Innovations Program

2022 Summer Innovation Cohort

El Mejor Fit

Monica Cordero '24, Keyla Ramirez '25, Rubi Rivas '23

Student-run startup El Mejor Fit, part of this summer’s Haverford Innovations Program Incubator, is working to provide more affordable and comfortable socks for people with prosthetic limbs.

Article: Finding the Perfect Fit

Light Cert

Emma Currie (BMC) '24, Bailey Hiroto (BMC) '25, Sarah Najib (CSU) '24

A Bryn Mawr-led team with an additional team member from an outside institution had launched and tested a prototype, looked to create a deeper level of engagement for fans at live events prior to applying to the Incubator. Their work in the Incubator focused on creating connections within the music, entertainment, and sports industry to find new opportunities to offer their product.

More information can be found on their website lightcertapp.com and Instagram @lightcertapp.

Flux Impact

Ken Ruto '22

Coupled with aging infrastructure, water utilities in developing economies lose nearly 50% of water from leakages, pilferage, poor metering or corruption. Consequently, only a small fraction of people have access to clean potable water and sanitation and for only a couple of hours a day! Flux empowers developing economies by digitally transforming and providing data-driven water resource management for sustainable access to clean water and sanitation for all.

More information on Flux can be found on LinkedIn.

2021 Summer Innovation Cohort

Haute

Eleanor Alix '23, Kayla Baquiran '23, Madeline Webster '23

Haute is a web-based platform dedicated to connecting emerging fashion designers of ALL backgrounds with customers looking to purchase unique garments. Unlike other e-commerce sites, we prioritize our designer's unique needs first — getting them paid work experience and increased visibility, thereby disrupting the fashion industry's homogeny and inspiring innovation. Simply put, we take care of all the hard, boring stuff, so our designers can do what they do best — create.

Article: Haute Disrupts the Fashion Industry

SLOP

Hilda Delgado '23, Sophie Schleifer ’22, Liana Wilson-Graff '23

SLOP Studios (Student-Led Online Programming), aims to promote accessibility into AV industries for students in non-film degrees. We aim to increase exposure to these artists through our film festival and platform, and to fill the gaps that exist for non-film school attendees by offering networking events and speaker series.

2020 Summer Innovation Cohort

INtern

Brittany He '21 & Julia Jones BMC '21

Ntern is a comprehensive online platform that allows college students to connect with busy professionals in their desired career area for small virtual jobs.

Article: INtern Connects Students with Virtual Job Opportunities

bentbox

Margaret Chen '21 & Sara Matasuma '20

bentbox works with healthy food establishment chains by providing them reusable containers for their to-go orders. After customers use our boxes, they gain reward points and can return the containers to outdoor receptacles that we take to be cleaned and sanitized in an offsite location.

Article: Bentbox Takes Aim at Takeout Container Waste

2019 Summer Innovation Cohort

Open House

For local community groups and individuals who require well-designed, affordable, and flexible spaces, Open House is a collaborative building system that employs accessible design and fabrication technologies to produce high-quality, modular structures for a variety of uses.

Article: Open House Team Builds Open Source Architecture

Gradual

Gradual is a flexible and dynamic course mapping tool that helps students visualize their academic path to graduation.

Article: Gradual Makes Rapid Progress in the Innovation Incubator

2018 Pilot Cohort

In the spring semester of 2018, HIP put out a call for applicants to the summer incubator. To apply, students outlined a problem they wished to solve and a proposed solution to be the focus of their collaborative project. Types of projects for consideration were broadly defined, allowing for a range of ideas and submissions as the end result could take the form of a marketable product, a creative work for public release, an organization or company, or another form of social innovation.

The two teams chosen for the pilot year came to the table with very different concepts.

The Dibs team, all rising Juniors in Computer Science, developed an online platform to connect and facilitate free exchange and sharing between individuals within a community.

The Beyond the Bell team, recent graduates, focused on putting the people back into people’s history by creating walking tours in the Philadelphia area by highlighting marginalized communities, peoples and histories.

The Innovation Incubator ran for 8-weeks with support from dedicated mentors, advisors, skill-building workshops in areas around entrepreneurial pursuits, funding for job and educational materials, and professional consults from our wonderful alumni network who provided legal and startup-related insights to help students further hone their ideas. Throughout the teams learned and practiced moving their project through discrete stages of planning, testing, and implementation.

At the end of the program, both teams gave their final pitch presentations. They were asked to weave together the following in a flow that best suited the narrative of their work: Elevator Pitch & Value Proposition, Product Demo, Business Model (addressing customers & revenue stream opportunities), Next Steps, Needs/Ask (what resources would be valuable if they wanted to continue this work), Lessons Learned/Individual Reflection (practical lessons learned, as well as self-reflections on what the work meant to them on a personal level).

Final Presentations

Where are they now?

Beyond the Bell Tours: Inclusive History Tours of Philadelphia

Joey Leroux '18 from Beyond the Bell Tours, leads an Alumni Day tour in Philadelphia. Photo: Alexandra Iglesia '21

Dibs: Solving the Problem of Waste at Colleges

Dibs founders Ken Ruto and Ahmed Ishtiaque.

In the spring of 2019, the Dibs team had a successful Haverford-facing launch of Dibs, a website allowing students to easily buy, sell, and give away items on campus with the goal of reducing waste.

Watch "Dibs: Solving the Problem of Waste in Colleges"