Citizen of the Week: Tiffany Yau
Citizen of the Calendar week: Tiffany Yau
The Penn alum launched Fulphil to inspire higher students to beginning social impact businesses—and to stay in Philly
Dec. 07, 2018
When Tiffany Yau was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania she witnessed the same blueprint over and over again: Some of the brightest students from around the country would come to Penn, phone call Philadelphia their home for four years, and with their degree in hand would nearly immediately scatter across the country to embark on their careers.
Engineers would go to Silicon Valley. The business-types to Wall Street. Many went to New York or D.C. In fact, of Penn graduates, co-ordinate to a recent Wall Street Journal study , simply about a quarter remain in Philly, joined by simply over half of Drexel and La Salle grads, and over threescore pct from Temple and St. Joe's.
"Philly is a identify where a lot of people come for an education, but they go out and they don't actually give annihilation back to information technology," Yau says. "There is something non quite right with that, you lot know?"
Watching this mass exodus was one of the reasons Yau launched her own company, Fulphil, in November of 2017. A mashup of the words "fulfillment" and "Philadelphia," Fulphil is a local nonprofit that specifically targets the city's university students, aiming to inspire them to outset their own companies that solve the metropolis's most pressing social issues through social entrepreneurship.
"Philly is a place where a lot of people come for an education, but they go out and they don't really give anything back to information technology," Yau says. "There is something non quite right with that, y'all know?"
In contempo years, Philadelphia has become a formidable trailblazer of the impact economic system, a phrase that references businesses that have a triple lesser line—people, profits and planet. Think guitar makers who source from sustainable wood or a clothing concatenation that cleans oceans . The first to offer special tax credits for sustainable businesses, the city is home to B Lab and the B Corp movement , too as a bandage of socially-minded enterprises like ImpactPHL and GoodCompany Ventures , amidst others.
Fulphil joins this group at what could be a changing moment for Philadelphia. The most recent annual report from Campus Philly , a local nonprofit that focuses on keeping graduates in Philadelphia, found that 67 percent of current students think they'll stay here for at least some time later on they graduate—up from 58 percentage in 2010. At the same time, the metropolis has experienced better than average job growth, including in some tech fields, and it is growing, in part because of the influx of immature people moving to the city over the last decade.
And young people are increasingly attracted to companies that are focused on more than than the bottom line. A recent Deloitte survey of millennials and Gen Z found that they are more skeptical of corporation's motives than in years by, just also more intent on working for and frequenting triple bottom line companies that are working to solve the world'south ills. Yau is hoping to fill that need with Fulphil.
"Fulphil has a very articulate message that they are trying to exercise, and that is having others have a very clear sense of what their impact is," Ryan Eppley, the Director of Partnerships for REC Philly and one of Yau's mentors, says. "[It'south] helping a lot of these people with a lot of different career options to just reconsider what they are doing in their 20s."
Fulphil mobilizes students with "campus ambassadors". Currently, the company has ambassadors embedded in 13 universities in the Greater Philadelphia surface area who invite speakers, run workshops and hold networking events for students to learn about the social impact economic system and how they tin offset building their ain business concern plans. The ambassador program has reached more than 800 students.
"In that location are and so many untapped, high-potential people hither, but in that location is no one bringing them together for something to amend the city," Yau says.
Yau herself did not always know that she wanted to enter the globe of social impact. Hailing from Southern California, Tau was accepted to Penn in 2014 to play golf. She initially followed in the footsteps of her family by studying pre-med, merely in her second twelvemonth of undergraduate studies, she worked as a graphic designer for Penn's chapter of the Hult Prize , an international competition that brings university students together to solve social problems.
Every bit a third-twelvemonth student in 2016, Yau rose to get the president of Hult Prize @ Penn . Congruent with the 2022 presidential election—and the contentious immigration argue that surrounded it—Yau and her colleagues chose to brand the clearing crisis as the central theme of the yr. Under her leadership, the Penn chapter worked to cultivate ideas regarding the clearing crunch and fundraise for teams to pitch their idea at regional, national, and international- level competitions.
Just the highlight of the year, she says, was inviting Syrian asylum seekers taking refuge in Philadelphia to come and talk near their experience escaping persecution back habitation. "I studied sociology, and at that place are all these statistics and numbers, but listening to people's stories it became very real," Yau says. "That was ane of the factors that fabricated me want to pursue social touch on."
Yau's piece of work with Hult Prize @ Penn brought her overseas to the Hultz Prize's headquarters in London for an "impact retreat," where she was able to meet the CEO, Ahmad Ashkar. Through conversations with Askhar, Yau learned that the prize was looking for ways to expand their reach in the United states of america, and Yau pitched forming a Hult Prize within the Ivy League conference.
Currently, Fulphil has ambassadors embedded in 13 universities in the expanse, who accept reached more 800 students.
Ashkar loved the idea and hired Yau to form Hult Prize Ivy . Launched during her senior year, it brought the chapters of the Hult Prize in each of the Ivy League universities together to piece of work on solutions to some of the globe's bug – such as creating new free energy sources or youth unemployment.
"I realized that it is actually hard to bring together students in this style, considering these are bug that nosotros are not seeing every twenty-four hour period, as opposed to those in more developing countries," she says. "What if we had a more localized affect initiative?"
Each year, Fulphil crafts its programming on a central theme which is based on the goals and objectives of the Mayor of Philadelphia's . Currently, Mayor Jim Kenney's goals include developing a diverse workforce, improving educational opportunities, operating regime efficiently and improving economical opportunities. For 2019, Fulphil's is turning its attention to the mayor's commencement goal: public prophylactic.
Yau and her colleagues will craft a comprehensive packet that will outline the consequence of public safety and what local regime and nonprofits are doing to solve it. This package will and so be distributed to their campus ambassadors, who will employ it to create programming.
"Fulphil helps people really believe that they have a voice and that they are role of a bigger impact movement," Joseph Lee, Fulphil'due south Regional Programme Director, says. "It'south a commonage endeavour amongst the younger generation to take upward and take charge."
While Fulphil does not provide any sort of seed funding for student businesses, Yau says it serves as the middleman between universities and the city's many impact businesses. If a group of students comes forwards with a substantive business programme, Fulphil connects them with industry leaders in the area to help their plan become off the group.
Currently, according to Yau, Fulphil has raised over $70,000 of funding—mainly from large individual donations. Going forward, the group is looking for sponsorships, and is applying for grant funding from the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia area.
Fulphil has already helped launch two student-run ventures: ENGAGEathon , a software platform that tracks and rewards community outreach; and Instahub , an affordable home sensor that tracks when people are home in order to reduce household electrical consumption. Both of the companies are all the same in the process of launching, but Fulfill is helping to connect both of the businesses with business organization leaders in Philly and to recruit eager college students interested in working at a beginning-up.
Final calendar month, Fulphil besides co-hosted a "Smart Impact" competition with WeWork and Cherry Balderdash, where 31 college teams came to pitch a business organisation plan that would aid solve a pressing social problem in Philadelphia. The teams were divided past not-profit and profit designations and one team in each category won a complimentary membership to the WeWork co-working infinite and pro bono legal services from the Drexel'southward Entrepreneurial Police Clinic .
Ane team traveled all the manner from the University of Pittsburgh to pitch their idea of helping families connect with STEM education opportunities."They drove out six or seven hours and spent the entire weekend but to pitch for 1 minute," Yau recalls.
Non many sociology majors offset their own business organisation straight out of college. And it has not been easy, despite help Yau has received from mentors, both alive and online. ("YouTube is the best professor," she notes). Yau rattles off the many hurdles she faces: organizing people, procuring funds, and getting their proper noun out. Equally a young adult female, she too struggles with being taken seriously when talking to some of the urban center'south biggest stakeholders. Simply she is undaunted.
"Someone one time told me that existence a startup is like jumping off a cliff and building a airplane on the fashion downward," she laughs. "But and so information technology's really heady to encounter the outcome."
Photo: Kara Zhang 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/citizen-of-the-week-tiffany-yau/
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