Entrepreneurship for Social Impact (ESI) took center stage this week as first-year students pitched eleven purpose-driven ventures in the annual ESI Pitch Competition at Kluge Auditorium. Guided by second-year and a panel of off-campus judges, students presented projects designed to make the world more just, sustainable, and humane.
Several ideas captured the heart of UWC-USA’s values. SmartSort, created by Yemen ’26 (Tunisia), proposes a smart recycling system that rewards users for correctly sorting waste while channeling benefits to low-income communities through school supplies. Mohamed ’26 (Morocco) presented Bridgetech, which refurbishes corporate e‑waste and redistributes it to underserved communities, directly addressing the digital divide with a circular-economy mindset. Nmesoma ’26 (Nigeria/Canada) introduced the Food Recovery Initiative, a nonprofit concept that rescues surplus food and transforms it into nutritious meals for people facing food insecurity—tackling both waste and hunger at once.
The judging panel brought deep experience from technology, entrepreneurship, and education. Veteran entrepreneur and executive Griff Kundahl drew on a career launching and scaling emerging-technology companies, including founding national nanotechnology initiatives and leading an innovation incubator. Video game pioneer Bill Fisher, one of the world’s first console programmers and founder of Quicksilver Software, contributed insights from four decades building games, educational tools, and advanced technical systems. Climate-focused founder Nicholas Seet offered a perspective grounded in startups, an early acquisition by Adobe, and his work treating constraints—personal and systemic—as design inputs. Technologist and former oil-and-gas exploration specialist Chuck Lucas added expertise in evaluating cutting-edge tools and applying innovation across sectors, from global energy to local agri-nature initiatives. Rounding out the panel, alumnus and serial small-business owner Charles Bibilos ’96 brought the lens of an educator-turned-entrepreneur who has started ventures ranging from a tutoring company to a coffeehouse and tech startup.
For student leader Lucca ’26, ESI is as much about personal growth as social impact: “I currently lead ESI with 3 other peers, and it has taught me invaluable skills that will prove themselves incredibly useful in the future. What I find compelling about it is that most of what we learn in that activity complements the academic side of learning. It teaches life skills such as selling ideas, managing connections, building consensus, and negotiating. All of these provide a great contrast to the rigorous IB curriculum at UWC-USA.”