Two Boston-area climate innovators were selected to participate in Tom's of Maine’s first-ever incubator.
The new incubator, which has virtual and in-person components, was announced in September and aims to support young, BIPOC leaders working on solutions to environmental challenges. Tom's selected five members for its inaugural cohort: Aliyah Collins of Somerville; Wawa Gatheru of Pomfret Center, Connecticut; Alexia Leclercq of Austin, Texas; Bodhi Patil of Arlington, Virginia; and Sanjana Paul of Cambridge.
“Each of our winners have already accomplished so much, and we are honored to work with them toward even more impact," Cristiane Martini, general manager of Tom's, said in a statement. "With the additional funding and mentorship our incubator provides, Tom's of Maine looks forward to helping our incubator members drive environmental solutions and empower others to make a positive impact.”
Collins, 24, is a master’s student at Harvard Divinity School studying African religious approaches to spiritual care and trauma-recovery models. She became passionate about climate justice after a tornado devastated Black residents near her undergraduate school in Tennessee.
Through the Tom’s incubator, Collins said she will launch her HBCU Eco-Healing Project. The project will focus on the impact of climate disasters on HBCUs and the mental health of their students. She hopes to help students use campus green spaces, such as gardens, to address mental health challenges and practice spiritual care.
“I applied to the Tom’s of Maine incubator program because I had not seen any research or reports on how HBCUs are disproportionately affected by climate catastrophes,” Collins said in a statement to BostInno. “I saw this program as a way to shed light on this issue and offer HBCU students a way to build better relationships with the environment that support their overall healing and well-being.”
Her fellow cohort member from Massachusetts, Paul, is co-founder and executive director of Earth Hacks, an organization that collaborates with students and groups across the world to host environmental hackathons. The 25-year-old is also a researcher at MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
“Many of Earth Hacks' hackathons have tackled environmental justice issues, such as Indigenous storytelling and environmental policy, and we are increasingly focusing on service-learning hackathons to support community leaders in tackling environmental and climate justice problems,” Paul said.
Earth Hacks has entered a period of rapid growth, Paul said, and she applied to the Tom’s incubator to expand its messaging to a wider audience. She hopes to further drive a culture shift in the tech space, engage more closely with environmental hackers in the global south, and help the student hackathon community turn their events into hubs for climate action.
Tom’s says its incubator is a seven-month program that will provide young leaders with funding, mentorship and exposure. The goal is to give younger generations support to create a more sustainable world. Each of the five cohort members will be awarded $20,000 to fund their work.
Cohort members will participate in multiple virtual workshops, trainings and one-on-one meetings with mentors throughout the winter and spring. Mentors will include people like Michelle Theodat Waring, steward for sustainability and everyday good at Tom's; Kristy Drutman, climate activist and co-founder of Green Jobs Board; and Lizzie Horvitz, CEO and founder of Finch.
The five members will also be invited to Tom’s three-day, in-person incubator summit in Kennebunk, Maine, this spring to meet with their mentors and Tom's leadership and workshop their action plan for moving forward their sustainability plans.
Sign up for The Beat, BostInno’s free daily innovation newsletter from BostInno reporter Hannah Green. See past examples here.
