Your support has allowed us to expand the reach of our innovation ecosystem and support more entrepreneurs, more ideas and more success stories.
Thanks to the generosity of our donors, the Science Center has doubled down on its commitment to inclusive growth. Read our Flying Slippers Blog Post, “Increasing the Depth of the Local Ecosystem” for some highlights!
Here are some recent stats from our soon-to-be-released 2019 Impact Report: 45 percent of the founders of companies in our commercialization portfolio are foreign-born; 35 percent are female founders; and 49 percent are minority founders.
Since January 2019, Quorum has hosted over 400 events with over 28,000 visitors, including 10,000 visitors to our (free) drop-in lounge on the first floor of 3675 Market. Quorum continues to facilitate new connections, introductions and pivotal conversations.
Quorum is like a living room for the community.
We’ve also welcomed over 10,000 visitors to Venture Café Philadelphia since its launch in November 2018. Let’s pause for a minute. Over 10,000 visitors, who had the opportunity to enjoy inspiring, organic, relevant and FREE educational content provided by thought leaders in the community. And more than 40% of those visitors were new each week.
Other milestones reached in 2019 include:
- Funded in part with support from the Kauffman Foundation, we launched a new accelerator, Launch Lane, building off the success we’ve seen with the Digital Health Accelerator.
- Partnerships with companies like CSL Behring support our commercialization programs, fueling early stage innovative research that supports a thriving ecosystem and brings life-saving technologies to market.
- Health Hackers, a collaboration between FirstHand and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s iSTEM team, was piloted in the fall. Igniting an interest in STEM through meaningful industry collaborations is integral to the program’s mission. Overall, over 350 middle and high school students from under-resourced schools in Philadelphia participated in over 5,700 hours of STEM engagement through FirstHand, growing the local STEM pipeline.
How are we able to offer all this for free? Through the generosity of our Ignite Innovation supporters, our Corporate Members and our philanthropic donors.
Top supporters who’ve committed significant new investments this past year include CSL Behring, the Ewing and Marion Kauffman Foundation, and The Lenfest Foundation. They join our list of current donors that includes Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, PECO and the Exelon Foundation, the University of Pennsylvania and Wexford Science & Technology. For a full list, click here.
From all of us at the Science Center – thank you for your support, and here’s to a bigger and better innovation ecosystem in 2020 and beyond!
