Breaktime: Empowering Homeless Young Adults in Finding Employment
Welcome to another edition of Profiles in Entrepreneurship, where we interview the brightest entrepreneurs and VC’s around the globe. I’m excited to introduce Connor Schoen and Tony Shu, who founded Breaktime, a social enterprise that launches the careers of young adults experiencing homelessness through employment and empowerment. Connor and Tony are both sophomores at Harvard University and started Breaktime early last year. I interviewed Connor about the experience of starting and growing Breaktime:
How did you first become passionate about the problem of homelessness?
As a bisexual man myself, it was heart-wrenching to learn that coming out to your parents can result in YEARS of homelessness for some individuals. According to the True Colors Fund, while only 7% of American youth identify as LGBTI, 40% of youth experiencing homelessness fall in this category. In fact, 80% of these individuals are homeless because they have been kicked out of their house for the way they identify. To make matters worse, these talented individuals struggle to obtain and maintain a job because of persistent discrimination, and they feel like they have to “hide themselves” in the workplace. This outright injustice shakes Tony and me to the core. Thus, we were inspired to create a job pipeline for these young adults in order to serve as a model to other employers for how to be most inclusive and accepting of LGBTI youth.
How did you come up with the mentorship/cafe model as your solution?
A majority of homeless graduates from local workforce training programs are still unemployed one-year after graduation. Therefore, Breaktime’s niche is as a bridge between first-stage training programs run by other non-profits and full-time employment in the broader workforce. Breaktime provides around one year of direct employment coupled with our supportive work environment, vocational training, and one-on-one career mentorship.
To create these employment opportunities, we first identify local businesses with a shortage of labor. Then, we nurture the skills and confidence of LGBTI young adults experiencing homelessness. Finally, our business partners contract Breaktime to fill their employment needs. For example, Breaktime identified that many local food businesses didn’t have enough staff or time to develop a catering arm or expand corporate sales. Thus, these small businesses hired Breaktime to handle the sales, marketing, and distribution of catering and corporate partnerships, providing good pay and great experience to our employees.
At Breaktime, we aim to create a stable and loving network of support to disadvantaged LGBTI young adults, providing them with long-term career mentorship and social capital. We are already operating and employing young adults, and we have successfully matched employees with full-time positions at other companies, helping them to get out of homelessness. Currently, we are at a critical point of growth: Our team is working on opening the first Breaktime Cafe in Boston while pursuing new business-to-business partnerships.
How did you two meet and what is your dynamic as partners? How have you learned to make decisions and resolve conflicts together?
Tony and I are both from MA, so we met each other shortly before coming to Harvard. However, we didn’t become close until we started talking about the issue of homelessness and working together at Y2Y Harvard Square, a revolutionary shelter for young adults experiencing homelessness. As co-founders, we constantly have to work through problems together with our employees, team, partners, clients, and each other. Our number one rule is to communicate clearly, quickly, and effectively. We believe that tensions only become true problems when they are not dealt with immediately and purposefully.
Do you have any inspiring or interesting stories about the impact you have made on those you serve?
Breaktime has already begun employing and paying five young adults experiencing homelessness (four LGBTI) at $15/hour.
One of our first employees, Erica, was recently placed by us at a sewing job that pays $16.75/hour. Because of this job placement, she is now able to afford an apartment and no longer be homeless! We cannot express how much this means to the entire Breaktime Family. Erica finds sewing “therapeutic,” so we leveraged our network to get this amazing opportunity for her. We have also secured Erica an invitation to speak at TEDx, a dream she has had since childhood.
Another one of our employees, Alala, has “finally found a work environment that embraces who [they] are.” We recently called a local business with a reference for them and told this business about all the initiative that Alala was taking at Breaktime, including writing a sales script for our Sales Support Program. They have now received a job offer to be a receptionist at that business, and their new boss will actually use their correct name and pronouns!
Lastly, Chris, Jasper, and Eva have all received valuable, good-paying digital media positions at Breaktime alongside experienced career mentors. We have secured multiple job interviews for them, and we look forward to see what offers they receive.
Overall, our employees say they have “gained more confidence and had experiences to connect with people [they] never dreamed of networking with.” We are looking forward to creating many more of these success stories :)
What is an unexpected obstacle that you have had to face?
The pivot away from our first cafe project was definitely a challenging moment for Tony and me. We had been working on opening a cafe at a space in Cambridge for an entire summer and, suddenly, right before construction, the process began to fall apart due to various things outside of our control. It soon became clear that this particular space was not going to be a stable, welcoming space for our employees to learn and grow. We thus shifted and started immediately looking at other properties. Overall, this momentary confusion and anxiety has led us to being much more successful social entrepreneurs.
What are some of your future plans for Breaktime?
We are still working on opening our first cafe. We also want to build partnerships with other businesses to create more meaningful employment experiences for the young adults experiencing homelessness with whom we work.
Do you have any advice for students who aspire to be social entrepreneurs?
Before you start anything, talk with everyone in the space that you can get a hold of: other non-profits working on the issue, those affected by the issue, government officials, local businesses, etc. Try to “map the system” before you actually start a formal enterprise. This research process will help guide you towards isolating the specific causes of the problem you’re focused on.
Do you have anything else you’d like to share about Breaktime or your journeys as founders?
This has been an incredible journey, and both Tony and I have learned so much! We are so incredibly grateful for the hundreds of people who stand behind us to make this possible. My parents (Lynn and Kevin Schoen) were one of our first investors, and so many of our friends and mentors donated to our viral GoFundMe campaign. Even before anything took off, we had so many classmates, old friends, and others in our network reaching out to see how they could help. I cannot express how incredibly grateful I am for these individuals and everything they have done for us. Breaktime wouldn’t exist with the intelligent industry veterans on our Board of Advisors, the incredibly hard-working team of student interns we’ve put together, and the many more folks in our network who unyieldingly support what we’re doing. More than anything else, we are exceptionally grateful for the young adults experiencing homelessness with whom we work who have been the entire inspiration for this whole social enterprise.
Learn more about Breaktime on their website (www.breaktime.us) and GoFundMe page (breaktimeharvard)!
