Former US President Bill Clinton with winners of the 2016 Hult Prize.
Photo credit: Hult.edu
The Hult Prize, the world’s largest student competition, comes to Harvard University as students tackle President Clinton’s Refugees – Reawakening Human Potential and Restoring the Dignity of 10M People by 2022 Challenge.
This local campus event is calling entrepreneurs to create viable start-ups and compete for $1 million in seed capital. A competition for Harvard students, run by Harvard students.
In partnership with former President Bill Clinton, the Hult Prize is hosting college and university events around the world in search of the next game-changing start-up. Natalie Kostich, MPA candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School will be leading the Hult Prize initiative at Harvard University. She is confident that her peers on campus have a great chance to take advantage of this opportunity and go all the way with this year’s Hult Prize competition.
Teams interested in participating in the Harvard competition on De
cember 10th held at the Kennedy School should register by November 30th at http://www.hultprizeat.com/harvard. For questions, contact: Natalie Kostich at natalie_kostich@hks17.harvard.edu
In partnership with the Clinton Foundation this innovative crowdsourcing platform identifies and launches disruptive and catalytic social ventures that aim to solve the planet’s most pressing challenges. Student teams compete around the world for a chance to secure US$ 1 million in startup funding to launch a sustainable social venture. The 2017 Hult Prize will focus on Reawakening Human Potential – a challenge personally selected by President Bill Clinton as a global crisis in need of urgent attention and innovative solutions. Ahmad Ashkar, CEO and Founder of the Hult Prize, attributes the success of the competition to the shift in the global economy and the millennial generation’s refusal to live in a world with inequality. “We are giving entrepreneurs from around the world a platform to innovate and revolutionize the way we think about servicing the disadvantaged,” Ashkar commented. The winning team from the Hult Prize@Harvard event will be fast-tracked to compete at one of the five Hult Prize regional finals events in Boston, San Francisco, London, Dubai and Shanghai next March, bypassing the general application which annually receives over 20,000 applicants from more than 350 colleges and universities in over 150 countries.
One winning team from each host city will then move onto a summer business incubator, where participants will receive mentorship, advisory and strategic planning, as they create prototypes and set-up to launch their new social business. A final round of competition will be hosted in September, where the winning team will be awarded the $1,000,000 prize by former President Bill Clinton himself.
“The Hult Prize is a wonderful example of the creative cooperation needed to build a world with shared opportunity, shared responsibility, and shared prosperity, and each year I look forward to seeing the many outstanding ideas the competition produces,” Clinton has stated.
About the Hult Prize Foundation
The Hult Prize is a start-up accelerator for social entrepreneurship, which brings together the brightest college and university students from around the globe to solve the world’s most pressing issues. The annual initiative is the world’s largest student competition and crowd-sourcing platform for social good, and has been funded by the Hult family since its inception in 2009. To learn more, visit www.hultprize.org.
“It’s not every day that we have an opportunity such as this to change the world. This competition is open to students across all Harvard schools and I look forward to supporting teams from a vast variety of backgrounds, perspectives and expertise. A team of you will be representing all of us at the upcoming Hult Prize Regional Finals in 2017. This is another chance to show the world that our institution is dedicated to impact. Let’s do it!” – Natalie Kostich (MC-MPA 2017).
Contacts
natalie_kostich@hks17.harvard.edu
michaelmccarthy@g.harvard.edu
