Making social innovation pop.
What We Do
At Yoxi, we search for amazing people who work hard to change the world, and we connect them to new opportunities by telling their stories in the most creative, compelling ways. We call these people Social Innovation Rockstars (SIRs) because they are original thinkers, creative problem-solvers, and fearless leaders who care about creating lasting social value. The world needs them to have more visibility and influence, so we do our part by helping them reach a mainstream audience. When a movement for social innovation becomes part of pop culture, we can make a real difference.
Create Shared Value through Collaboration
To seize the opportunities to make the world a better place, we all need to understand and embrace the critical importance of collaboration. Our work isn't just a gentle nudge for doing good, rather, it's an urgent call for creating value. We are changing the rules of the game every day by forging meaningful partnerships to increase our collective impact. Yoxi is a for-value company. We don't waste time debating whether we should be for-profit or non-profit, we simply focus on creating shared value for all.
Social Innovation Rockstars: creating Authenticity via Shared Value.
“Shared Value is not social responsibility, philanthropy, or even sustainability, but a new way to achieve economic success. It is not on the margin of what companies do but at the center.”
Michael Porter, Harvard Business Review
Work With Us
We Are Advocates for Social Entrepreneurs
We tell stories about social entrepreneurs that must be told. These stories elevate their visibility, increase their influence, raise the stakes, and open up new possibilities for success. We also identify and represent a portfolio of Social Innovation Rockstars. We connect them to business opportunities, support them with sophisticated media strategies, and boost their impact with a global resource network.
We Are Ambassadors for Brands
We identify shared value business opportunities, match brands with relevant Social Innovation Rockstars, and create compelling content and media campaigns to deliver tangible solutions and authentic consumer engagement. By bringing institutional infrastructure and entrepreneurial ingenuity together, we help brands establish real trust and credibility.
Ready to rock? PlayDownload Our Solutions PresentationOur Band of Rockstars
A Social Innovation Rockstar is the agent to authentically connect brands and consumers through shared value creation. They are charismatic leaders who drive innovation to meet social purpose and create social good. Meet the SIRs we’re working with to change the world. Each brings a unique ROI (Return on Innovation) to campaigns that set disruptive change in motion.
Chid Liberty
From Sweat Shops to Sweat Equity
In addition to being a finance guru and social entrepreneur, Chid presides over a four-pronged hybrid social enterprise across two continents. His organization, Liberty & Justice, develops local African factories and connects them with international retailers and individual consumers. These factories produce fair-trade apparel for American and European retailers, replacing a culture of sweatshops with a culture of sweat equity.
libertyandjustice.comJoy Anderson
Change the Economy through Women and Churches
Very few people have the talent to “find the right dots to connect” before others even see a clue. Joy is one of them. She is a visionary force to change the rules of our economy. Understanding the “Women Effect” opens up great opportunities to improve the global economy. Recognizing churches as a significant player in shaping new institutional behavior allows initiatives like “greening the churches” to make a pivotal contribution towards a more sustainable economy.
criterionventures.com
Heather Hiles
Rethink Job Creation through Personal ePortfolio
Heather is often portrayed as a change agent in higher education, but her vision for creating a digital ePortfolio platform goes far beyond affecting our educational system. A tool intelligent enough to capture and measure individuals' evolving potential and cumulative capacity opens up new possibilities for a more dynamic job market, thus introducing new ways to define and create jobs.
rrripple.comLaurie
Schoeman
Urban Agriculture Classrooms
Recycle rhetoric has become so pervasive in schools that it's lost all meaning and relevance. Good intention breeds apathy when it's not informed by a larger sense of action-based sustainability. Laurie's "green interventions" provide a proactive, GIY (Green-it-yourself) platform for NYC schools to galvanize student, teacher, and community efforts around specific and scalable sustainability initiatives. Her vision of developing on site pilot demonstrations of green infrastructure provides students with a visible and tangible awareness about how sustainability functions while supporting STEM education-transforming curriculum into tangible and flexible solutions, growing future leaders who think big picture versus small returns.
Yasser Ansari
Citizen Science Made Easy
Working at the intersection of biology and mobile technology, Yasser aims to reconnect people to the planet and our natural world by harnessing the power and prevalence of mobile technology. Project Noah provides a platform for the mobile masses to document their encounters with nature, therefore building a formidable force for data collection and an important educational tool for wildlife awareness and preservation, along the way helping to cure our NDD (Nature Deficit Disorder).
projectnoah.orgSEA: David
Baron &
Zeshan
Muhammedi
Make Good Cool
The dynamic duo focuses on functional apparel design with a purpose, mobilizing college students to “wear their social responsibility” with a cool attitude. Their current initiative “Colors for Causes” is paving the way for an ambitious enterprise to build a coalition for 100% closed loop recycling in the fashion/apparel industry.
simplysea.com/causesStories We Tell
Watch these rising stars talk about their ambitions to change the world. Take a close look at their fascinating work, find out what makes them tick, and get inspired to join them.
Leadership
Sharon Chang
Founder
Former Chief Creative Officer of 19 Entertainment, the company behind American Idol. Brand strategist. Creative director. Media executive. Social entrepreneur. Angel investor. Global citizen. Obsessed with food and travel. Makes the perfect martini.
Believes in making the impossible possible.
Randy Makiej
Chief Operating Officer
Randy brings nearly two decades of production and management experience. Always focusing on the entertainment possibilities of the web his experience exemplifies Transmedia Production. Most recently he managed all digital production for 19 Entertainment's If I Can Dream.
John C. Havens
EVP, Strategy and Engagement
Contributing writer for Mashable, author of Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media to Maximize Value and Build Their Brand, blues musician, proud Dad.
Advisory Board
Press
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Read the full article »"Changing the world should be fun. When seriousness is embedded in entertainment, and complexity is hidden behind an elegant layer of simplicity, we create intrinsic motivation for people to do good in more creative ways. Yoxi is about creativity and collaboration in the deepest sense we can imagine."
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Read the full article »"The biggest edible roof garden in Brooklyn. Curing Nature Deficit Disorder (NDD). Transforming sweatshops. This is the range of ideas that Yoxi (pronounced yo-see) is working with. By discovering “amazing people who work hard to change the world,” (people Yoxi calls, "Social Innovation Rockstars," or SIRs,) the organization aims to connect them with appropriate brands so those collaborations can boost visibility and grow good ideas into opportunities that spread social impact."
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Read the full article »“Yoxi’s larger goal is to bring social good into mainstream conversation.”
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Read the full article »“The idea to pick a problem and solve it in a way that brings in the most creative ideas from the widest possible audience is born from [Yoxi Founder, Sharon] Chang’s feeling that the ‘only way to truly solve problems fundamentally is to stimulate a higher level of creativity.“
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Read the full article »"Pop culture is driven by superficial qualities, and Chang says she would rather exploit those qualities for a good purpose than wait around for people to change. 'We live in a society where people are obsessed with vanity, with fame, with celebrity,' she says. 'This is not something we can change overnight… it would be more useful for us not to try to fight that.'
Chang anticipates criticism and admits her project is controversial, but she’s not going to let that stop her.
'I don’t think we can accomplish anything by being afraid, so we just have to go with it.'"
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Read the full article »“People also typically have an ‘us versus them’ attitude in regards to companies and social entrepreneurs. The older mentality used to be that it was okay to highlight social change for campaign-focused Corporate Social Responsibility efforts. We’re changing the game because we believe in deep collaboration between social entrepreneurs and brands. Business challenges are seen as great opportunities to create Shared Value.”
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Yoxi, LLC is a subsidiary of the TTSL Charitable Foundation. ©2012 Yoxi, LLC