Impact Snapshot

September 2022

In this month’s Impact Snapshot, read about EHF Fellows in action creating environmental, social and economic impact, plus recent recognitions and awards they’ve received.

Fellows in action

🌏 Environment

Philipp Sueltrop shared about Kea Aerospace and their high-altitude unmanned aircraft at the first-ever NZ Aerospace Summit held at Christchurch.

“Our solar-powered remotely piloted stratospheric aircraft will fly continuously for months to collect aerial imagery that fills your data gap with more accessible intelligence.”

Photo and note credit: Steven Moe

✌ Social

Evan “Rabble” Henshaw-Plath was featured in Forbes discussing his decentralised, interoperable social network, Planetary.Social. Evan was once Jack Dorsey’s boss at Odeo and is intent on giving control back to users of social platforms.

Atin Batra was interviewed by Forbes and discussed why he is bullish on the future of education investing and the market. Atin’s portfolio has a combined $300 million enterprise evaluation and he has “scored big wins” with companies such as the in-class engagement and homework platform built specifically for chemistry courses, Aktiv Learning.

Khalid Albaih’s Instagram @dohafashionfridays project was exhibited in New York City at ApexArt. As described in the exhibition essay, the exhibition surveys art and creative activism exposing the exploitative kafala system and calls for its reform.

📈 Economic

Lisa Nelson hosted a delegation of Kiwi founders and investors, including Erik Zydervelt and Mark Bregman in San Francisco early September. The event was hosted in partnership with Bridget Unsworth of the Angel Association of NZ. It was a full day of informative meetings on topics like how to do your diligence on investors, what US VCs look for when investing, different pricing models, legal mechanics of flipping a company to the US and the tax implications of doing so.

Michelle Sharp spoke at the Christchurch Foundation’s Women’s Fund about her journey as Digital Innovation for Impact at Vodafone to Chief Executive of Kilmarnock to her current position as Chief Executive Officer at UNICEF New Zealand. The Christchurch Foundation’s Women’s Fund was formed to support women and girls in Ōtautahi Christchurch who are change-makers.

Photo and note credit: Erica Austin, EHF Team

Ants Cabraal sat down with Francesca Pick and Alanna Irving, both established pioneers in methods of collaborating with money, to put a spotlight on how we think about and use money in groups.

The conversation covers a wide range of topics; different collaborative funding methods, why collaboration with money gets hard, practical solutions to overcome these challenges and what’s emerging at the edges of experimentation in this space today.

🤝🏽 Collective Impact

Primary school students at Homai primary, South Auckland showcased their solar project as part of Newsroom’s (Rod Oram) climate change films. The Helios Energy team (Jeff Schlichting and Tim Derrick) spoke to students about the solar industry and heard how students are putting their learning into action to fundraise for EV cans they can charge with school solar. Their project is called “Follow the Sun: the ancestors of Maui” and is part of pilots with Kia Kotahi Ako (including Sarah Grant, Jojo McEachen and Barry Neal).

Awards and recognitions 🏆

Dylan Field and Figma for the acquisition by Adobe for approximately $20 billion in cash and stock. “The combination of Adobe and Figma will usher in a new era of collaborative creativity.”

James Mielke for his studio’s game, Jupiter & Mars (on Meta Quest 2) has been nominated as an official selection in two categories at the upcoming Raindance Film Festival’s Immersive awards. Nominated in: Best Immersive Game and Best Immersive Experience for Social Impact.

Yoshimoto Watanabe for his restored 1888 villa, 5-star Hulbert House in Queenstown has won the World Travel Award for New Zealand’s Leading Boutique Hotel 2022.

Chris Simcock for joining Leaft Foods as their new Head of Strategy and Finance to help the leaf protein company scale up and secure different sources of capital.

Rasha Abu-Safieh for winning the Academic Initiative of the Year Award at the Global Entrepreneurship Network Awards 2022. Rasha co-founded STARlab at University of Otago based on shared values and commitment to social justice; the core belief that entrepreneurship is for everyone.

Tim Pare and his Funding Network NZ for winning the 2022 FINZ Excellence in Innovation award for the pilot Generosity Generator online fundraising programme. They build the capacity of small, Kiwi grassroots charities and inspiring generosity.

Nathaniel Calhoun and Bioverse for winning a grant from Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation to expand operations around the Brazilian rainforest. With this grant, they can afford to push into multi-spectral, high resolution scans of the Amazon laying the groundwork for next generation bio prospecting. 

Nathaniel Calhoun and Bioverse again! They’ve been recognised by UNDP as one of their vetted Digital X Solutions. A small number of innovative companies are added to this directory by UNDP at a global level, to help their country offices identify trusted solutions.

Tim Hawkey (EnergyBank), Jacinta Gulasekharam (Dignity NZ), Imche Fourie (Outset Ventures) and Rasha Abu Safieh (STARlab) for being finalists at this year’s Global Entrepreneurship Network New Zealand (GEN NZ) Entrepreneur Ecosystem Awards!

*Images have been provided by Fellows or sourced from the Internet. EHF does not claim to own the images.