The AIC Founder Stories session will provide conference attendees with the opportunity to hear from entrepreneurs in a range of industries discuss their professional journeys and experiences starting companies. We will begin with an overview of entrepreneurial resources at MIT from the Legatum Center and then transition to five short presentations from our speakers. 

Megan Mitchell, Director of Fellowship and Student Programs | Legatum Center

Megan Mitchell is the Director of Fellowship and Student Programs for the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship. Prior to joining MIT in January of 2017, Mitchell managed UBS Americas’ Elevating Entrepreneurs initiative, a portfolio of philanthropic partnerships and programs focused on driving toward a more inclusive entrepreneurial landscape. This included Project Entrepreneur, a collaboration with Rent the Runway Foundation to increase the pipeline of women building economically impactful companies. Prior to UBS, Mitchell oversaw co-curricular and experiential learning activities for Wharton Entrepreneurship, including the annual business plan competition and global internship program. She also served as a member of the Venture Initiation Program management team, and led development of the department’s venture development programs at the school’s San Francisco campus. Mitchell holds a BA in Economics and Public Policy Studies from Duke University and a MSEd from University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.

Sergio Medina, Founder & CEO | Rise

Sergio is a social entrepreneur designing solutions to address the global refugee crisis. As Founder and CEO of RISE, he is blending entrepreneurship, human-centered design, and technology to create a digital platform to expedite humanitarian aid. He has led his early-stage startup from concept to three international pilots in Greece, Germany, and Kenya – setting the stage for scaling. Prior to forming RISE, he designed and implemented numerous innovative programs at many of the largest INGOs and at multiple UN agencies around the world.  He holds a BA from Rice, an MSW from Columbia, a Certificate in Social Entrepreneurship from Stanford GSB, and is currently a very proud MIT Sloan EMBA 2020 student where his also a Legatum and PKG Fellow.

Claude Grunitzky, Founder | TRACE and TRUE Africa

Claude Grunitzky is the founder of TRACE and TRUE Africa, a media tech platform championing young African voices all over the world. In 2017, TRUE Africa was funded by Google’s Digital News Initiative. In 2003, Grunitzky and two business partners completed a multimillion-dollar financing deal led by Goldman Sachs Group. As a result, the TRACE brand is now being leveraged globally across various television, event and interactive platforms. TRACE, which now reaches an audience of more than 200 million people across 160 countries, was successfully sold to a French investor group in 2010. A graduate of London University and MIT Sloan, where he obtained an MBA as a Sloan Fellow, Grunitzky is also a trustee at The Watermill Center, a laboratory of inspiration and performance, at MASS MoCA, a contemporary art museum in Massachusetts, and at Humanity in Action, a foundation that works internationally to build global leadership, defend democracy, protect minorities and improve human rights. Grunitzky is a Visiting Social Innovator at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Social Innovation and Change Initiative.

Juliet Wanyiri, Co-Founder | Foondi & Mekatilili Program

Juliet Wanyiri is the co-founder of Foondi and Mekatilili progam. She is a masters student in Integrated Design and Management (IDM) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – a joint program between the MIT School of Engineering and Sloan School of Management. Her background lies in engineering, product design and business, having worked in numerous roles at Nokia Networks, Tesla and as a Stanford FabLearn Fellow. She is also a Fellow at the MIT Legatum Centre for Entrepreneurship and Development. Foondi is creating Africa's first online platform for creative hardware professionals that enables hardware innovators to easily showcase their work and skillset using a portfolio-based career site. Foondi helps increase the visibility of hardware innovators to recruiters and companies looking for specific prototyping and electronics skillset, that is often difficult to find and validate using current channels such as resumes and online profiles. 

Michael Beeler, Founder | 1Room

Michael Beeler is an entrepreneur and PhD Candidate in Operations Research at MIT. Both his research and venture, 1Room, focus on educational technology and operations management in developing countries. Michael is a past fellow of the MIT Tata Center, Legatum Center, Fulbright Science and Tech Program, and D-Pize. 1Room is a 21st Century one-room-schoolhouse designed to make quality high school education affordable and accessible to rural, remote, and disadvantaged communities, starting in Western Kenya. 1Room has developed a modular, individually-paced digital curriculum following government standards, allowing students to work at their own pace and with flexible hours under the supervision of an academic coach. The tech system requires neither internet nor a grid connection. 1Room's six-person field team is currently testing its curriculum with several public schools in Kenya.

Genevieve Victoria Barnard, CFO & Co-Founder | MDaaS Global

Genevieve is co-founder and CFO of MDaaS Global, a company on a mission to provide convenient, affordable, and high-quality health care for Africa's next billion, starting in Nigeria. In order to achieve this mission, MDaaS Global builds and operates modern, tech-enabled diagnostic centers focused on providing care to low- and middle-income patients. After completing her BA in Public Health at the University of Pennsylvania, Genevieve joined the UN Development Program as a Health System Analyst in Uganda. As part of her role, she visited dozens of hospitals across the country and heard the same complaint over and over again: our equipment is not working. The reasons varied from lack of available biomedical technicians, to botched installations, to missing instruction manuals. Genevieve became both fascinated and frustrated by these seemingly preventable equipment challenges and their detrimental effects on patient care. A few years later, Genevieve joined forces with three co-founders who had all experienced the same equipment challenges across Africa, and together they launched MDaaS Global in 2016. They opened their first diagnostic center in November 2017 in southwest Nigeria and have since provided care to over 6,500 patients. Genevieve is an MBA candidate and Legatum Fellow at MIT Sloan School of Management and an MPA candidate and Cheng Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.