gBETA’s Director of Social Impact, Mfoniso Ekong, Recognized by Technical.ly

From Mfoniso Ekong’s view, social entrepreneurs are more diverse than your average startup founder, and face more barriers to securing capital. That can make it more difficult to get their businesses off the ground.

“They have more roles outside of the business, and they’re not getting money from the family,” he told Technical.ly. “They have to juggle their whole life for this,” a mission they believe can make change in the world.

As the director of social impact at gBETA, an offshoot of national accelerator gener8tor, Ekong is helping them fulfill that mission. His work goes beyond generating resource awareness for impact-minded founders and includes extending opportunity to entrepreneurs who are often overlooked — that is, not just those who “look like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg.”

gBETA Social Impact is a free, seven-week accelerator that helps for-profit startup founders tackling important social issues in two tracks: equity in education, and criminal justice reform. While Ekong is focused on the latter, the program as a whole offers its cohorts one-on-one coaching and mentoring, guidance on building out business models, and strategy and growth support, as well as access to a community of companies, investors, technologists and capital.

“gener8tor is an accelerator, but it does so much more,” said Ekong, who works from the organization’s Milwaukee office. “It’s really best described as a virtual community center. It has these different layers, not just finding founders, growing skills or ideas, but really growing the culture and the community. [With gBeta,] impact is built into it from the jump.”

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