Social Entrepreneurs | Issue 2021

Four years since launching BEI schoolwide, Hannah Kim is finally seeing her dreams become a reality.
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“We’ve always dreamed of this school as a place that could produce entrepreneurs who solve problems with a purpose,” says Kim, the Vice President of Valley Christian’s K-12 Business & Entrepreneurship Initiative (BEI). “Now, we have the classes and programs to help students achieve impact through that mission.”

Social entrepreneurs seek to provide value to traditionally underserved populations via large-scale, transformational benefits. Such work isn’t mutually exclusive with generating profits, but according to Kim, it gives her students more meaningful areas of focus.

“They’re going to be movers and shakers,” Kim says of the young entrepreneurs in her charge. “But they need to be grounded in good principles.”

Cale McLellan’s entrepreneurial spirit was sparked in part by tragedy — when his mom witnessed a traffic accident involving emergency vehicles, the “(E)emergency” app was born. The app lets drivers know when first-responders are en route to the scene, using cutting-edge geo-fencing technology.

“Entrepreneurship is all about filling critical social needs,” says McLellan, who graduated from VCHS in 2018 and is now wrapping up his time in the business school at the University of Colorado. “I realized that drivers could really benefit from being able to see in real-time where nearby emergency vehicles are.”
 

“We’ve always dreamed of this school as  a place that could produce entrepreneurs who solve problems with a purpose.”

(E)emergency remains on hold as the pandemic has made testing and implementation more challenging; McLellan has repurposed his technology, though, for a new startup, 9-Eighteen, that delivers food and beverage service to golfers in the middle of their rounds. McClellan’s initial startup tugged at his heart to solve a problem that technology had overlooked. Similarly, VC DECA’s “Project Aquila” members were stirred to launch a purpose-driven project.

“We really wanted to emphasize building community,” says senior Isabella Levkovic. “We thought to ourselves: what brings people together more than food?”

To that end, the team — comprised of Levkovic, as well as seniors Vaishali Nair and Kaitlyn Ould —partnered with the Coup De Thai restaurant in Los Gatos to offer Thai cooking classes over Zoom as part of a fundraising initiative for the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area (IIBA). The team has been working with IIBA to build a distance-learning infrastructure for the organization’s English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) citizenship classes.

“Both Isabella and I are first-generation and have seen the immigration process firsthand,” Nair explains. “Immigration has become near and dear to all our hearts as we have grown up in Silicon Valley and have been exposed to the many backgrounds, cultures, and struggles of people close to us.”

“We pray that we always remain service-centered,” Ould adds, “and always put people and social progress over any personal success.” Clearly, these amazing movers and shakers are proving to be entrepreneurs with strong integrity.

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Discover all the exciting content in the Fall 2021 issue.
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