Chesapeake Bay Green Entrepreneur Roundtable
Please join us on Zoom to hear from several entrepreneurs addressing ecological and collective health in communities across the Chesapeake Bay watershed. This online space is intended to highlight environmental and social entrepreneurs, helping to connect them to resources, build awareness of their work, and amplify their current needs (including funding, partnership-building, customer introductions, team-building, and more).
On May 29th, we will hear from the following organizations and entrepreneurs:
Baltimore Vertical Farming Association (Alisha Edwards, Founder & CEO)
Baltimore Vertical Farming Association (BVFA) alongside a coalition of subject experts, aims to create union-cooperative apprenticeships, provide technical assistance for worker-owned businesses, advance ethical/local food and cannabis product with living wage and affordable housing guarantees.
EnviroCollab (Heidi Thomas, Founding Principal)
EnviroCollab is a full-service landscape architecture and urban planning firm founded as a response to cultural inequities within the field, and as a challenge to social, economic, and environmental injustices across urban landscapes. We aspire to change how our profession influences the world by prioritizing inclusive engagement and equitable design strategies that first and foremost center marginalized communities and those most impacted by structural and systemic oppression.
Blue Filter (Salah El Sadi, Founder)
Blue Filter provides an innovative water purification technology using natural, plant-based materials to deliver clean and safe drinking water.
Dandelion Foodscapes (Arman Milanian, Founder)
Dandelion Foodscapes works with communities to design and implement edible landscapes with rainwater management systems that enhance local food security, ecological health, and community engagement.
This online event is open to all. If any of the below describe you, you will likely find this series of calls helpful:
You are interested in understanding novel and entrepreneurial approaches to ecological and social challenges in the watershed.
You are seeking to build partnerships and collaborate with ecological and social entrepreneurs the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
You are interested in finding an internship or job with an organization working on ecological or social challenges.
You want to fund novel and entrepreneurial approaches to ecological and social challenges.
Each entrepreneur will speak for no more than 7 minutes each and will end their portion with a summary of their needs. Examples of needs might include talent, fundraising, customer intros, stakeholder and government connections, etc. Q&A for each entrepreneur will happen after all presentations in breakout rooms.
The value of this event is in increasing connectivity between different stakeholders in the regional climate and entrepreneurship ecosystems. By holding this call, we hope to facilitate connections between entrepreneurs, supporters, funders, government, community members, and more.
We intend to hold this event on regular basis going forward. Entrepreneurs interested in participating in future roundtables should email Scott Christensen at schris14@umd.edu.