Activate Anywhere is Nurturing Talent Across the U.S.
Activate Anywhere is disrupting innovation with its distributed model—and building a strong community of innovators across the United States.
Talented innovators are everywhere, and they are poised to transform industries that are located well beyond the traditional innovation hubs of Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York City. Activate launched its Anywhere community to meet these promising science entrepreneurs where they are. Only one year old, this distributed community of Activate Fellows is an “experiment”—one that has yielded promising results.
Cohort 2022 Activate Anywhere Reunion
How It Works
Fellows in the Activate Anywhere Community—who are based at research facilities from Atlanta, to Upstate New York, to Madison, to Fort Collins—meet virtually on a regular basis and in person every quarter. They enjoy all the same benefits as fellows in the Activate Berkeley, New York, Boston (and soon, Houston) Communities, including mentorship, education, funding, and networking opportunities.
Fellows from the Activate Anywhere Community traveled to Berkeley to spend time together in person and meet the local Activate community.
The Activate Anywhere Community has its own dedicated team of Activate staff. Activate Anywhere’s managing director, Hannah Murnen, brings experience as a startup CTO, a management consultant for industrial companies, and a doctorate in chemical engineering to her role providing hands-on support to fellows.
Surprising Benefits
“Despite being Activate’s only fully remote community, Activate Anywhere stands out for its close-knit feel.”
“Fellows really show up for each other and celebrate each other,” says Murnen. “Many of them come from environments where there isn't as much entrepreneurial ecosystem support and this is their primary entrepreneurial community.”
Andy Zhao (Cohort 2022, co-founder and CTO of Limelight Steel) hanging out with fellows from the Activate Berkeley Community.
One of the hallmarks of the Activate Fellowship is the supportive community it provides. Fellows in the Activate Anywhere don’t miss out on this benefit—they may even get more of it through expanded networking opportunities. During their quarterly in-person meet-ups, which take place in various locations, fellows in the Activate Anywhere Community often meet fellows from Activate’s other communities and network with entrepreneurial ecosystems across the country. As Murnen says, “They’re getting the best of all worlds.”
Moreover, networking opportunities are just a Zoom call away, and Murnen and her team frequently tap their professional networks to connect fellows with experts across the United States and even internationally.
Disrupting Traditional Innovation
The landscape of innovation is changing, and in many ways, Activate Anywhere represents the future.
The pandemic, for example, spurred Activate to reimagine community. “COVID helped people realize you can actually build really good relationships on Zoom,” says Murnen. “Yes, you need to sustain them with some in-person interactions, but you can get a lot done in virtual settings.”
The rise of remote work and the redistribution of tech talent during the pandemic also changed the innovation workforce. The precise impact on venture capital is still unclear, but venture dollars have been distributed more widely across the United States as overall VC investment has surged over the past decade. While California, Massachusetts, and New York still dominate venture capital, and that is not expected to change, many smaller hubs across the country have received more venture investment recently than ever before.
Moreover, as urgency builds to solve grand societal challenges, Activate aims to empower even more science entrepreneurs to reinvent the world. Activate Anywhere, in particular, removes barriers to entrepreneurship by offering a unique flexibility.
“Creating an ecosystem that’s outside of these traditional entrepreneurial hubs gives folks a lot more flexibility in how they can build their company and their journey.”
“Maybe you have a partner who needs to be somewhere else because they're a professor, or maybe you have to take care of your parents, or whatever the case is—people have lots of reasons to be anchored in a place,” says Murnen. “Creating an ecosystem that's outside of these traditional entrepreneurial hubs gives folks a lot more flexibility in how they can build their company and their journey.”
Future Growth
As the Activate Anywhere Community embarks on its second year, soon doubling in size with the incoming Cohort 2023, fellows maintain a sense of adventure and are dedicated to the community’s continued success. “Our fellows feel very much like they're part of building something new, and so it feels like we're all architects of it,” reflects Murnen.
While it’s still growing and evolving, Activate Anywhere proves that you don’t have to be co-located to have a strong community. It also redefines the geographic scope for innovation, modeling a more inclusive approach. Furthermore, the demand for this community shows that there really are promising science entrepreneurs everywhere—and they need support.
“Activate Anywhere proves that you don’t have to be co-located to have a strong community.”
“We have a lot of big challenges to solve and Activate is trying to make that happen through science innovation, and I don’t think we can do that if we only support or access a small portion of the population,” says Murnen. “We need to be supporting everybody who has good ideas to get started on this journey.”
Interested in becoming an Activate Fellow? Sign up to receive email updates. Programming for interested applicants begins this summer with applications for Cohort 2024 opening in the fall. Find out more about Activate Anywhere and visit our FAQ for eligibility details.
