Arizona Social Impact Business Challenge Opening Ceremony
Join us on June 11
The Opening Ceremony is open to all family, friends, mentors, judges, media, and the general community. We will gather all the kids together with the support of their families and friends to hear inspiring, world class social impact entrepreneurial speakers, to get these budding social impact entrepreneurs even more excited about the possibilities of what they can accomplish with the skills they are about to learn.
The Arizona Social Impact Business Challenge believes that rather than just providing students with resources to read like many business plan competitions, having successful mentors, workshop hosts, and role models teaching the kids enables them a chance to really connect and relate to the information in a more tangible, real world, and exciting way.
Our goal is to give these budding social impact entrepreneurs opportunities that they simply don’t get in school or other programs; having these incredible speakers, mentors, and workshop hosts share their knowledge, advice, and experiences will be invaluable to them.
Invite your family, friends and join us in encouraging and celebrating our future generation of social impact entrepreneurs!
The Arizona Social Impact Business Challenge believes that rather than just providing students with resources to read like many business plan competitions, having successful mentors, workshop hosts, and role models teaching the kids enables them a chance to really connect and relate to the information in a more tangible, real world, and exciting way.
Our goal is to give these budding social impact entrepreneurs opportunities that they simply don’t get in school or other programs; having these incredible speakers, mentors, and workshop hosts share their knowledge, advice, and experiences will be invaluable to them.
Invite your family, friends and join us in encouraging and celebrating our future generation of social impact entrepreneurs!
Speakers
The Arizona Social Impact Business Challenge would like to thank everyone for their support in creating a unique program with incredible opportunities and experiences for our youth.
This program was founded on the idea that culture is defined by what you celebrate—we want our youth to see people celebrating social impact innovators and entrepreneurs, so we have made our Opening and Closing Ceremonies open to the public to raise awareness and encourage social impact innovation and entrepreneurism.
We are honored to have Jamie Casap and MIT Professor Herr speak at the Opening Ceremony of this inaugural event. Help us celebrate the contributions they have made to this world, and the contributions that these young students will make to the world in the future with the skills, values, and knowledge they acquire here.
This program was founded on the idea that culture is defined by what you celebrate—we want our youth to see people celebrating social impact innovators and entrepreneurs, so we have made our Opening and Closing Ceremonies open to the public to raise awareness and encourage social impact innovation and entrepreneurism.
We are honored to have Jamie Casap and MIT Professor Herr speak at the Opening Ceremony of this inaugural event. Help us celebrate the contributions they have made to this world, and the contributions that these young students will make to the world in the future with the skills, values, and knowledge they acquire here.
Jamie Casap
Google
Chief Education Evangelist
MIT Prof. Hugh Herr
MIT Media Lab
Professor, Inventor, Entrepreneur
Jamie Casap
Jaime Casap is the Chief Education Evangelist at Google. Jaime evangelizes the potential of digitalization as an enabling capability in pursuit of promoting inquiry-based learning models. Jaime collaborates with school systems, educational organizations, and leaders focused on building innovation into our education policies and practices.
In addition to his role at Google, Jaime serves as an advisor to dozens of organizations focused on learning, skill development, and the future of work. He is the coauthor of “Our First Talk About Poverty,” as a way to talk to children about poverty. Jaime helped launch the Phoenix Coding Academy, a public high school in Phoenix, AZ, focused on computer science as part of an inquiry-based learning model. He teaches a 10th-grade communication class at the school. He also guest lectures at Arizona State University.
He speaks on education, digitalization, innovation, generation z, and the future of work at events around the world.
In addition to his role at Google, Jaime serves as an advisor to dozens of organizations focused on learning, skill development, and the future of work. He is the coauthor of “Our First Talk About Poverty,” as a way to talk to children about poverty. Jaime helped launch the Phoenix Coding Academy, a public high school in Phoenix, AZ, focused on computer science as part of an inquiry-based learning model. He teaches a 10th-grade communication class at the school. He also guest lectures at Arizona State University.
He speaks on education, digitalization, innovation, generation z, and the future of work at events around the world.
MIT Professor Hugh Herr
Professor Hugh Herr, who heads the Biomechatronics group at the MIT Media Lab, is creating bionic limbs that emulate the function of natural limbs. In 2011, TIME magazine coined him the “Leader of the Bionic Age” because of his revolutionary work in the emerging field of biomechatronics – technology that marries human physiology with electromechanics.
A double amputee himself, Herr is responsible for breakthrough advances in bionic limbs that provide greater mobility and new hope to those with physical disabilities. He is the author and co-author of more than 150 peer-reviewed papers and patents, chronicling the science and technology behind his many innovations. These publications span the scientific fields of biomechanics and biological motion control, as well as the technological innovations of human rehabilitation and augmentation technologies. As published in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation in 2014, Herr’s team advanced the first autonomous exoskeleton to reduce the metabolic cost of human walking, a goal that has eluded scientists for over a century.
Herr’s Biomechatronics group has developed gait-adaptive knee prostheses for transfemoral amputees and variable impedance ankle-foot orthoses for patients suffering from drop foot, a gait pathology caused by stroke, cerebral palsy, and multiple sclerosis. He has also designed his own bionic limbs, the world's first bionic lower leg called the BiOM Ankle System. As published in the 2012 Proceedings of the Royal Society, the BiOM Ankle System has been clinically shown to be the first leg prosthesis to achieve biomechanical and physiological normalization, allowing persons with leg amputation to walk with normal levels of speed and metabolism as if their legs were biological once again.
Herr has received many accolades for his groundbreaking innovations, including the 13th Annual Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment; the Prince Salman Award for Disability Research; the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in Technology; the 14th Innovator of the Year Award; the 41st Inventor of the Year Award; and the 2016 Princess of Asturias Award for Technical & Scientific Research.
A double amputee himself, Herr is responsible for breakthrough advances in bionic limbs that provide greater mobility and new hope to those with physical disabilities. He is the author and co-author of more than 150 peer-reviewed papers and patents, chronicling the science and technology behind his many innovations. These publications span the scientific fields of biomechanics and biological motion control, as well as the technological innovations of human rehabilitation and augmentation technologies. As published in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation in 2014, Herr’s team advanced the first autonomous exoskeleton to reduce the metabolic cost of human walking, a goal that has eluded scientists for over a century.
Herr’s Biomechatronics group has developed gait-adaptive knee prostheses for transfemoral amputees and variable impedance ankle-foot orthoses for patients suffering from drop foot, a gait pathology caused by stroke, cerebral palsy, and multiple sclerosis. He has also designed his own bionic limbs, the world's first bionic lower leg called the BiOM Ankle System. As published in the 2012 Proceedings of the Royal Society, the BiOM Ankle System has been clinically shown to be the first leg prosthesis to achieve biomechanical and physiological normalization, allowing persons with leg amputation to walk with normal levels of speed and metabolism as if their legs were biological once again.
Herr has received many accolades for his groundbreaking innovations, including the 13th Annual Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment; the Prince Salman Award for Disability Research; the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in Technology; the 14th Innovator of the Year Award; the 41st Inventor of the Year Award; and the 2016 Princess of Asturias Award for Technical & Scientific Research.