We’re really happy to announce that our mentoring service will be operated in the New York Metropolitan Area by Impact Hub starting summer of 2021. Impact Hub New York Metropolitan Area (IHNY) is one of more than 100 Impact Hubs in 60 countries globally, with over 16,000 members, innovating to create impact.  

Our Head of Communications Lee Mannion caught up with IHNY co-founders Archana Shah and John-Paul Parmigiani (pictured above in winter 2020) to understand more about the community they serve, the support they offer and the way Expert Impact will work Stateside.

UK readers familiar with the London Impact Hub will know it as a co-working space which runs support programs and events. Is Impact Hub New York Metropolitan Area the same?

Archana: Impact Hub Kings Cross is a co-working space, but it’s not just a co-working space. Like you said, it’s got support programs, activities and events all around building the social impact ecosystem in the London area; all Impact Hubs have that same vision/mission that they adapt to their local context. 

In the NY Metro Area, while a lot of our work may be directed towards innovators or aspiring innovators that are trying to solve for the 2030 UNSDGs, to truly build the social impact ecosystem we will also meaningfully engage other stakeholders such as government, funders, investors, academics, corporates, civil society etc. 

Our region does not lack resources, but what is lacking is wide-ranging access to resources, opportunities and networks that remain very Manhattan-centric and therefore limited in scope and reach.  So our goal is really to create a more accessible, inclusive, and wide-ranging ecosystem that will have far-reaching and sustainable impact.

How many social enterprises or not-for-profits do you have in your network?

J.P: From our wider audience, about 11,000 people and possibly up to 30% of those are startups. We engage more directly through our programs with about 150 people.

Can you give some examples of the kind of support you offer?

Archana: In Spring we ran a four-month virtual incubator program for 15 initiatives that are pre-scale, early stage. The program was themed around “the culture of health” – healthy economy, healthy people, healthy communities – and over four months, we took the cohort through the lean business model canvas, with added modules on impact measurement and metric. We also had practitioners come in to share a current look at the funding landscape. It was a combination of content, 1-1 expert sessions, group work and panel discussions. The program ended with a demo day, where each cohort member presented their initiative to an audience from the broader impact community. 

Can you give us an example of how you have helped a particular organisation? 

JP: A timely example is Million Patients Cured, which looks to solve various health challenges with data. During the Covid crisis, they have shifted to be a reliable source of robust data for civil society to understand the evolving crisis: including varying global guidelines as it affected travel, translating medical data to make it more accessible etc.

We helped them in a variety of ways from access to different networks, to highlighting them through our work, to making introductions to people who are in the health space in different parts of the world in our network. We also kept in touch with their needs and made sure that as things came up, we could be helpful.

How will Expert Impact Mentoring work in NY?

Archana: We’ve reached out to our cohorts of innovators individually to let them know this is an opportunity for them. The other places that we’re currently engaging is through our network of organizations, that we know have similar communities to ours, or are working with some subset of the communities that we work with. And then general marketing, social media campaigns etc.

But ultimately, it’s going to be kind of very much one-on-one outreach to individuals we know are ready for this and could benefit from it. We’re also directing them to the Expert Impact website of course. I think individual one-on-one conversations have clarified that it’s a skill set match and that over time mentors based in the US or New York will be added to the portfolio as we build. Anyone in the NY Metro area looking for information about Expert Impact mentoring can always contact us here too.

Expert Impact mentors can be filtered by area. To see the U.S. based mentors, click here.