers with the resources to create sustainably made palm oil and improve their livelihood. With over 200 customers, Green Source is shifting the landscape of palm oil production.

Islam Genina (MIT Research Fellow'18) and Andrew Tsang (MIT IDM'19 Graduate) are co-founders of InSanirator and IDEAS 2019 award recipients. InSanirator's vision is to build resilient, healthier and prosperous cities of the future. They are working with cities globally to build strong, adaptive fecal sludge and septage management systems.

Tamara Knox and Joshua Morrison are graduates of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and IDEAS 2019 award recipients. Their project, Frolic specializes in urban cohousing with projects designed to foster community and be financially accessible to a broader population than is currently supported by the homeownership market. It’s innovative, daring, and successful in many ways.

Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola is a graduate of the MIT Sloan Business School and an IDEAS 2012 award recipient. Her project, (Wecyclers), a for-profit social enterprise, promotes environmental sustainability, social welfare, and community health by utilizing low-cost cargo bicycles called “Wecyclers” to provide convenient recycling services to households in densely populated low-income neighborhoods in Nigeria.

Introducing IDEAS that Inspire, a limited-series podcast celebrating the 20th year of the MIT IDEAS Social Innovation Challenge, formerly known as the IDEAS Global Challenge.