Have an idea that provides a platform or opportunities for others to succeed? Register for our one-day Ignite Opportunity workshop. Work with mentors and peers to develop your project idea then participate in our optional pitch competition to win up to $10K in awards to ignite your project!
For all the good they can do, many businesses, agencies, and community organizations can also be less than inclusive in their decision making. Increasingly, businesses and community organizations see being more inclusive as a way to create more value in what they do. It’s of course about doing the right thing but also about “firing on all cylinders” and having a diverse set of skills and perspectives in the house.
You should walk out of this event with new acquaintances and colleagues and allies in our quest to make Pittsburgh’s business and community development scene more inclusive, efficient, and vibrant.
Join members of the Pittsburgh Chamber of Cooperatives to hear their stories of how they make their decision making more inclusive and productive.
This, like all Inclusive Innovation Week events, is free.
New Sun Rising is excited to welcome Leigh Solomon-Pugliano in her role as Director of Opportunity. The primary responsibility of this new position is to scale the impact of established social businesses and nonprofit organizations through the Grow program. Additional duties include further development of Vibrant Communities, the organization’s framework for regenerative community development built upon equity, entrepreneurship, and place. Core Vibrant Community strategies include Culture, Sustainability, and Opportunity, created through Planning, Resources, and Connectivity, in order to create an authentic community Identity.
To achieve these goals, Solomon-Pugliano will develop a Grow programs and services to support established, growth-stage businesses and projects, plan and deliver workshops and entrepreneurial education seminars, increase the diversity of earned income opportunities, support the administration of Vibrancy Funds’ loans, grants, and awards, and more.
Solomon-Pugliano’s past work mentoring and consulting for social entrepreneurs prepares her for this position. She joins NSR from her own consulting firm, Straight Forward Consulting, which provided start-ups, non-profits, and creative entrepreneurs while accentuating diversity, equity, and inclusion. Her experience as a mentor stems from work with New Sun Rising and Social Venture Partners.
In addition, Solomon-Pugliano is the founder and director of a New Sun Rising fiscally-sponsored project: Barrels to Beethoven, a social enterprise launched in 2014. Programming focused on music education and development of the steelpan and includes youth programs, summer camps, and supplementary school curriculum. Barrels to Beethoven holds workshops that not only teach attendees how to play the instrument, but also how to construct it — in order to preserve the process of making and maintaining the instrument.
Since joining the NSR team, Solomon-Pugliano is focused on the development of the Grow program and is currently designing a Grow Residency program for projects, businesses, and social organizations that will foster sustainability through business mentoring, professional development, revenue model development, and civic innovation while finding new and collective solutions to community problems.
ECOSYSTEMS – A happy hour with the partners, projects, and friends of New Sun Rising – all are welcome. Come and cross-pollinate.
strengthen your local networks
cross-pollinate ideas and projects
learn about fiscal sponsorship + Launch programs available through NSR
explore the intersections of Culture, Sustainability, + Opportunity
FREE DRINKS available thanks to PENN BREWERY, games, + light snacks
Please RSVP via FB or email amy@newsunrising.org so that we have a general count, thanks!
After the event, join us as we walk down the street to Grist House, Bado’s Pizza will be parked outside.