By Rob Lalka, Partner at Medora Ventures — I have been hearing all the latest buzz about student life at Yale, but today I experienced something the media often doesn’t cover. It left an impression that will stick with me. A Yale junior pitching at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute shared that his company, The Releaf Group, is on…

Hurricane Katrina: 3 Objects of the Storm and 3 Objectives of Service This article by Medora Ventures Co-Founder and Partner Rob Lalka originally appeared in the Aspen Institute Blog on August 28, 2015. Today is the tenth commemoration of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina. This article is adapted from remarks that were delivered at an event hosted yesterday at Propeller, a New…

5 development lessons from Hurricane Katrina This article by Medora Ventures Co-Founder and Partner Rob Lalka originally appeared in the World Economic Forum Agenda blog on August 24, 2015. I live in New Orleans, a city back in the news this week due to the 10th commemoration of Hurricane Katrina. …

New Orleans Advocate Letter to the Editor: Jefferson Davis statue is an outdated relic of the past This article by Medora Ventures Co-Founder and Partner Rob Lalka originally appeared in The New Orleans Advocate on July 18, 2015. I have followed with great interest your coverage of the debate over Confederate symbols, and when I read about Mayor Landrieu’s call to rename Jefferson Davis Parkway after Dr…

Why Century-Old Statues Could Inhibit New Orleans’ Next Century Of Entrepreneurship This article by Medora Ventures Co-Founder and Partner Rob Lalka originally appeared in NewsOne on June 26, 2015. Symbols Matter. Words Matter. That’s what one local entrepreneur, Frank Scurlock, reminded us of when he paid for skywriting during Jazz Fest. New Orleanians looked heavenward to find clouds shaped as peace…