NJTW News: Happy Thanksgiving, Princeton START Program And More
[This article was taken from NJTW News, an NJTechWeekly.com newsletter. Sign up for it here.]
- We wish you all a happy and healthy Thanksgiving week!
Princeton Opens Up START Entrepreneurs Program Application
- During Empower 2021, an event celebrating Black academic entrepreneurship, Rodney Priestley, Princeton University’s vice dean for innovation, announced the launch of the START Entrepreneurs program.
- Startups can now apply. See more information here.
- Princeton is looking for entrepreneurs from historically underrepresented communities for this program.
- Founders must have advanced degrees from any institution.
- START Entrepreneurs is an integrated program that is part academic fellowship and part startup accelerator.
- The goal of the program is to help aspiring commercial and social entrepreneurs translate academic scholarship into highly impactful new ventures.
- Entrepreneurs spend 12 months on campus at Princeton working with a faculty member on “translational” research, then 18 months off-campus at the Princeton Innovation Center BioLabs, building their startup company or nonprofit.
JSWT Group Discusses Tech And Human Trafficking
- The November Jersey Shore Women in Tech meetup hosted Bella Hounakey, a fierce advocate of initiatives to combat and abolish human trafficking.
- She was a victim of human trafficking herself.
- Hounakey spoke about the need for simple tech tools for enabling victims to find shelters nearby, so they don’t have to accept help from dangerous people.
- She added that we have to find a way to be innovative and still protect privacy.
- For example, there is no way for human-trafficking victims to change their names in databases everywhere in order to protect themselves from further exploitation, she said.
