March 2024 Updates
Happy March! It’s officially spring - the trees are blossoming, the weather is getting warmer, and Foundation-wide, participants are gearing up for summer!
Towards the beginning of the month, we had a wonderful site visit up at Cardinal Hayes to see our BridgeUP + OUT program. Scholars were back from Spring Break, and excited to get back to work. We have welcomed two new program coaches to the BridgeUP family, Daishawn and Franchesca. We are thrilled to have them as a part of our team!
Our BOLD Women’s Leadership Network Scholars participated in the annual Pitch Competition, to receive funding for a project of ideas they’ve been working on. All of the pitches were incredibly thoughtful, we are so proud of all the Scholars for putting their efforts towards putting together such impressive projects and presentations. Shoutout to BOLD scholars Brithany and Wardah for presenting their first pitch! Brithany proposed "Let's Talk Let's Walk", while Wardah presented on "Ensuring Equitable Access to Menstrual Products". Their innovative ideas showcase their commitment to supporting women in their community and across campus. Well done!
BOLD Scholars at Rutgers University were busy in March with volunteering, specifically at the FOCUS Hispanic Center for Community Development in Newark. FOCUS is renowned for its commitment to social services and community development. Additionally, they also participated in a wonderful Women’s History Month Conversation for the month of March! BOLD alumni, scholars, and directors were invited to attend a private discussion on leadership, mentorship, and reproductive health with Congresswoman Mikie Sherill, Senator Ruiz, Assemblywoman Speight, Assemblywoman Pintor-Marin. The conversation was led by BOLD scholar Halyn Xheraj.
For the third consecutive year, the Brown Institute partnered with Columbia Entrepreneurship to offer a segment of the Startup Columbia Venture Challenge dedicated to media initiatives. The first round of the competition began with 21 teams, and as always, there was a huge variety of projects being pitched. Some teams were attempting to repair journalism’s business models with clever payment schemes or new ways of matching advertisers and content creators. AI played a large role in this year’s projects, serving as a tool for optimizing site functionality and content delivery, as well as helping with reporting.
After two pitch sessions, nine finalists were named. The judges that night were Carolina Valencia, Director of Partnerships and Communications at Epicenter-NYC, Emily Goligoski, Head of Research & SVP at Charter, and Richard Witten, Head of Columbia Entrepreneurship and Senior Advisor to the President of Columbia University. Each pitch was fantastic and unique in their own right which made choosing winners difficult for the judges! After much deliberation, the winners for the 2024 Media Track are listed below!
There was a tie for Third place, each team winning $5,000: Pitch, Please! A Marketplace of Story Ideas: A project by Meghnad Bose (2024 Data M.S.), Trish Mukherjee and Dina Katgara (both 2024 M.S.) that will streamline the journalist-to-newsroom pitch process. Second, PrivaSee: Yuqi Cheng (2024 Data M.S.) and Yanan Sun (2024 Dual Degree CS/Journalism M.S.) proposed an AI-based tool for auto-scoring and visualizing privacy policies
In second place, winning $10,000…. In Old News LLC: Shalaka Shivaji Shinde (2023 Data MS) with partners Sanshey Biswas and Manon Verchot pitched a service for diversifying video journalism through free footage library
And the first place prize went to FaultLines! Taha Ozturk and Jacob Sirota (Architecture MA, GSAPP) developed an interactive AI-powered earthquake risk assessment platform. Congratulations to the winners and everyone who participated!
Stay tuned for updates next month!