2023 Ventures Showcase Recap

On May 24, our CityBridge community came together for our 2023 Ventures Showcase, the culminating event for our 2022-2023 Design Residency: Ventures cohort. Over the past nine months, our Residents received customized curriculum, coaching, connections, and capital that supported accelerated the design and implementation of their education ventures. 

Throughout the program, these passionate individuals worked tirelessly to reimagine the future of education and to push their vision forward. This work was on display during the Showcase as our entrepreneurs pitched their ventures to a panel of expert judges. 

Our 2022-2023 Residents:

• Tia Bell, The T.R.I.G.G.E.R Project. The T.R.I.G.G.E.R. Project is a non-profit focused on addressing root causes that create a culture of violence among our city’s youth.
• Laurel Djoukeng, Sparc. Sparc is a social network that connects college students/professionals with job opportunities, employer recruiting events, and networking opportunities.
• Noah Dougherty and Dan Englender, Relevant Learner. Relevant Learner connects students with locally and culturally relevant content by sourcing diverse and empowering content from expert community institutions and making it simple for educators to find, personalize, and share that content with students.
• Vanessa Douyon, The Polyglot Tot. The Polyglot Tot provides at-home tools to help caregivers pass their heritage language on to their kids, focusing on ages birth to three, when most language development happens, and where resources are at their slimmest.

Please join us in congratulating our entrepreneurs for all they have accomplished this year. We are grateful for the unwavering commitment of Tia, Laurel, Noah, Dan, and Vanessa and the collective impact they will make on DC’s education system.

We are also grateful to Riley Jones, IV, for his leadership and to our esteemed judges: Troy Duffie, Dr. Omolara Fatiregun, and Isaiah Walker.

CityTutor DC Announces New, Expanded HIT Partnerships

CityTutor DC and Georgetown University have partnered to expand the DC Schools Project at Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching & Service. Georgetown University students will provide high-impact tutoring and support services for migrant and newcomer youth in Washington, DC. 

“High-impact tutoring for newcomer migrant students will improve their literacy skills and academic performance,” said Jessica Lee, Assistant Director for Immigrant Justice Initiatives at the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching & Service. “Ultimately, our race-conscious and justice-focused approach works to increase the ability of the youth and families to fully participate in the cultural, civic, educational, and economic life in US society and close the equity gap.”

DC Schools Project’s individual or small group tutoring model will serve K-12 students both during school and after school, meeting students where they are. During the spring semester of school year 22-23, Georgetown tutors will serve approximately 100 elementary, middle, and high school students across the District with high-impact tutoring. 

Additionally, CityTutor DC has expanded partnerships with six tutoring provider partners—including universities, tutoring organizations, and school networks—to provide school day high-impact tutoring for several hundred students throughout the District this school year.

Meet the Inaugural CityBridge Launch Fund Entrepreneur: Dr. Omolara O. Fatiregun

CityBridge Education is thrilled to announce Dr. Omolara O. Fatiregun as the inaugural entrepreneur in the CityBridge Launch Fund, a 15-month venture philanthropy investment fund. Dr. Fatiregun is the Founder and CEO of THRIVE!, a venture that uses technology to help school systems and human services agencies root out systemic racism in spending. 

Through the Launch Fund, we aim to fund and advise equity-minded ventures that advance our vision of Washington, DC, as a national proofpoint for educational equity and excellence. The CityBridge Launch Fund provides seed funding for early-stage education entrepreneurs as well as consulting support from a bench of seasoned experts and access to our network of education leaders and venture advisors.

“We were compelled by Omolara’s leadership and deep experience in working with government and school systems to advocate for equitable outcomes for young people,” said Rachel Evans, CEO of CityBridge. “THRIVE! was the ideal first investment for our Launch Fund because of its ability to make the invisible visible for schools around their most marginalized students, as well as the centering of research-based strategies that schools and systems leaders can immediately implement.”

THRIVE! helps school systems evaluate their budgets and invest in evidence-based approaches that have been scientifically proven to break cycles of poverty. The software platform first conducts an equity audit, considering the academic and impact evaluation literature on how to close the achievement gap, improve attendance, and reduce disciplinary actions that fuel the school to prison pipeline. It then checks individual school and central office budgets for investments in programs and practices known to work—like strategic resource allocation and school climate interventions. THRIVE! also assesses the extent to which students and parents are empowered in decision-making. Based on this comprehensive analysis, districts get a score and concrete recommendations on how to reallocate resources or partner with other organizations to reduce disparities and improve results and experiences for marginalized students.

Dr. Fatiregun designed THRIVE!’s equity algorithm based on her 20-year career as an impact evaluator, a cabinet-level official in DC’s juvenile justice agency, and a foundation executive. Dr. Fatiregun earned a bachelor’s in Sociology and African American Studies from Harvard, a master’s in public policy from Georgetown, and a doctorate in education leadership from Harvard where she was a Presidential Public Service Fellow and an Adrian Cheng Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Social Innovation + Change Initiative. She has won many innovation awards including the HP Prize for Advancing Digital Equity, MIT Solve, and fellowships from Halcyon and Camelback. Dr. Fatiregun’s work has been featured in Boston Globe, MSN, and Nasdaq.

ABC News Highlights CityTutor DC

ABC’s Justin Finch interviews CityTutor DC Executive Director Cat Peretti and visits CTDC Hub, Horton’s Kids for a story about how high-impact tutoring is helping to accelerate learning for students in the District.

Celebrating the Riverseed School

At CityBridge, we have the privilege of supporting incredible entrepreneurs who have planted seeds that will grow into new classrooms, schools, nonprofits, or ventures.

This month we celebrate a seed that has grown into a beautiful new model. This fall DC Wildflower Public Charter School (DCWPCS) opened its first school in the District.

DCWPCS was founded by Maia Blankenship, a 2020 Design Resident. DCWPCS will serve up to 225 students through up to six community-embedded, teacher-led microschools in Wards 4, 5, 7, and 8 over the next four years. DCWPCS’s first school in DC—The Riverseed School—was founded by two teachers, Zani Dalili-Ortique and Ebony Marshman. Rachel Kimboko, Executive Director for Stakeholder Engagement at DC Wildflower Public Charter School, is also an alumna of CityBridge programming. The Riverseed School celebrated its grand opening in early October by bringing together nearly a hundred community stakeholders, parents, and educators for a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The Riverseed School Opening Celebration Photo Collage from Wildflower Schools on Vimeo.

Congratulations to Maia, Zani, Ebony, Rachel, and the entire Riverseed School community!

Entrepreneur Journeys, a reflection on the celebration

CityBridge held its first in-person event in over two years, Entrepreneur Journeys, in June. The event was a remix of a traditional panel and spotlighted three BIPOC Entrepreneurs in our DC community. We asked these entrepreneurs to share their stories of learning, vulnerability, and self-discovery. 

At CityBridge, we recognize, support, and celebrate the journey of entrepreneurs—especially those entrepreneurs who choose disruption, liberation, and to design a future we’ve only dreamed of. To be an entrepreneur is to continually put yourself and your ideas out into the world, with the hopes they will find ears, hearts, and minds that embrace, believe, and invest in them. This takes a deep level of self-awareness, vulnerability, continued reflection and self-discovery, and to be able to speak to the future. 

Below, we are sharing the questions that were asked of panelists during the Entrepreneur Journeys event. We hope that you will take a look at them and use them as reflection tools to uncover your own entrepreneurial journey. Bonus if you share one of your stories with a friend or colleague!

Reflection Questions:

• Which of your intersectional identities do you most strongly identify? Why? What’s your UNIQUE story that has allowed you to be here?    
• What is something you’re insecure about as an entrepreneur that you’ve hidden from the world?  
• What is the one thing you are learning about yourself? Is it in tension with what you’ve always been told?
• What is an image that captures “a more equitable future” for the young people of DC. What are you creating that will make this true?

Entrepreneur Journeys Panelists 

Andre Zarate is an educational leader in the Washington, DC, area, most recently at Sojourner Truth Montessori PCS. He has been an educator for the past nine years in Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia. He’s currently working on his doctorate degree to support his mission and commitment to creating a counter-space school model that centers the needs of LGBTQIA+ students of color through the Z Factor Project and House of Legends.

Lauren Bryant is a catalytic connector, radical collaborator, and womanist operationalizing spaces of belonging that ignite and sustain change. A decade-long cultivator of community within public education, Lauren centers her values of community, collaboration, and compassion to support school-based operations teams and leaders through her work at StartOps, focusing most deeply on the experiences of executive leaders of color and leaders of color within operations.

Naomi Shelton currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of the National Charter Collaborative. A self-described dynamic leader with cross-functional expertise, Naomi is a 4th generation graduate of Tougaloo College and a staunch advocate for educational justice who lives for a good independent film and live music. While Mississippi is her birthplace, DC is—and will forever be—home. #DCorNothing

Announcing Our 2022-2023 Venture Residency Cohort

We know big ideas start small. With time, investment, and support, these ideas have the power to transform communities. CityBridge invests in entrepreneurs, education leaders, and innovators with bold solutions that have the promise of creating a more equitable future.

We are thrilled to announce our newest cohort of Ventures Residents for 2022-2023! Each of these leaders has a deep commitment to advancing equity, proven leadership skills, and a clear vision to launch an education venture in DC.

• Tia Bell, The T.R.I.G.G.E.R Project. The T.R.I.G.G.E.R. Project is a non-profit focused on addressing root causes that create a culture of violence among our city’s youth.
• Laurel Djoukeng, Sparc. Sparc is a social network that connects college students/professionals with job opportunities, employer recruiting events, and networking opportunities.
• Noah Dougherty and Dan Englender, Relevant Learner. Relevant Learner connects students with locally and culturally relevant content by sourcing diverse and empowering content from expert community institutions and then making it simple for educators to find, personalize, and share that content with students.
• Vanessa Douyon, The Polyglot Tot. The Polyglot Tot provides at-home tools to help caregivers pass their heritage language on to their kids, focusing on ages birth to three, when most language development happens and where resources are at their slimmest.

Our Design Residency is a ten-month, part-time program that provides customized coaching, dynamic workshops, and financial support—up to $20,000—to accelerate the design and implementation of new school models and education ventures. Past Ventures Residents have launched education technology products and applications, nonprofits, and other social enterprises.

Learn more about our new Ventures Residents

Welcome to the Rewind

The last two program years have laid bare the acute impact of the deeply embedded inequities in our systems. However, in the midst of the increasing levels of frustration and disillusionment, we have found local inspiration. Since 2020, over 300 DC leaders have been compelled to address these inequities with the support of our programs. The CityBridge Incubator provides critical early-stage support for school leaders, educators, and entrepreneurs to design innovative and equity-centered solutions to our most entrenched educational challenges. In one of the most troubled and unique moments in our history, leaders—from all wards of the city—in student-serving organizations and schools within both sectors designed, piloted, and launched solutions tethered to one unifying goal: to create a more equitable future for DC’s young people.

Through the activation of equity design principles, our tools, and coaching from our experts, participants designed solutions from strengthening trauma-informed practices within the individual classroom to the launch of a multi-generational model prioritizing family wellness and parent technical skill development. Regardless of whether or not each participant’s ideas or pilots were ready for scaling, all participants embarked on a journey that centered learning from and with the communities most impacted by the problem.

Just as we encourage learning as a part of the solution building process, we demand that of ourselves. In fact, we’ve spent the last two years refining the strategies that will help us deliver programming that catalyzes our unifying goal. We have executed strategies to activate leadership and prioritize the recruitment of Black and Brown leaders, deployed curricula and coaching to improve the effectiveness of early stage ventures, and shared our ideas broadly in order to invite critique and reflection. 

As a part of this journey, we’ve decided to pause and reflect on what we’ve learned in pursuit of these goals and share them with you. 

This, my friend, is for us. A chance for all of us to be inspired about what we’ve accomplished together.

We are thrilled to kick-off The CityBridge Rewind, a month-long highlight reel of the leaders and ideas that have passed through our incubator and what we’ve learned from and with them. Across this month, you will gain more insight into our approach to this work from members of our team, preview the tools we use, and share in the learning that results. 

Upcoming stories will provide insight into how we:

• Deploy curricula and coaching that will improve the effectiveness of early stage ventures: Listen in on a conversation with Coach Kim and some of the leaders she coached through Fellowship. They’ll share about the partnerships they built, the ways they grew as leaders, and the fun they had through the process.
• Share our ideas to offer critique and reflection: Read Jim’s story about his work with the CapX and how it exemplifies how we keep students at the center of our work, while being creative, flexible, and innovative about ways in which we can push impact for kids. Read about how we had to pivot our approach after being rejected by the PCSB, but ultimately embraced obstacles as opportunities for students in DC.
• Deploy curricula that will improve the effectiveness of early stage ventures: Read Andrew’s story of his work with two amazing leaders at Friendship Public Charter Schools. We help educators and entrepreneurs incubate their ideas with a widening toolkit of equity-design methods. One of the most powerful tools? Reflection. Read about how Felicia Ow0-Grant and Ayinde Spradley at Friendship PCS used reflective tools to explore, test, and learn.
• Activating leadership: Join us at 5:30pm, Thursday, June 23rd as we celebrate the work of all of our alumni at Entrepreneur Journeys event at the Gathering Spot DC. Email Morgan Marler at mmarler@citybridge.org to RSVP.

This post is a part of The Rewind, our month-long highlight reel sharing what we’ve learned and spotlighting the leaders and ideas we’ve supported from 2020-2022.