Tech Innovators With Lived Experience Solve The Big Problems
At SXSW 2024, a panel of tech innovators and ecosystem builders shared their insights on how founders with lived experience are driving change in areas like criminal justice reform, environmental justice, and economic inequality.
Following are key takeaways from their discussion.
Speakers
The panel, moderated by Elizabeth Nguyen from Village Capital, featured Topeka Sam (FRSH), Natrina Gandana (Salesforce Foundation), and Kasheef Wyzard (Dream.Org).
Key Takeaways
Lived Experience is a Competitive Advantage
Founders who have personally faced the challenges they’re trying to solve bring invaluable insights and motivation to their work. They also have built-in trust and credibility within the communities they serve.
Elevate and Empower Proximate Leaders
While those closest to society’s problems are often closest to the solutions, they frequently lack access to the resources needed to bring their ideas to life. As startup leaders, it’s crucial to actively listen to, trust, and support these proximate leaders.
Dream.Org exemplifies this principle, with 40% of their staff being justice-impacted and 60% of their entrepreneur network consisting of justice-impacted founders. By centering those with lived experience, they ensure their work remains grounded and impactful.
Collaborate Across Sectors for Systemic Change
Driving meaningful, lasting change requires collaboration across the cultural, tech, financial, and government sectors — socalled “corners of power.” Partnerships between mission-driven organizations and the private sector, such as Salesforce Foundation’s support of Dream.Org’s initiatives in justice tech and climate tech, can accelerate progress.
Advice for Social Entrepreneurs
- Leverage your lived experience as a unique strength and competitive advantage.
- Build trust and partnerships within the communities you serve.
- Seek out ecosystem support and resources from organizations prioritizing proximate leaders.
Embrace your unique perspective as a strength. The insights shared at SXSW remind us that the most transformative solutions often come from those who have faced the problem firsthand. Social impact leaders and supporters can lift up and amplify these voices.
Learn More
We curated our key takeaways with social impact startups in mind. Listen to this session in its entirety to hear the many nuanced insights shared in this hour-long conversation that we simply can’t capture in our brief article.
Explore our in-depth coverage of Social Impact Sessions & Speaker Highlights, Startup-focused Sessions, and Top AI Keynotes & Sessions at SXSW 2024.
Our StartingUpGood team believes that events and conferences are great places to learn, share ideas, and innovate. We are committed to using our innovative tech tools to share key insights and learnings from top conferences. This article uses Otter.ai to create transcripts and various LLMs to generate content summaries. All work is hand-checked for quality.
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