The Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship presents

 STRUCTURE LAB

 Thursday, March 27, 2014

6-9 p.m.

South College B2/B3

(location is tbd based on registration numbers; you will be contacted before the event with final details)

Joy Anderson ’89, President of Criterion Institute and instructor of Wesleyan’s “Money and Social Change” course, is a prominent national leader at the intersection of business and social change. She will bring her patented program — Structure Lab — to campus in this hands-on, learning-intensive session for anyone with an idea for a new enterprise, who wants to build business skills, or is just curious about the ways organizations function.

Registration is required, and space is limited. Refreshments will be provided. Structure Lab materials are $50 per participant, and the Patricelli Center will be purchasing these for you. If you register and do not show up, you will be billed for your unused materials. 

REGISTER NOW

About Structure Lab

The overarching theory of change of Structure Lab is that legal structures manage relationships.

The labs are not reduced to focusing on any one kind of structure and maintain a signature comfort living in a space of blurred lines, emerging forms, and new innovations. Structure Lab is not only for the entrepreneur, but also for investors and ecosystem players, situating the labs in Criterion’s mission of shaping markets and systems to create social change.

Criterion responded to the need for both creativity and clarity in the social change space with the creation of Structure Lab. Initially supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Structure Lab is a learning experience that provides a framework in which to think about structure as part of social venture strategy.

The enterprise of social change is in flux. Terms of capital are shifting. New legal forms are emerging and the marketplace is more open to new organizational forms than ever before. Such periods of flux are rife with unpredictability, yet these periods are also rich with possibility; new approaches emerge and the rules of the game change.

What this means for you is that significant opportunities exist among the corporate forms that structure our organizations: for profits, non-profits and all the permutations in between. Structure Lab provides participants with a simple and accessible way to evaluate various structure options and to move forward strategically toward achieving their goals. Structure Lab enables participants to explore what is possible.

 

About Joy Anderson ’89

Joy began as a high school teacher in New York City Public Schools. She went to New York to understand how power works in big systems and stayed for eight years because she fell in love with the students. Joy played leadership roles in the teachers union and managed federally funded programs for the school and the district.

After leaving New York, Joy transitioned from a school teacher to an entrepreneur, founding Criterion Ventures in 2002, co-founding Good Capital with Tim Freundlich and Kevin Jones in 2006 and leading the development of Rockefeller-funded Healthcare_Uncovered from 2006 until 2009.

Literally hundreds of ventures have been shaped by Joy’s insights and experience. As faculty on the leading social innovation award programs, including Unreasonable Institute and Echoing Green, she advises the next generation of leaders. As chair of the board of directors of Village Capital and through involvement in Investor’s Circle, she is actively involved in shaping early stage social investments. And through her role in developing and leading Structure Lab© workshops she has helped over 300 organizations think through their legal and financial structures.

A serial entrepreneur and consummate networker, Joy’s leadership and expertise have been at the forefront of the development of the social capital markets over the last 10 years. Her interest in the role of finance in changing the world was sparked during her eight year consulting relationship with the General Board of Pensions of the United Methodist Church.  She was instrumental in her board position at Lutheran Community Foundation in their recent $10 million allocation to social investment. As a recognition of her business leadership, in 2011, Joy was ranked 51st in Fast Company’s annual of the 100 Most Creative People in Business.

Currently, she leads Criterion Institute which serves as a think tank around shaping markets to create social and environmental good. Criterion houses three field building initiatives, Structure Lab, Women Effect Investments and Church as an Economic Being. Her speaking and thought leadership is focused on the practices of shaping markets, whether that is focused on how the church is both an actor and implicated in the economy, on how legal structures shape the possibilities of enterprises, or a gender lens on investing.

Joy’s intellectual interests draw on her research for her Ph.D. in American History from New York University. Her dissertation examined prison reform in the 1830’s and how individuals and organizations in democracies claim expertise in order to shape public institutions.