The Global Social Entrepreneurship Lab (GSEL) is a hands-on, AI-native course where students develop and test ideas for high-impact startups. Each week, leaders of award-winning for-profit and nonprofit ventures from around the world (“Founder-Mentors”) share candid insights on how they built their organizations. Past speakers have worked on edtech for refugees in Lebanon, climate tools for farmers in Kenya, mental health innovation in the U.S., and microfinance for widows in India. Students arrive with no idea or an early one and deepen their understanding of a problem they care about, validate potential solutions using AI development tools, and test them with real users. They leave with a pressure-tested social venture ready to take forward, and many launch it after the course.
The most pressing human rights, social, and environmental issues in society – the refugee crisis, homelessness, inadequate and inequitable access to education and health care, racial injustice, threats to environmental sustainability, and so on – are solvable only by innovative leadership. GSEL provides an opportunity to rapidly build the early foundations of a potentially world-changing venture. At our course meetings, we will learn from the founders of leading impact startups – an incredibly diverse group of guest speakers – about how they designed, refined, launched, and funded their ventures. Students will go from more deeply understanding the issue that most makes them “come alive” to using AI tools to design and rapidly testing their own startup ideas – many of which our students go on to launch after concluding the course.
Students apply individually and can work in groups of one to three. If you already have potential team members in mind, there is a place to note this on your application. This course is for anyone who has an interest in social entrepreneurship and wants to spend their quarter crafting their own impact startups. It is designed to have a global feel and to feature placement partners and guest speakers representing a wide range of backgrounds.
Applications are now open here and are due by Monday, February 8th at 11:59pm CT.
