Please join me in congratulating Austin Center for Design’s graduating class. These students have completed thirty-two weeks of intense training, reflection, and creative production. The results of their effort are five companies, each founded around principles of social entrepreneurship: these companies generate revenue, and simultaneously drive social impact, pursuing a humanitarian theory of change. The companies, and their founders, are presented below:
Ad@pt, founded by Melissa Chapman and Willy Morgan
Ad@pt provides illustrated adoption timelines, which are designed to give families a bite-size, digestable glance at all of the adoption options. This way, when a family calls an adoption agency, they feel informed and in control. Our product hosts and helps manage digital copies of the adoption paperwork throughout the process so that, in the end, families have an easy-to-access and secure access to this important content on their mobile devices.
Spoak, founded by Callie Thompson, Eli Robinson, and Dave Gottlieb
Spoak is an app that evokes audio stories based on personal photos of artifacts, people, places and events. Transform memories into dynamic stories. Invite family and friends to record their own versions and bring shared history to life.
CareWell, founded by Eric Boggs and Chuck Hildebrand
Other caregiving task management systems are little more than bandaids. They fail to connect caregivers with long-term, motivated helpers. They fail to address the fundamental fear, anxiety, grief and guilt that are a natural part of caregiving. CareWell offers practical and emotional relief for people who are helping an ailing or aging loved one. It equips caregivers with powerful delegation and task management tools to tame overwhelming logistics of caregiving. It also addresses issues of fear, isolation, burn out and guilt through stress-free recruiting of motivated helpers, planning guides and ‘system at a glance’ tools.
Kites and Ladders, founded by Bethany Stolle and Jesse Jack
Kites and Ladders allows families with autistic children to negotiate this communication gap with a shared visual communication system. Our product includes a wearable biometric sensor for tracking emotional state, a camera app for the child to visually express their point of view, and a photo editing app that allows the child to customize photos and share them with a private network of family and caregivers.
Bring Up, founded by Will Mederski and Kevin McCann
By sending parents SMS text messages with classroom highlights each night, bringup gives parents insight into the school day so they may have meaningful conversations with their children anywhere. bringup builds a bridge between the classroom and home.
Congratulations to all eleven of our graduates. We’re extremely proud of you!
