Joyful Celebration for Flywheel Demo Day
Five Greater Cincinnati area health and wellness equity startups have officially become Flywheel alumni. They pitched their startups during the Flywheel Elevate Equity Demo Day held May 2nd at the 1819 Innovation Hub. Over 100 people were in the audience, including elected officials, several representatives from healthcare provider organizations, and supporters of the startup ecosystem.
Asha Parker,
Product Marketing Director at Kroger Health gave the keynote address calling on entrepreneurs to continue to develop non-clinical approaches to health and wellness, particularly solutions that break through stigmas that prevent underrepresented communities and cultures from seeking help early, when it is likely to result in the best outcome.
Following the keynote, each of the entrepreneurs had seven minutes to pitch their enterprise.
Brandon Hill,
who goes by Jide Fresh, already has annual sales over $70,000 in his self-help publishing company called, In Fly We Trust. A graphic artist, he designed the books and founded the company after he created some of the early content following his own recovery from a devastating accident. From that experience he found that art, inspiration, and mindfulness allowed him to rediscover his motivation and hope. He is now bringing this destigmatized form of mental self-help to young adults and youth facing loss, trauma, and looking for an off-screen way to connect to their inner strength.
Dr. Calisha Brooks
has had elements of her treatment modalities in use at Harvard University as she develops Wired Hope, an approach toward healing from race-based trauma. The PhD clinical psychologist and researcher is preparing to turn her treatment modalities into an app that could offer 24x7 access to self-care at your fingertips. Her app is created by people of color for people of color and is backed by Dr. Brook’s years of race based trauma research at Notre Dame and Vanderbilt. She is now preparing to test the product with local focus groups as she prepares her go-to-market strategy.
Valda Freeman-Karmo
Valda Freeman-Karmo has secured a MoU with the Forest Park Police Department to test her system that would send an alert to officers when they approach a registered user of her A.A.R.O.N Wearable Tech product. Her product is designed to be worn by people with diagnosed mental and behavioral health conditions. The goal is to help officers make better informed choices about how to manage the interaction while keeping the wearer and the officer safe.
The idea grew out of her concerns for the safety of her special needs sons who would be unlikely to conform fully with directions from an officer yet don’t readily appear to have a disability.
Alicia Suguitan
Alicia Suguitan is using her experience in higher education to create a continuing education curriculum for maternal healthcare providers. She is deploying new, experienced based approaches to bias training focused specifically on the most common complications in childbirth. Her goals is to decrease complication for women of color who are 2.5 times more likely to suffer complications. She has secured a MoU to test her curriculum with maternal health providers at UC Health.
Alicia, who is multiracial, experienced her own high risk pregnancy, which opened her eyes to the issue. Her son, now age six, cheered her on as she pitched at Demo Day.
Shakeita Moore-Lilly and Candace Gasper
The team from Humanity Hub was a category winner in the Flywheel Housing Stabilization Hackathon held in February. They chose to participate in the Elevate Equity cohort to continue work on their idea to create a resource for landlords and tenants that takes the friction out of finding resources to overcome a setback that could lead to eviction. Timely deployment of resources could prevent the anxiety and stress that always accompanies the threat of housing loss. Teammates include Milton Woody and Cyrina Thomas.
All five solutions were created by entrepreneurs who brought their own lived experience to the development of their enterprise.
Each enterprise received a $6,000 stipend from Flywheel along with eight weeks of training, coaching and connections. Each is now officially a member of the Flywheel alumni network. Alumni enjoy a community of support where they can share experiences with fellow alumni, ask for advice, attend educational events, showcase their progress, and request a free workshop to troubleshoot a new challenge.
Flywheel would like to thank the many volunteers to contributed their subject matter expertise to our workshops. We would also like to recognize our coaches who dedicated eight weeks to supporting their team through the program. They are; Roy Kulick | Joan Kaup | Mishawn Styles | Kathy Schwab | Alisa Smith | Kelly Dehan | De'marco Kidd | Betsy Neyer | Rebeca Arbona | Adam Little | Reginald Staples | Julie Albright | Melisse May | Fred Hilkowitz.
Elevate Equity was made possible by the generous support of the following organizations.
