Inventing the Future : Innovation + Job News

Recent Temple graduate Andrew Nakkache and his business partner, fellow grad Mike Paszkiewicz, got the idea for their winning 2016 College Pitch Philly concept Habitat when they grew frustrated with the student meal plans. The resulting startup is a food-delivery app linking local food trucks and restaurants with campus-dwellers.

The duo -- who both graduated about a month ago -- met on their very first day on campus and soon identified a couple things about student life that weren’t ideal, including the fact that they (or their parents) were wasting money on meal plans with meals that expired weekly.

"Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was an off-campus meal plan?" Nakkache remembers wondering. It was just a concept at that point, but a year-and-a-half later, he and Paszkiewicz launched the initial version of Habitat, a general "student-to-student marketplace."

"It failed big-time," recalls Nakkache. It was "buggy" and they released it in April, shortly before the summer exodus. People were downloading the app, but in one month, they didn’t book a single transaction. There was work to be done.

The partners headed to San Francisco for some mentorship -- one successful entrepreneur assured them that they had a great market, but needed to zero in on a much more targeted service. They realized that there was a huge opportunity in food alone.

Nakkache points to existing meal delivery apps and websites like GrubHub; they realized none of them were focused on the college market. The revamped version of Habitat, launched September 1, 2015, operates with "runners" (exclusively Temple students) delivering food to campus sites within a half-mile or less of participating restaurants and food trucks for a $2.50 in-app delivery fee.

Since launch, Habitat has clocked about 1200 orders, with over 400 in the last month. Nakkache touts a 75 percent success rate with vendors: out of 28 food trucks and restaurants approached by Habitat, 21 came on board.

At the February 24 College Pitch Philly competition, Habitat took top honors, nabbing $7,500 out of a total $15,000 prize pool. (The contest is sponsored by the Philadelphia Regional Entrepreneurship Education Consortium and partners StartUp PHL, Blackstone Foundation, and Quorum at the University City Science Center.) Wins like this -- including a $21,000 boost from the Fox School’s Be Your Own Boss Bowl -- have helped propel the young company, which now has six full-time employees.

Habitat’s latest update speaks to the founders’ original inspiration: a stored-value feature that allows app users (or their parents) to buy tiered plans that include a certain number of pre-paid meals (at $8 each) and some free deliveries.

Next up? Burnish the metrics at Temple and expand to University City. The founders hope the prize money from College Pitch Philly will help bring Habitat to Penn and Drexel by fall 2016.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Andrew Nakkache, Habitat

A new way to gather DNA for testing. A better tool for training healthcare workers. Improved physical therapy. An innovative approach to stem cell therapy. These technologies are all under development at regional universities and have been funded by the latest round of the University City Science Center’s QED Proof-of-Concept Program. 

Launched in 2009, the program provides a boost to novel university-born technologies with market potential, bridging the gap between academic research and commercialization. To date, 28 funded QED projects have attracted over $15 million in follow-on funding and led to seven licensed technologies.

QED goes to the heart of the Center's mission as a nonprofit organization that supports early-stage innovation. In its latest funding round -- the eighth -- QED awarded $600,000 to support researchers at the University of Delaware, Penn State University and Rutgers. The awards are half funded by the Science Center and half by the researchers’ institutions.

The four awardees were selected from a pool of 62 applicants and 12 universities in the Greater Philadelphia region.

Amy Cowperthwait of the University of Delaware is revolutionizing healthcare training by addressing the shortcomings of mannequin simulation. A qualified nurse, Cowperthwait has teamed up with lead engineer Amy Bucha to develop a tool for teaching healthcare workers airway management in emergency situations, improving patient safety and providing feedback from the patient’s perspective.

Dr. Judith Deutsch, professor of rehabilitation and movement science at the Rutgers University School of Health Related Professions, led a team of physical therapists and engineers to create a customized low-cost rehabilitation technology that selectively tracks movement and heart rate. The technology will aid in balance, mobility, coordination and fitness training for older adults as well as persons with neurologic and musculoskeletal conditions such as a stroke.

Dr. Melik Demirel of Penn State is using proteins to coat the surfaces of biomedical swabs, improving DNA capture. These swabs will allow gene analysis from even tiny amounts of blood or other biological samples; the DNA swab industry is the primary market for this product.

Dr. KiBum Lee, an associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers, is developing an innovative platform for programming human patient-derived stem cells for use in stem-cell therapies. His methods would help people with incurable and debilitating diseases and disorders. Lee's strategy is unlike conventional approaches because it doesn’t rely on the use of viruses to modify the cells' genes.

"The QED program excels at finding innovative, commercially relevant solutions for pressing problems in healthcare and life sciences," notes Science Center President and CEO Stephen S. Tang. "Our latest round looked for innovative approaches to collaboration as it emphasized partnerships between two groups that don’t typically work together: medical professionals and engineers. Putting together these groups’ different skill sets and perspectives -- as exemplified by Amy Cowperthwait’s and Judith Deutsch’s projects -- creates another path to improving patient care. You can expect to see more of these special emphasis areas in the future."

WRITER IN RESIDENCE is a partnership between the University City Science Center and Flying Kite Media that embeds a reporter on-site at 3711 Market Street. The resulting coverage will provide an inside look at the most intriguing companies, discoveries and technological innovations coming out of this essential Philadelphia institution.
 

Last week, we spoke with Megan Garner about the School District of Philadelphia's new five-year "GreenFutures" Sustainability Plan which includes a big boost for recycling in all of the city's schools. Modeled on the City's six-year Greenworks Philadelphia initiative, the program is broken up into several focus areas.

Greenworks includes categories such as energy, environment, engagement and equity, and the District admired the model. Their Office of Environmental Management and Services sought out input from a partnering Consumption Waste Committee which featured representatives from Keep Philadelphia Beautiful, Recyclebank and other school districts (including New York City and suburban Philly-area districts) which have had success with their own green initiatives.

According to Garner, the District chose five focus areas for its own GreenFutures plan: Sustainability; Consumption and Waste; Energy and Efficiencies; School Greenscapes; and Healthy Schools, Healthy Living.

Francine Locke, Director of the District’s Office of Environmental Management and Services, is spearheading the project with help from internal and external partners. She has a master’s degree in environmental health, and experience as an industrial hygienist; Garner studied geology and worked in environmental consulting.

"Prior to this [plan], we were helping with indoor environmental quality inspections," explains Garner. That included projects like the clean-up of oil or chemical spills.

They weren’t educators, but after focusing on the operations side at the District, they began to reach out to curriculum departments about incorporating sustainability initiatives into the life of the schools. Possible future educational options include a special science course, or an environmental or energy-savers club.

Building GreenFutures involved extensive outreach. Within the District, that meant connecting with departments as diverse as educational technology, transportation, food services and facilities management. Outside the schools, it meant creating relationships with local government, public and private industry leaders, nearby school districts, and institutions of higher learning.

Garner says that the initiative's five focus areas cover about sixty individual actions. For example, helping all schools -- not just ones with large yards – incorporate educational green spaces, and officially cataloging the green spaces and gardens that do exist.

"The goal is that 100 percent of [Philadelphia] schools will recycle," says Garner of the plan's major five-year push. Through recycling, the District hopes to "increase its aggregate waste diversion from landfills by ten percent over five years."

Does that sound low?

Maybe, but according to Garner, "we’re hoping to blow it out of the water. Every student will have access to a vision for consumption and waste. Every student will have access to a school that incorporates waste reduction practices and diverts waste from landfills."

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Megan Garner, School District of Philadelphia

2001's No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) -- with its federally mandated education standards -- has been replaced by 2015's Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). On February 24, the Friends Center's Exchange PHL hosted Maura McInerney, a senior attorney at the Education Law Center – PA, for the latest installment of its Breakfast Series to discuss the shifts ESSA will bring to U.S. schools (with most changes taking effect by December of this year).

While McInerney was frank about many portions of the law that maintain nebulous standards in terms of education access, goals, and enforcement, the new rules mean a goodbye to mandates for the controversial Common Core teaching style.

Teachers "had no idea how to implement the Common Core," she explained. Now states are required to adopt "challenging" academic standards -- which could mean a continuance of Common Core or a new standard (Pennsylvania opted to maintain Common Core).

So how does ESSA impact Pennsylvania and Philadelphia schools? Some of its provisions build on the original intent of NCLB with policies to maintain and increase access to quality education for at-risk children. This is important for our state because Pennsylvania has the largest disparity in the country between its wealthy school districts and its under-funded school districts, and children are hurting.

One notable change from NCLB -- particularly relevant to a state with wide funding gaps -- is a new requirement disaggregating data about students' performance. Evaluations will no longer group all children together, but allow special consideration for students who face extra challenges, such as kids who are homeless or living in poverty, kids in foster care, kids with disabilities, or kids learning English as a second language.

ESSA also works to eliminate punitive measures for teachers whose students fail to meet federal standards. According to McInerney, this was resulting in counselors and teachers advising kids to miss tests when they were at risk of failing them.

ESSA also hopes to better support kids who now wind up in Alternative Education for Disruptive Youth programs (AEDY). A disproportionate number of students in AEDY programs have disabilities (McInerney helped open a legal investigation into the problem). And ironically, one issue that often lands kids in AEDY programs is truancy (how can children be labeled "disruptive" if they’re not even present, she wondered). ESSA aims to implement conditions to reduce bullying and harassment and "reduce the overuse of discipline practices that remove students from the classroom." Currently kids in AEDY programs must change schools to enter their new classrooms, and, as a punitive measure, lose access to art and music classes, maintaining only "core subjects." This does little to reduce disruptive behavior or truancy.

Another provision of ESSA that could impact Philadelphia schools in particular relates to grant programs for school districts. Districts that receive over $30,000 must spend "20 percent on at least one activity that helps students be safe and healthy."

What could that mean for Philly? The restoration of school nurses. Due to budget cuts, local schools have lost 100 nurses since 2011. In some cases, a single nurse now covers as many as five schools. ESSA could help change that.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Maura McInerney, Education Law Center – PA 
 

"You wouldn’t think it’s that hard, because pretty much everyone recycles at home, right? So what is the big problem at school?” asks Megan Garner, Sustainability Program Manager at the School District of Philadelphia’s Office of Environmental Management and Services. They're rolling out the ambitious five-year city-wide "GreenFutures" program, bringing a full recycling program to each of the District’s 218 schools.
 
Recycling does exist in City schools, but it’s limited -- they are all able to recycle cardboard. Forty-two schools also have a dumpster for co-mingled recyclables and a vendor to haul them, but at the remaining schools, all other recyclables (including cans and bottles) currently go right into the trash.
 
A longtime in-house contractor with the School District through Keating Environmental Management, Garner has been working closely on the District’s sustainability plan (launching this spring) with her supervisor Francine Locke, director of the Office of Environmental Management and Services.
 
"We would like to expand the program, but we’re having trouble getting participation at the schools," says Garner. Many principals and staffers face pressing issues that make it tough to prioritize recycling.
 
But according to some studies, about ninety percent of the average classroom’s waste is recyclable. So is this as simple as just putting recycling bins in Philly classrooms?
 
No, Garner insists, if they don't bring kids on board with the initiatives, "we would be missing a large educational piece with our students…We’re not in the waste business; we’re in the education business."
 
That means not just relying on District staff -- teachers and building engineers -- or outside vendors to make District-wide recycling a reality. It’s getting the kids in on the ground floor.
 
Garner hopes students and staff can eventually see that recycling isn’t a "stand-alone" proposition and build understanding of the "embodied energy" that our trash represents: the use of raw materials and depletion of natural resources, and energy spent shipping, processing and packing. There are also plenty of cross-curricular, interdisciplinary links, like the impact recycling has on our drinking water, air quality and climate.
 
Widespread recycling also makes economic sense. Trash disposal currently costs a set fee per pick-up -- and an additional fee by weight when it reaches the landfill. Recycling shrinks the volume of landfill trash, lessening the number of trash pick-ups needed and reducing landfill fees.
 
"So even if you’re not in it for the social or environmental aspects, financially it makes sense," explains Garner. "To be successful, it really needs to have the students involved...people don’t generally say no to student ideas. So if it’s student-driven and student-led, with the support of teachers and staff, it has a much better chance for success."
 
And it’s about preparing for Philly’s future, too. According to Garner, today’s students are "the decision-makers, the policy-makers, the leaders, the critical thinkers, the innovators of tomorrow."
 
Stay tuned for a closer look at the District’s plan to boost sustainability in our schools.
 
Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Megan Garner, School District of Philadelphia
 

On February 4, Mayor Jim Kenney joined Mt. Airy USA Executive Director Brad Copeland and others for the official launch of the Philadelphia Immigrant Innovation Hub at 6700 Germantown Avenue.

In his remarks to the diverse crowd of immigrant entrepreneurs, funders and other supporters, Kenney called the room "a beautiful sight."

"This is what Philadelphia looks like," he said. "And this is what the country should look like."

Copeland added that a support and co-working hub for Philly's immigrant entrepreneurs was "very Mt. Airy" -- the neighborhood is already extremely diverse and civically engaged. He praised Hub members’ commitment, drive, energy, vision and "willingness to take risks."

The Hub was made possible by a 2015 Knight Foundation Cities Challenge grant. Speakers credited former Mt. Airy USA leader Anuj Gupta for the inspiration to pursue these dollars for the project. Out of 5,000 applications last year, there were 32 winners -- seven of those from Philadelphia, the most winners from any city in the country.

"[Knight] allows organizations like ours to dream crazy dreams and then challenges us to make them a reality," enthused Copeland.

Sarajane Blair and Jamie Shanker of Mt. Airy USA outlined the new space's offerings, which are made possible with additional financial support and guidance from the nonprofit community lender FINANTA. Services will include "core workshops" (offered through a partnership with the Welcoming Center for New Pennyslvanians), individual business and financial plan development, credit building tools, and community support and engagement helmed by Mt. Airy USA. Hub members will also have access to a co-working space on Germantown Avenue, five financial lending cycles a year, and dedicated networking programs.

"We will do everything we can to help you succeed," said Blair to program participants.

Those eligible for the program must be immigrants to the U.S. who want to be self-employed and have a business idea or plan, but need assistance in starting or growing their business. Applicants can head to piihub.org to get started.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Sources: Philadelphia Immigrant Innovation Hub launch speakers
 

As Flying Kite transitions from its most recent On the Ground residency at Asian Arts Initiative, it’s worth looking back on neighborhood voices from the past few years. After all, this area just north of Center City has many names and many stories.

Last week, we spoke with Mural Arts freelance project manager Dave Kyu. He's been involved with the Asian Arts Social Practice Lab since 2012. His past projects include "Sign of the Times," which collected thoughts and reflections from the neighborhood and broadcast them on signs mounted on a truck driving around the city, and "Write Sky," which solicited ideas from community members that became messages in the sky with the help of sky-writing pilots.

To launch projects like this -- including his current work on a light and sound installation near the Viaduct -- he needed to get to know the neighborhood. Kyu began with a small survey of about fifteen people, hoping to learn what people’s perceptions of the area were. He recently shared the results with Flying Kite. The themes raised in surveys conducted in late 2012 through early 2013 reflect dramatic neighborhood change.

One question he asked his subjects was a deceptively simple one: What do you call this neighborhood?

To some, it’s Chinatown North, but it’s also Callowhill and "North of Vine." Others call it "the Viaduct area" -- certainly a label that’s gaining traction now -- and others call it "Eraserhood" or the "Loft District."

Kyu says all of these names just represent different factions of people trying to preserve what they see as their piece of the neighborhood as development advances.

Back then, respondents noted that the area was becoming a haven for the "creative class" and other entrepreneurs. The addition of galleries, bars and restaurants -- from artists and collectives at the 319 gallery building to nightlife startups like Brick and Mortar and W/N W/N Coffee Bar, and services like GoBeer -- have borne this out.

Kyu also asked subjects, "What is the best thing that could happen in this neighborhood in the next year?" Answers included a launch to the first stage of the new Viaduct Park (on its way), and "some type of festival that is accessible for all." Last fall’s Pearl Street Passage project offered a taste of this possibility.

The survey also noted that the area was "ripe for development" and changing extremely fast. Projects from the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation’s Eastern Tower to new high-end residential units on Spring Garden, speak to expanding live/work opportunities in the neighborhood.

Keep an eye out for our continued coverage of happenings in Callowhill as it searches for its 21st century identity. And come say hello in Strawberry Mansion, where we will begin our next On the Ground residency soon.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Dave Kyu, Mural Arts Project and Asian Arts Initiative

Follow all our work #OnTheGroundPhilly via twitter (@flyingkitemedia) and Instagram (@flyingkite_ontheground).

On the Ground is made possible by the Knight Foundation, an organization that supports transformational ideas, promotes quality journalism, advances media innovation, engages communities and fosters the arts. The foundation believes that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit knightfoundation.org.
 

For young students, the Internet can be a big, messy, cluttered, unreliable or even dangerous place. Choosito!, a University City Science Center startup, has devised a technological solution to help K-12 teachers find age appropriate resources for their students. The company's tagline sums up its mission: "Because the web is not a library and search engines are not librarians."
 
We asked co-founder and CEO Eleni Miltsakaki five central questions about his growing enterprise.
 
What is your big idea?

Although progress has been made in returning quality search results, the focus is on improving the relevance of results to the query, not the user, and on improving the online shopping experience. 
 
Choosito! is a web search filtering application designed to personalize search specifically for learners. To achieve this, we shift our focus from the keyword to the user.

Let's take the example of the query "polar bears." The user making the query could be a second or fifth grader searching for cool facts about polar bears to bring to class the next day; a group of middle school students working on a science project; a language teacher looking for a short story or news about polar bears at different reading levels; a foreign language learner; or even a polar bear expert.
 
The key to personalizing results for learning is understanding who the user is, what she wants to learn and what she knows already. Choosito is building technology that combines text analysis algorithms with statistical representations of each user’s current and evolving experience with the topic of the query to make adaptive recommendations of relevant resources.
 
What is your origin story?

I am a linguist and natural language processing scientist. In 2006, I started teaching educational technology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education and was quickly confronted by frustrated teachers who were reluctant to let their students use the web because it was a distraction, took a long time to find something useful and was not reliable.
 
Co-founder Christos Georgiadis and I started operations in 2012. We are now surrounded by a talented team of educators, technologists and entrepreneurs dedicated to personalized learning.
 
What is your timeline for growth?

We launched our beta Choosito! Search and Learn in October 2014. Users can establish search criteria to filter websites by reading level and theme. Since our launch, we’ve gotten over 30,000 users.
 
On our first anniversary, we released our premium product Choosito! Class to help K-12 teachers integrate the teaching of information literacy into their curriculum. Choosito! Class also helps teachers assess the progress of their students’ critical thinking and information literacy skills by accessing quantitative data about their students’ methods of inquiry and evaluation of information.
 
In March, Choosito received a $1 million Innovation Award from the National Science Foundation. We’re currently at work to extend our machine learning text analysis technology by offering website recommendations based on what each student already knows and understands about the topic of inquiry.
 
Why does the marketplace need your company?

There is currently no other tool that can leverage the power and size of digital content to offer a sustainable solution not only for K-12, but lifelong personalized learning. Choosito!’s competition offers either automatically retrieved non-leveled resources or limited collections of resources organized by reading or grade level that become obsolete in less than a year.
 
What is your elevator pitch?

Choosito is a linguistic application that personalizes learning by making adaptive recommendations of resources that are not only relevant to the topic of interest but also relevant to the user and what they already know.

WRITER IN RESIDENCE is a partnership between the University City Science Center and Flying Kite Media that embeds a reporter on-site at 3711 Market Street. The resulting coverage will provide an inside look at the most intriguing companies, discoveries and technological innovations coming out of this essential Philadelphia institution.
 

In December, the Enterprise Center (TEC) in West Philly announced a special program to augment their 25-year mission: giving local women- and minority-owned businesses the tools they need to grow. TEC is one of only seven organizations nationwide -- and the only one in Philly -- chosen to receive over $1 million in federal funds through the U.S. Small Business Administration's ScaleUp America Initiative.

According to TEC, ScaleUp provides "growth-oriented" small businesses with a targeted twelve-week curriculum and six months of one-on-one mentoring from experts aimed at developing a three-year strategy. TEC narrowed the field of applicants down to 25 businesses featuring minority owners or executive managers.

Iola Harper, TEC's executive vice president of business programs, says that the companies served by TEC and ScaleUp America are often "sandwiched" between early startups "in the idea phase" and large firms that can attract venture capital. To qualify for participation in the ScaleUp program, businesses had to have local impact and have proven themselves in the market via $150,000 to $700,000 in annual revenue.

"We call them scalers," says Harper, and they are often neglected in the venture capital world.

One marker of companies like this is a relative lack of managerial experience, in addition to inadequate access to capital and technical assistance.

"I find that these businesses tend to work in their business and not on their business," explains Harper. "So this program forces the participants to step out of their businesses," encouraging management to look at the big picture: business goals, scalability and understanding the numbers.

The ScaleUp initiative is a mentoring curriculum, but another component of working with TEC is the access to capital. The organization can make in-house loans of up to $200,000 to qualified participants, and if a business’s capital needs exceed that, there are banking partners on hand.

Harper is excited about "the fact that these are all local or minority-owned firms, and they’re typically the pool that has the hardest time accessing these services that we’re offering."

That difficulty is two-fold: Not only does TEC focus on women and minority entrepreneurs who get a smaller percentage of America’s venture capital in general, but it also targets companies outside of the tech and pharmaceutical realms. Current ScaleUp participants include food, manufacturing, personal service and construction businesses.

TEC is focused on ventures that "bring a lot of social capital to our community," enthuses Harper. "They bring a lot of intellectual capital to our community, and most of all they bring jobs to our community."

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Iola Harper, The Enterprise Center
 

The dictionary defines polymath as "a person of great learning in several fields of study." The term has been widely applied to Benjamin Franklin. Looking at his resume, it’s not too much of a stretch to apply it to Dr. Keith Leaphart.  

At only 40, Leaphart is a physician, one-time congressional candidate, philanthropist and serial entrepreneur (commercial cleaning, events planning and, like Franklin, printing.) Speaking in December at the University City Science Center’s Quorum, Leaphart described himself as a "physician by training, an entrepreneur by birth."

The Philadelphia native started selling candy -- in a self-described "dodgy scheme" -- in middle school. By the time he got to medical school (he simultaneously earned an MBA), he was running a commercial cleaning service whose major client was Gerry Lenfest's Suburban Cable, a little company that sold to Comcast in 2000 for $6.7 billion. 

It was the start of a long affiliation with Lenfest.

"If I hadn’t dumped [his] trash every day, I definitely would not be here," says Leaphart.

Today, he is chairman of The Lenfest Foundation and serves on the board of Philadelphia Media Network, the parent company of the Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com, which is owned by Lenfest.

He also continues to work weekends on-staff at Bryn Mawr Hospital.

But his life as an entrepreneur was the focus at Quorum. Leaphart -- who says a key to his success is an ability to catnap anytime, anywhere -- acquired a long-established printing company in 2009 in the depths of the recession.

"It wasn’t about buying a print shop," he recalls. "It was about getting into the digital economy."

Leaphart rebranded the company as Replica Creative, moved it to larger quarters and, in 2013, opened a second location in the Science Center’s 3711 Market Street building. It boasts modern interior design, event space and a coffee bar.

"It’s like a high-end Kinkos and Starbucks on steroids," he says. 

Providing coffee and comfort food helps maintain a steady flow of traffic and provides a place for clients to meet and commission design and production work. 

This month, Leaphart is launching his latest venture wallsome.net, an e-commerce platform for customizable and repositionable wallpaper. He will follow up in April with a new flagship space at 8th and Callowhill streets in a former nightclub. The 7,700-square-foot hub will feature a café, production facility and co-working space for residential interior designers. 

All told, Replica has more than 18 employees and Leaphart expects to add another six in the first half of this year. 

His best advice to aspiring entrepreneurs: Travel for inspiration, hire people with expertise beyond your own and don’t micro-manage. And his assessment of the entrepreneurial climate in Philadelphia?

"There’s thinking big and there’s thinking bigger. We all need to think bigger."

WRITER IN RESIDENCE is a partnership between the University City Science Center and Flying Kite Media that embeds a reporter on-site at 3711 Market Street. The resulting coverage will provide an inside look at the most intriguing companies, discoveries and technological innovations coming out of this essential Philadelphia institution.
 

Earlier this month, we took a look at a new report on the projected impact of SEPTA's proposed expansion of the Norristown High Speed Line to King of Prussia, the first direct rail service to this sprawling retail and business center. The "Connecting KOP" analysis -- a collaboration between SEPTA, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, the non-profit Economy League of Greater Philadelphia and Econsult Solutions, Inc. -- was about a year in the making.

The Economy League's Nick Frontino marvels over KOP's history: It was a quiet residential and farming community as recently as the 1970s. But an industrial park turned business complex and the famous Mall, a destination for shoppers throughout the region, turned the area into "the largest economic center in Greater Philadelphia," explains Frontino. "[But] it’s really limited in its infrastructure capacity, particularly its transportation capacity."

A look at the impact of direct rail to KOP isn't complete without acknowledging the potential effect on Norristown across the Schuylkill River.

"Norristown could stand to benefit from this investment as well," says Frontino. Despite being a city with "a great downtown core" and "great housing stock," many residents find quality local jobs just out of reach. Though KOP’s commercial powerhouse is just a few miles away from Norristown as the crow flies, "a lot of its residents have a hard time accessing economic opportunities today."

Those without a car who rely on current transit services often have to set aside up to 45 minutes each way for the commute. But an extended rail line could cut that trip down to as little as 15 minutes. This would really open up the door to economic opportunity in Norristown, as well as spurring increased demand in the residential market.

Practical next steps for the extension proposal, still in its draft environment impact statement phase, include SEPTA’s work with the Federal Transit Administration and local stakeholders. Each new draft of the statement will identify a tighter and tighter number of possible routes for the new rail. That number will drop from 40 prospective routes to 15, and then to five, and then a top locally preferred route, which will be the focus of a final environmental impact statement. Next come the engineering and design, contracts and construction -- the new rail likely wouldn’t be operational until at least 2023.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Nick Frontino, the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia

Imagine shaving over thirty minutes off of the commute between Center City and King of Prussia (KOP), the region’s greatest economic center outside the city limits.

That dream will take a while to become a reality, but a new "Connecting KOP" study released in early December -- through a partnership between the non-profit Economy League of Greater Philadelphia and Econsult Solutions, Inc. -- has some noteworthy numbers. The analysis has been in the works for about a year, with the help of SEPTA and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. 

Economy League Managing Director of Strategy and Operations Nick Frontino calls King of Prussia an "edge city," meaning that people who work or shop there outnumber the people who live there. About 20,000 people call the area home, while about 50,000 work there and 25 million visit the KOP Mall annually. It’s a natural hub of economic activity at the convergence of four major highways: the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the Schuylkill Expressway, Route 202 and Route 422.

"I think you’re beginning to see the evolution of a lot of these types of automobile-centric, very suburban business and commercial centers into more mixed-use, denser, more accessible communities," says Frontino.

SEPTA’s proposed extension of its existing Norristown High Speed Line to KOP is probably at least eight years away due to rigorous federal processes for new transit initiatives, but the fresh analysis nevertheless offers some exciting news for the region.

Simplifying and expediting the commute to KOP from areas like Center City, Upper Darby and Norristown – both in terms of easier transit access and less congested roadways – will have significant outcomes for the whole region. According to the Economy League, direct rail transit could result in 17,000 to 29,0000 new jobs in KOP over the next 20 years, alongside up to eight million square feet of new development. The trip from Upper Darby could be reduced by at least ten minutes, while the commuting distance from Norristown could be cut by over 20 minutes. Add in that extra half hour taken off the commute from Center City, and that could mean up to 2.1 million hours per year saved by local drivers due to the reduced roadway congestion alone.

The study also projects that improved KOP access by rail could generate up to $1.3 billion in economic activity in the greater five-county region of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Ultimately, Frontino hopes this analysis of the project -- which is still in its Draft Environmental Impact Statement phase -- will alter the conversation about transit in the region which often "focuses on the price tag, and not as much on what the associated benefits might be…On a national level, money allocated towards transit is talked about as spending, while money allocated towards highways is talked about as investment."

He wants a new perspective on how improved non-automotive transit can benefit a state and city’s bottom line. And what about the projected effect of the rail line on Norristown just across the river? Stay tuned for a look in our next issue.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Nick Frontino, the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia

When Flying Kite last looked in on Kiva City Philadelphia, the crowdfunding platform had disbursed $200,000 to 50 local independent businesses. Now as the initiative celebrates its first anniversary, that has jumped to 71 loans totaling $318,000 – and manager Alyssa Thomas (who works out of the City’s Department of Commerce) estimates the program will approve up to seven more campaigns by the end of the year.

Kiva is a micro-loan service that caters specifically to aspiring entrepreneurs who lack access to traditional banking and fundraising avenues. Many of them have low incomes or are new arrivals to the United States. The Kiva system utilizes trustees -- such as local community development corporations (CDC) or neighborhood stakeholders -- to discover and sponsor recipients. Crowdfunding campaigns are then run through the Kiva site for $500 to $5,000.

This fall, Thomas has been taking a lot of “corridor walks,” touring commercial stretches throughout the city alongside CDC corridor managers.

"We talk to the businesses that we already know are in need of financing and would be good fits for Kiva," she explains.

A current campaign that stands out for Thomas is Cambodia native Chany's new venture Angela’s Boutique at 454 Wyoming Avenue (between Olney and North Philadelphia).

Chany and her nine siblings pulled together to support the family very early in life. Her father died when she was 12 and her mother, who was disabled, couldn’t support them on her own. The kids worked before and after school at a corner store they launched themselves.

After Chany married a U.S. resident and arrived here at 21, she and her husband had almost nothing. He worked in a factory; she used her sewing skills and took ESL classes. She also operated a Chinese food stand for a few years, but in 2008 decided to purchase the dry cleaner’s on Wyoming, which she and her husband now operate in addition to working four other jobs between them. Six months ago, with the help of the nonprofit Esperanza (one of Kiva’s new collaborators), Chany decided to pursue a longtime dream: opening her own custom formalwear boutique named after her daughter Angela. A campaign now live on Kiva’s site aims to raise a loan of $5,000 toward new signage, lighting and security for her storefront. 

On December 4, an anniversary party at the Center for Architecture honored the New Kensington CDC as Kiva City Philadelphia’s most valuable trustee of 2015 -- they sponsored the highest number of loan recipients, with a repayment rate of 100 percent.

According to Thomas, one continuing struggle is connecting an online micro-finance platform to entrepreneurs who may not have digital fluency or access to the Internet, an issue many low-income Philadelphians face.

"We’ve definitely seen the toll of businesses not being connected to the Internet," she says. Those that aren’t on Yelp or Google Maps suffer. "You don’t know they exist and it really stunts their growth."

Philly’s Kiva pays special attention to the trustees’ role of shepherding loan recipients through the online application and repayment process.

"It’s difficult, but we’ve learned now to work through it so it’s no longer a hurdle," adds Thomas. And ultimately, helping these business owners take their first steps online will benefit them in the long run. "[This] will inspire them to want to figure out how they can utilize those resources to grow their businesses.”

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Alyssa Thomas, Kiva City Philadelphia

On November 18, University City District (UCD) hosted its sixth annual State of University City event at World Café Live. The headline of the night was the 75,000 jobs created within this 2.4-square-mile neighborhood, home to some of Philly’s premier education, healthcare and science institutions. According to UCD, the area is on track to add an additional 1,000 jobs in 2016.

Craig Carnaroli, executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania and UCD’s board chair, noted that this density of jobs is among the highest of any neighborhood in the country. Speaking at World Café Live, he cited the impact of startup hubs like the Enterprise Center and Drexel’s ic@3401, which now hosts 50 technology entrepreneurs from 30 member companies.

Carnaroli also noted the groundbreaking work of companies like Spark Therapeutics, which will soon seek FDA approval for its gene therapy; studies indicate they can achieve restored vision in people blinded by certain retinal diseases. Another University City breakthrough made national news this year when eight-year-old Zion Harvey received the world’s first pediatric double hand transplant from Penn Medicine.

Carnaroli touted "the power of community and institutions coming together in partnerships to produce results."

UCD Executive Director Matt Bergheiser spoke about why 75,000 jobs is a "magic number" for the area. Businesses and institutions are "feeling the growth of the regional economy" with a substantial spike in well-paid jobs, he insisted. According to UCD, between 2008 and 2013, the neighborhood saw a 79 percent increase in middle to high-wage jobs -- wage growth far above the city’s overall average. It’s exciting news, especially paired with a ten percent jump in University City’s population since 2013 and expansions in the restaurant, hospitality, retail and real estate sectors.

Another way to look at the job density in University City, Bergheiser pointed out, is to count 30,000 jobs per square mile. He also emphasized some essential ingredients in the neighborhood's success: entrepreneurial, civic and "opportunity" infrastructure. 

Because innovation needs places for people to come together, entrepreneurial infrastructure flourishes at cutting-edge hubs like the Science Center and Wexford Science + Technology.

Civic infrastructure -- which Bergheiser called "splendor at the ground level" -- includes elements such as new parklets, the Porch at 30th Street, a revamped Market Street Bridge and the upcoming $2.1 million transformation of the 40th Street SEPTA portal, slated to open in 2017.

"Opportunity infrastructure" is paying attention to an equity of opportunities, or "how we connect the talent in our West Philadelphia neighborhood" to meaningful jobs, he explained.

That led naturally to talk of UCD's West Philadelphia Skills Initiative -- many participants are low-income residents who struggle with longterm unemployment or a criminal record that prevents them from getting a foot in the door with job applications. Bergheiser said that 91 percent of Skills Initiative graduates succeed in landing a job, with an average starting wage of $13.60 per hour.

It all adds up to "a new first and lasting impression" for our metropolis, he concluded.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: University City District

On December 2, wake up with more than just coffee at the latest installment of the Exchange PHL Breakfast Series. At Wednesday's event, regional leaders in innovative social good will tackle "the Path from Startup To High Impact." 

"I think there is something that’s profoundly shifting among nonprofits and their openness to look at these possible changes in how they do business," explains Nadya K. Shmavonian, director of the newly formed Nonprofit Repositioning Fund, who will be speaking at the breakfast.

Hosted by nonprofit-centric co-working space The Exchange, located in Center City’s Friends Center, the event will shift the conversation from entrepreneurship to operations, and discuss how great programs become part of the fabric of the city, touching on sustainable revenue models, evaluation and adaptation.

"We just launched on October 7, so it’s a very new effort," Shmavonian says of the Fund. "We have been pleasantly surprised at how much interest there’s been."

The seven founding members include North Penn Community Health Foundation, Samuel S. Fels Fund, Scattergood Foundation, the Barra Foundation, the Philadelphia Foundation, United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey, William Penn Foundation and Arizona’s Lodestar Foundation.

The Fund targets nonprofits in transition in the greater Philadelphia area, including Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Philadelphia and Montgomery counties. Hosted and administered by the Philanthropy Network of Greater Philadelphia, seed awards and grants will support nonprofits as they explore and formalize new collaborations, joint ventures and consolidations.

In rare instances, the Fund will also help with dissolution planning for individual organizations outside of a merger or acquisition. That, along with the work of "repositioning" nonprofits, can lead to questions about the Fund’s goals.

"How do foundations work with nonprofits in a way that is not threatening?" asks Shmavonian. "Because obviously there’s a power imbalance there. This isn’t about thinning the herd. It really is about finding ways to allow a nonprofit to…deliver on their mission in a sustainable high-performance way."

That can include tweaks like merging back office realms or making an informal partnership an integral piece of an organizations’ structure, allowing the pooling of resources and best practices.

"There’s a whole array of arrangements that people are looking at that stop far short of a formal merger or acquisition," she adds.

Shmavonian is looking forward to the December 2 conversation, which will also feature Lauren Fine of the Youth Sentencing and Re-entry Project. She thinks the next several years will bring very interesting deals for regional nonprofits, and that the Fund will grow a portfolio of creative models for participating organizations.

"It’s a fast-changing environment out there," she argues. "I’m as much about shifting the culture and dynamics around this as I am the actual individual deals that we’re going to engage in." 

The latest Exchange PHL Breakfast Series is happening Wednesday, December 2 from 8:30 - 10 a.m. at 1501 Cherry Street. Attendance is free; click here to register.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Nadya K. Shmavonian, the Nonprofit Repositioning Fund