‪WA's biggest social enterprise event of the year is this Thursday 19th July 2018 https://events.humanitix.com.au/impact-seed-pitch-night-2018-wa-s-investable-impact-ventures

Over the past two years our fully booked pitch nights saw over 400 members of the startup, business and angel investor community attending to see a selection of WA’s best investable social enterprise startups pitch for investment.

This event is part of the 2018 Social Impact Festival, and will be held at the UWA Business School in Crawley on the evening of Thursday 19th July. Drinks, networking and displays from our pitch finalists from 5:30pm with doors closing and pitches starting 6pm sharp!

This event is proudly sponsored by Beyond Bank

INTRODUCING OUR FINALISTS FOR PITCH NIGHT 2018!

Rebecca Nguyen - CyFi Space: Rebecca has been involved in over 12 digital health and advocacy projects with a combined project funding amount of over $1.5 million through her work with Telethon Kids Institute. Her unique skillset has allowed her to support the Telethon Kids Institute team in translating research into digital health technology, including this latest project – CyFi Space app project.

CyFi Space is an innovative app to support mental health and social connectedness for young people with cystic fibrosis. It was developed and supported by the Telethon Kids Institute - one of the largest, and most successful medical research institutes in Australia.

Young people with cystic fibrosis are at increased risk of feeling isolated and having mental health problems and few studies have explored programs that may help these at-risk young people. The CyFi Space team have developed and piloted a smartphone app “CyFi Space” to support mental health and well-being for children and young people living with cystic fibrosis. The CyFi Space app and project team were recent finalists for the “Most Impactful Social Benefit” category at the 27th WAITTA Incite Awards.

Carly Hardy - Kooda: Carly is an idea generator who has a passion for seeing and solving problems, she loves a good challenge and the idea of engineers solving real world problems.

Australians throw out 345 kgs of edible food each year, equating to AUD$8 billion. Helping reduce the amount of food that ends up in landfill is Kooda's mission. With just the click of an app, Kooda will come and collect your food scraps and organic waste from wherever you are in Perth. In return, customers are supplied with five litres of worm castings every four months, made from the very scraps collected by Kooda. Kooda is the only registered commercial BioPak compost facility in Western Australia.

Kooda was founded in 2016, as a graduate company from the Founder Institute. Kooda's vision is to build a world where we recycle our food nutrients and none of it goes to landfill, where we have biodynamic healthy soils provide the nutrients to the feed urban cities which in turn feeds back into the soil cycle, sequestering carbon in the process.

Carly graduated from UNSW with B Chemical /M Biomedical Engineering and has worked in manufacturing of high risk sterile devices, and quality systems before moving to Perth. Carly is raising her three capable daughters on her own in Perth, juggling this with her entrepreneurial journey!

Kirsten Shearn, Wollstonecraft: As a business owner of 20 years, and currently Director of Innovation at Pat Giles Centre, Kirsten has a deep passion for integrating social purpose and business acumen.

Women in situations of family and domestic violence will leave and return an average of 7 times before leaving for good. This entirely unacceptable statistic is primarily due to disempowerment and financial dependence combined with a complete absence of societal support for effective transition. Governments' responses to date have been ineffective - building more womens refuges, at an operating cost to the public of $40,000 per 3 month stay.

Wollstonecraft is a social enterprise that empowers women in family and domestic violence to financial independence. Through a trialled and tested support program, participants are transitioning to employment and eventually business ownership through a social franchise cleaning service. This business model taps in to a $1B+ market for in-home aged care domestic assistance. As a WA and Australian innovation first, the Wollstonecraft team are on the verge of a truly unique social innovation that will contribute to breaking the cycle of family and domestic violence. They have secured $100K in funding to complete their pilot program.

Ray Hart - Urbotanica: Ray has enjoyed the last 20+ years travelling the world building & rebuilding both new and old businesses – ranging from IT to Airlines. Ray transcends both entrepreneur and investor having tasted success and failure with both. He has been an active member of Perth’s start-up scene for the last 10 years being a co-founder and past chair of Perth Angels – and passionate about the need to create and develop local opportunities for new businesses and jobs. Not happy to sit on the sidelines he has started with his latest venture - Urbotanica – where he wants to reconnect “Urbanites” with the science and benefits of plants and at the same time prove that Australian manufacture is not dead.

Who Are Urbotanica?

Urbotanica™ is a new Australian made & owned brand delivering innovative solutions and knowledge to help educate urban dwellers with an increasing passion for health & wellness, cooking and food security for positive environmental and community outcomes. Urbotanica will re-connect current generations with natural solutions by providing the knowledge on how to grow food, and the personal and community benefits of local and natural food production.

Urbotanica have started with their launch product – the UrbiPod™ - an Australian designed and manufactured kitchen appliance that will create local jobs, and partner with social and community initiatives. Urbotanica will leverage Australia’s recognised brand for high quality products, horticulture expertise and leadership in bio & food security.

Vanessa Rauland - Climate Clever: Vanessa Rauland is a Research Fellow at Curtin University with a background in climate change and a PhD in low carbon cities.

After helping to certify the first carbon neutral school in Australia back in 2012, she has been on a mission to find a way to help more schools to achieve the ambitious goal of becoming carbon neutral. After finishing a successful 2 year pilot program with 15 schools in Perth, Vanessa and her team have created and launched ‘The ClimateClever Initiative’ nationally in 2018.

The exciting new data-driven, online program is enabling schools and their immediate communities to reduce their carbon footprint and utility costs. The program is underpinned by innovative new software that enables schools to calculate, track and compare their carbon footprint, audit their buildings and create personalised, evidence-based online actions plans that are interactive and predominantly student-led.

Through the Climate Clever app, participating schools can track their progress and celebrate and share their achievements with other schools to create a sense of collaboration, community and joint commitment for a common goal. Her vision is to empower the next generation to lead the way in creating a low carbon future.

Sian Reed - Club Soda: Club Soda was founded by Sian Reed in July 2017. Sian has a Bachelor of Psychology (Honours), a Bachelor of Commerce (Marketing) and a Master of Applied Psychology (Professional).

She has a combination of both corporate, academic and research experience working as a Human Resources Advisor, Research Interviewer, Drug and Alcohol Counsellor, and most recently a Provisional Psychologist.

Sian developed Club Soda while working as Drug and Alcohol Counsellor and noticed that for people in alcohol recovery there was a lack of social activities that did not involve alcohol. When those in recovery do go to social events, there are limited quality alcohol-free options available to them. Because of these limited quality options, those in recovery may start to isolate themselves.

Social isolation and lack of engagement in social activities makes it harder to overcome alcohol problems. In a state with the highest proportion of lifetime risky drinkers in Australia, and a global market where the growth of alcohol-free alternatives is eclipsing alcoholic beverages, the time is right for Club Soda to launch in Western Australia.

WELCOMING OUR SPECIAL GUEST MC AND PANELISTS

Dan Madhavan will be our guest panelist and keynote speaker at our 3rd annual showcase.

Dan is CEO of Impact Investment Group, a leading Australian impact investment funds manager. Dan joined IIG in 2017 after almost 3 years serving as the founding CEO of Impact Investing Australia, an independent non-profit organisation dedicated to growing and developing impact investing as a field and ecosystem. Previously, he had a distinguished 12-year career at JB Were and Goldman Sachs JB Were, where he served in a variety of roles including as Acting CEO, COO, and Head of NSW.

Dan is also Chair of YGAP, a non-profit organization supporting impact entrepreneurs in developing countries, and is a Director of Sanfilippo Childrens Foundation.

He joins us to speak on the importance of growing an impact investment and social enterprise ecosystem, to create the world we want to live in, and shares stories from his many years in this space.

We're thrilled to welcome Dan back to WA looking forward to an evening of learning, networking and impact business pitches.

Tom Dawkins, CEO and Co Founder of StartSomeGood to WA is our guest MC for our 3rd annual showcase. Tom is a leader in the social entrepreneurship ecosystem. StartSomeGood, which supports social entrepreneurs, has raised more than $11 Million globally, with one of the highest success rates in crowdfunding.

Tom was previously the founder and CEO of Vibewire, the first Social Media Director at Ashoka, a global NGO fostering social entrepreneurship based in Washington DC, and co-founded the Changemakers Festival with The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI) in 2013.

Tom has been recognised with awards and Fellowships from the World Summit Youth Awards, International Youth Foundation, Nexus Summit, Future Summit and the Australian and New Zealand Internet Awards.

Tom is a passionate advocate for the power of technology to build community, inspire changemakers and empower all of us to change the world, and we’re looking forward to welcoming him back to WA.

Justin Colyer is CEO of Rise, and joins the panel for our 3rd annual showcase. Rise is a leading WA not for profit organisation which delivers a comprehensive range of services for people with mental health issues, a disability, the aged, youth at risk, those dealing with family and domestic violence, and the carers for all those people, as well as housing.

Justine has 25 years experience across public, private and NFP sectors in the UK and Australia, doing everything from running a pub to running a prison. She is a Distinguished Fellow of Leadership WA , one of the premier leadership programs in the WA and the winner of the WA Telstra Businesswomen’s Award (Community and Government).

Justine was previously a founding board member of Spacecubed, and a number of other NFP’s and start-ups in WA.

She is a leader in the social innovation charge and is currently working with Impact Seed and a number of other organisations towards the launch of WA’s first collaborative social innovation incubator program.

Kylie Hansen is a Founding & Executive Director of Impact Seed and joins the panel for our 3rd annual showcase. She is a passionate advocate and capacity builder across the WA not-for-profit, government, social enterprise and corporate sectors, and is well recognised for her high quality impact in these areas over the past 10 years.

Kylie leads Impact Seed's impact and outcomes measurement agenda, supporting mission driven businesses, impact investors and investees to fully understand, articulate and measure their impact.

She supports Impact Seed's social innovation strategy through fostering collaboration across the WA NFP sector to develop deal flow and coinvestment opportunities in social enterprises and impact businesses.

Kylie sits on a number of WA boards and committees, including Linkwest, SCALES Community Legal Centre, AIESEC WA Board of Advice, the Fairbridge Centre for Social Innovation, the Social Impact Measurement Network – Western Australia, and the Alumni for Social Impact at UWA, and is a former mentor with the School for Social Entrepreneurs, and former CEO of Cambodian-Australian social enterprise Empowering Communities. She holds Graduate Certificates in Social Impact, and Project Management; Bachelor of Community Development; Bachelor of Commerce; Bachelor of Arts, and is currently completing a postgraduate law degree at UWA.