+Impact Studio Propels Financial Equity & Climate Action Ventures to Success
By Katie Moore (BA ’25) and Loren Townes Jr.
Social innovators and creators of the +Impact Studio are making waves in the wider Ross community as two venture teams, CliMates and Grow Together (G2G), earned entrepreneurial recognition in the past weeks. In December alone, CliMates received 2nd place in the +Tech Innovation Jam; an interdisciplinary 6-week competition focused on demonstrating technical competency and mastery to thrive or pivot in the tech industry. Grow Together advanced as semifinalists in the Michigan Business Challenge (MBC) — Seigle Impact Track. This campus-wide competition awards cash prizes totaling over $100,000 to the most compelling business plans that deliver social and/or environmental impact.
In alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the +Impact Studio key priority areas, both of these ventures seek to address and aid issues of climate action and/or diversity, equity, inclusion & racial justice. CliMates (with co-founders Akhila Kosaraju, Christopher Okumura, and Isha Goel and Applebaum Impact Design Fellow Grace Sanders) offers a crowd-sourcing app to facilitate donations by Gen Z and Millennial investors towards organizations combating climate change in underserved countries. Grow Together (with founder Yasmin Abdulhadi and Applebaum Impact Design Fellow Bridgit Jung) seeks to ease the financial and emotional burdens of individuals experiencing major life hardships, offering wealth-building aid and initiatives. Its current focus is on supporting caregivers. Through differences in their missions, both ventures have seen tremendous growth and achievement in just a few months.
The +Impact Studio teaches the foundations of creating and growing a social enterprise. Yasmin Abdulhadi of Grow Together emphasizes, “being able to work with Loren Townes Jr, Moses Lee, and Cat Johnson and receive guided feedback instead of saying what’s wrong has been incredibly useful.” Instead of criticism, she notes, “we have a conversation, and the thoughtful questions received on what we have, create a dialogue and help us obtain new findings.” Such introspective conversations have helped founders and fellows alike identify key questions and gaps in their ventures and fix them using the Studio’s resources, leading to a more robust business model and, thus, a strong proposal for various competitions.
However, this holds true for more than G2G — CliMates, too, is gaining valuable knowledge from the Studio’s staff. Chris Okumura notes that Applebaum Innovator in Residence Moses Lee’s tough love has been key in aiding their venture and that the Studio as a whole has helped them learn the “values of a business.” He further states, “the direction we’ve gone from, the Studio helped us create a more valuable product to guide us to where we are right now.” For CliMates and G2G, their “right now” is success in various Ross business competitions, further quantifying the success of their ventures and, by extension, the +Impact Studio.
Beyond bringing to bear business principles, asking the big, difficult questions is a significant area in which the +Impact Studio has helped these ventures succeed. “The +Impact Studio is really great in asking us the really hard questions,” noted Kosaraju. “We started super broad, but all of the advisors told us to dig much deeper and help us discover whom to reach, why we’re reaching out to them, and how we want to utilize what people are sharing with us.” This sentiment is reflected in Grow Together’s advancement, too. Yasmin Abdulhadi notes that “good questions are always being asked at the Studio,” helping to refine unclear propositions. For example, the “biggest question asked was whether we were targeting professional or nonprofessional caregivers and I was like ‘huh, I’ve never thought about that before.’” This ethos of the +Impact Studio — deep questioning artfully tailored to each group combined with constructive feedback instead of simple criticism — has helped each venture target and better its business model. Not to mention enabling a good foundation to succeed in competitions such as the +Tech Innovation Jam and MBC.
Along with thoughtful, reflective questions, the environment and collaborative nature of the +Impact Studio have proven beneficial to all ventures involved. When talking about how Grow Together has changed since arriving at the Studio, Bridgit Jung noted that the community is a key part of their recent success. She expressed, “everyone has so much information to share — when we had our fellows meetings, a lot of us were in similar stages, so it was cool to see what other people were doing and sharing what’s out there.” By bringing together student entrepreneurs committed to impact, and in similar stages of development, participants can collaborate and share resources. This level of engagement and cross-pollination creates a mutually beneficial result in which all involved have more connections, ideas, and encouragement. For CliMates and Grow Together in particular, these results ended in accolades desired by much of the Michigan Ross community.
So, after such achievement in these competitions, the question remains: what’s next for CliMates and Grow Together? CliMates is working on expanding their internet presence, creating a website and social media pages, and focusing on customer discovery. Much attention is devoted to those who want to be part of an early sign-up list (register here). For Grow Together, the answer still lies in advancing to the next round of MBC (finals are in February). In the meantime, they’ll focus on building community partners, talking to caregivers and learning about their experiences.
