Roughly 25 undergraduate and graduate students, representing a variety of disciplines from engineering and architecture to management, will compete for $12,000 in combined prizes.
Teams and individuals representing eight ideas are finalists in two Ideas 2 SERVE (I2S) categories, Social Solutions and Environmental Solutions. Another eight teams will compete for the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation Award, which recognizes ideas that help mitigate poverty’s effects on Georgia’s low-income families. Three teams overlap and are competing in both categories.
In its second year, the I2S competition seeks to find “early-stage products or venture concepts that [are] focused on creating a better world,” according to the Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship (ILE), which produces the competition. Although housed in the College of Management, the competition is open to all Tech undergraduate and graduate students and recent alumni. This is the first year I2S has offered a monetary prize for Blank Foundation finalists.
“This competition fills a niche that’s very valuable, not only to the College of Management, but also to Georgia Tech as a whole,” says ILE Research Scientist Dóri Pap. “It really showcases the Institute’s best examples of social entrepreneurship.”
Various prizes with a range of monetary values will be offered, such as the Social Entrepreneurship and the Sustainable Systems prizes, which are $1,250 each. A People’s Choice Winner, chosen by the audience, will win $500. A total of $5,000 will be distributed to various winners of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation Prizes.
Judges include Jerome A. Atkinson, a retired executive vice president with Fortune 500 company Assurant Inc.; Ann Cramer, a director with IBM Corporation; Val Peterson, former president of the ARCS Foundation—Colorado Chapter, which raised money for science scholarships; and Bill Todd, president and CEO of the Georgia Cancer Coalition. Kathleen Kurre, CEO of TechBridge and founder of Fusion Advisors LLC, will host the event.
I2S and Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation Prize finalists will present their ideas March 10 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the LeCraw Auditorium of the College of Management during the regular time for the IMPACT Speaker Series, in a presentation titled "Students who IMPACT." Each team will have three minutes to present their ideas, and then will answer questions from the judges. Winners will be announced at 6 p.m. Attendees can vote on their favorite idea and will be eligible for various door prizes.
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