From Hospitals to Rooftop Farms, How the 2025 Enlight Fellows Spent Their Summer

On a summer evening somewhere around week eight, the ten members of the 2025 Enlight Fellowship cohort found themselves at BU Beach, talking about the world’s biggest problems and what they intended to do about them. They came from different schools, different disciplines, different countries. But as they sat together watching the sun set over the Charles River, what united them was the shared conviction that their ideas could become something real.

“This group is so smart, so humanitarian,” says Zachary DaSilva-Grondin (SAR’28). “These are the kind of people I want to work with in the future. These are the kind of people I want to support in their initiatives.”

The Enlight Fellowship is a ten-week summer program run by Innovate@BU that pairs Boston University students with local nonprofits while supporting them in developing their own social impact ventures. Each fellow receives a $10,000 stipend to cover living expenses and invest in their projects. This summer, the program welcomed its largest and most competitive cohort yet: 127 students applied for ten spots, a 65% increase over the previous year.

What emerged was a cohort that program leadership described as exceptionally mature, deeply committed to their chosen social challenges, and unusually focused on building ventures that would outlast the summer itself.

Zachary entered the fellowship exhausted. He had just returned from a medical brigade in Guatemala and wasn’t sure what to expect from the program. A human physiology student at Sargent College with experience working alongside displaced indigenous communities in Brazil and survivors of human trafficking in Nepal, Zachary had long focused on global health equity. But the Enlight Fellowship shifted his perspective on how change happens.

“I realized that addressing issues down the river, symbolically, is possible if we start where the river begins,” he says.

His placement with Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD), where he joined the Housing and Homelessness Prevention Team, grounded that realization in local work. The organization supports individuals and families in Greater Boston who are searching for stable housing, providing personalized housing counseling to prevent homelessness before it happens.

“They give us the freedom to do something aligned with our passions, but they also show us how that can be applied locally—and why that’s necessary,” Zachary says. By the end of the summer, he had found not just a new approach to social impact, but a community of peers he intends to stay connected with for years to come.

“Enlight is where dreams become reality. It’s where people have an idea, and those ideas become a plan, and those plans become something that can be implemented.”

Mya Kelly (CAS’27) grew up in Owensboro, Kentucky, watching her mother run a business that spotlighted local entrepreneurs. When she arrived at Boston University, she wanted to explore what innovation might look like for her—but she didn’t have a clear path.

“I just wanted to figure out what entrepreneurship really looks like for me and where my passions may lie,” Mya says.

She found her answer through the Enlight Fellowship. A psychology major, Mya spent the summer developing a board game designed to teach financial literacy to young learners. Working with program mentors, she connected with leaders in financial education to explore how play-based learning could introduce concepts like budgeting and saving to children who might otherwise never encounter them.

Like Zachary, Mya was placed at ABCD, where she gained her first real experience inside a nonprofit. “It was my first time really exploring the internship space,” she says. “Being in corporate America in the 9-to-5 was really kind of fun, but it also helped me understand what nonprofit leadership looks like.”

The $10,000 stipend proved essential. A significant portion went toward housing in Boston, but Mya also invested in a new computer and in accessing paywalled research resources that helped her refine her venture concept. By summer’s end, she had connected with BU’s Student Innovations Law Clinic to patent her game and developed a plan to distribute it to school districts in her hometown by the end of the year.

“I wanted to make my venture more concrete than just an idea and learn how to make it more accessible for all students,” she says. She plans to apply to the Innovation Pathway program this fall to continue building out the venture.

For Guixuan (Jim) Jin (CGS’24, CAS’27), the fellowship began with a problem he noticed at his internship. Jim was placed at Green City Growers, a Certified B Corp specializing in urban agriculture across New England that builds rooftop farms and edible gardens. He quickly observed that the sustainability metrics the company tracked—vehicle routes, energy usage, waste logs—were scattered across multiple platforms. The process of gathering, organizing, and cleaning that data was tedious and time-consuming.

So Jim built a solution: an automation dashboard that linked QuickBooks Online with carbon-accounting platforms, giving the company real-time visibility into fleet emissions and sustainability reporting. The work earned him an invitation to continue his internship on a paid basis through the 2025-2026 school year.

But the project also sparked a broader venture idea. Through his work at Green City Growers, Jim came to understand that even socially responsible small businesses are often daunted by sustainability reporting because most existing tools are designed for large companies. His venture concept addresses that gap: carbon-accounting software for small and medium-sized businesses that integrates natively with the tools they already use.

“The fellowship concentrated on human-centered innovation, where I learned to conduct stakeholder interviews, prototype quickly, and translate environmental impact into business language that decision-makers can act on,” Jim says.

Before the program, he understood computer science primarily as a technical field. Through Enlight, he began to see technology as a form of civic infrastructure—something with the power to shape behavior, support communities, and drive change when built with empathy and purpose.

“The Enlight Fellowship was a life-altering experience, one that enabled me to balance technical aspiration with civic purpose.”

Megan Kwan (CFA’27) came into the fellowship with a vision that emerged directly from her own experience as a College of Fine Arts student. She had noticed how individual and isolated creative education could feel, and she wanted to change that—not just at BU, but across Boston’s art schools.

“I’m working on building cross-university connections within the Boston art schools,” Megan explains. “I want art students to not only have a richer community, full of connections and opportunities, but also feel prepared to take on the workforce after they graduate.”

Her venture aims to unite students from at least five local art institutions through a lecture series designed to prepare art students for life after school—bringing business professionals into creative spaces to share what it takes to build a sustainable career as an artist.

Megan’s internship placement at the Pao Arts Center in Boston’s Chinatown felt like a natural fit. The organization celebrates and strengthens the Asian American Pacific Islander community through culturally relevant art, education, and creative programs. As an artist with an Asian-American background, Megan found herself at home there—and she found opportunities to apply what she was learning in real time.

“There was a moment in the last week where we were having a team meeting at Pao, and they were discussing some of the frameworks we were learning about,” she recalls. “I could just jump into the conversation, and I even started explaining some of the concepts to them!”

The experience validated the work she was doing through the fellowship. “It was nice to know I had this foundation of information that I learned at Enlight… that I could bring to my real-life job and feel like I really belonged in the environment.”

Beyond her placement and her venture, Megan found something else in the fellowship: a cohort of peers who shared her drive. “We all have this collective drive to do better and be better,” she says.

Gabrielle Moussas (SAR’26) arrived at the fellowship feeling stuck. She had a big idea—a nonprofit initiative grounded in faith and aimed at addressing social anxiety and depression among middle and high school students—but she wasn’t sure how to move forward with it.

“I was unsure about how I would take this big idea and make it something that’s real,” Gabrielle says.

Her placement at Union Capital Boston, a nonprofit focused on building social capital in underserved communities, gave her a front-row seat to nonprofit operations: event planning, resource management, funding strategies, and collaborative decision-making. As a health science major in Sargent College, the experience felt like new territory.

“It was a very different experience from what I’m used to,” she says. “As a STEM major, going to a nonprofit that’s dealing with social capital was eye-opening.”

Through the fellowship’s workshops, coaching sessions, and peer community, Gabrielle developed her venture concept: Chosen Youth, a program designed to empower young people through positive environments and faith-based support.

“The environment we grow up in strongly influences the way we see the world,” she says. “I want to make sure youth get the most positive experience they can.”

The cohort itself proved to be a source of motivation. “Being surrounded by a cohort of people who had huge ideas that needed support really pushed me in a multitude of ways.”

By summer’s end, Gabrielle had refined her concept, built confidence in networking and pitching, and found momentum she hadn’t expected.

“After the Enlight program, I realized there are so many opportunities to innovate, to continue to push on this idea and grow it, even post-graduation.”

Jamila Peguero (SSW’26), a Master of Social Work student, the idea of starting something of her own had never even been on her radar.

“I’m the first in my family to go to undergrad, the first to go to grad school,” Jamila shares. “Owning something, creating something—it wasn’t something I was encouraged to do or even taught was possible.”

The Enlight Fellowship changed that. Jamila was drawn to the program’s combination of entrepreneurship and social impact, and she spent the summer developing the Care and Justice Network, a professional community for social workers interested in racial justice strategies and interventions.

Her original idea focused on strategic planning and DEI consulting, but the current climate and her own skill development led her to pivot. “Right now, the climate isn’t very receptive to that, and my skills weren’t quite there yet. So, I pivoted to where I could make the most impact: creating community.”

Her placement at Inclusion Geeks, a DEI consulting firm, gave her insight into the complexity of this work. “Being at a consulting company opened my eyes to the nature of the problem—all the nuances, all the moving parts,” she says. “It really helped me shift gears and think differently about the kind of impact I want to have.”

The skills she gained through the fellowship’s workshops surprised her. “Problem discovery, teasing out assumptions—these are things I didn’t even know I needed, and now I use them all the time.” Looking ahead, Jamila sees innovation as central to her future leadership in social work.

“In social work, we’ve been doing the same things for decades—and we still have homelessness, poverty, racism,” she says. “We need new approaches. We need innovation. This experience opened a whole new door of possibilities for me.”

Patricia Porekuu (SPH’27) brought a different kind of experience to the cohort. A seasoned development practitioner from Ghana with over 15 years of experience in HIV, TB, and malaria programs, Patricia has spent her career educating and supporting underserved communities across Sub-Saharan Africa. When she arrived at BU’s School of Public Health as a master’s student, she was ready to grow in a new direction.

“I’ve worked broadly in service delivery, but I hadn’t developed skills in entrepreneurship,” Patricia explains.

Her venture, My Wealth, My Power, addresses financial dependency on men among rural women in Ghana. The program delivers localized, inclusive financial literacy training in local languages, helping women understand core financial concepts, start micro-businesses, and generate their own income.

“Once women develop their own businesses and begin generating their own income, economic empowerment leads to household wellbeing,” Patricia says.

Her placement at Boston Impact Initiative, a nonprofit impact investment fund and certified Community Development Financial Institution, gave her exposure to how capital can be deployed for social equity outcomes. Through weekly coaching sessions and collaboration with peers working on vastly different ventures, Patricia refined her approach.

“It’s been a fruitful beginning,” she says. “I’ve learned what it really means to develop a product, to understand the needs of your customers.”

The $10,000 fellowship stipend will support both her tuition and her venture’s launch. “I’m sowing a seed for my social venture,” Patricia says. “And gaining the knowledge to help it grow.”

Riya Sandler (SAR’27) spent her summer between two worlds: the labor and delivery floor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the innovation lab at Innovate@BU. Through her work as a cord blood collector at one of the nation’s top hospitals, she witnessed a problem she felt compelled to address.

“What struck me was how something as impactful as cord blood often just gets discarded,” Riya says. “I wanted to change that through education.”

Cord blood is a critical resource in treating diseases like leukemia and lymphoma, but Riya observed that patients—especially patients of color—were often unaware, hesitant, or misinformed about donating. Her venture, Cord Connect, aims to build a platform that highlights voices from both donors and recipients to foster understanding, combat misinformation, and increase donation rates among underrepresented communities.

“What makes me passionate about healthcare is hearing directly from patients. I think others can connect that way, too,” she explains.

Working directly with patients shaped both her venture and her growth as an innovator. “Outreach was so intimidating at first,” Riya admits. “But with the support of the Innovate@BU community, I learned how to step into it with confidence.”

The $10,000 stipend proved essential to her summer. “Last year, I had an unpaid internship and it was a major stressor,” she says. “This funding let me stay in Boston, focus fully, and feel supported—not just financially, but emotionally, too.”

Riya plans to continue developing Cord Connect while staying actively engaged with Innovate@BU.

“This is one of the most supportive spaces I’ve found at BU. I didn’t expect to walk away with such close friends and mentors, but I did.”

Her advice for other students considering the program is straightforward: “Just go for it. You don’t need to have it all figured out to start. The Enlight Fellowship meets you where you are and helps you grow from there.”

Ishtiyaq Shajahan (CAS’26), a political science major originally from Brooklyn with family roots in Bangladesh, was drawn to the fellowship because of its accessibility.

“What drew me in was the low barrier for entry,” he says. “They make it easy and accessible for people of various disciplines, especially non-business majors, to get involved in the social entrepreneurship scene.”

His placement at the Boston Climate Action Network gave him hands-on experience in environmental lobbying and coalition work. The organization is part of the Boston Green New Deal Coalition, which includes 30 to 35 member organizations focused on environmental justice.

“Getting exposure to that network has been monumental,” Ishtiyaq explains.

His venture, Community Roots Hub, is a mobile pop-up initiative that offers gardening and cooking lessons in public spaces. But it’s more than a series of workshops. Ishtiyaq describes it as a “third place”—a welcoming communal space beyond work or home where neighbors can gather, share stories, and build social infrastructure through food. The goal is to promote food justice and green infrastructure while bringing people together.

His vision extends far beyond Boston. “There’s a lot of mutual aid going around Boston, but it’s fragmented and hyper-localized,” he notes. “So, one part of our mission is to expand the broader coalition across Boston, eventually across Massachusetts and even the country.”

For Ishtiyaq, the fellowship confirmed that the future he wants is possible. “It showed me that what I want to do in the future is possible.”

He encourages other students to take a chance on Innovate@BU programs.

“Whether it’s the Enlight Fellowship, the First-Year Innovation Fellowship, or any of the Innovate programs, get involved. Being in this ecosystem is so beneficial—it’s given me a lot of hope that I can have a good career and help the world at the same time.”

Tsega Wondwossen (CAS’25) graduated from Boston University in May 2025 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. Throughout her time at BU, she was an active community leader, serving in multiple roles within the Eritrean and Ethiopian Student Association and contributing to campus life as a Resident Assistant. Her academic and professional interests centered on economic development, particularly advancing data-driven solutions across the African continent.

Through her Enlight Fellowship placement at Boston Impact Initiative, Tsega worked as an Impact Investing Intern, gaining hands-on experience supporting analyses that link capital to social equity outcomes. Following graduation, she began her role as a Patient Financial Coordinator at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine—continuing to build a career grounded in meaningful contributions to economic development.

Across the cohort, the summer produced ventures at every stage of development: some ready for patent applications, others beginning to form coalitions, still others preparing to launch pilot programs in communities halfway around the world. But as Zachary put it:

“What made everybody bond was our shared goal to make an impact in the world.”

Since the Enlight Fellowship launched in 2022, 33 students have completed the program. Of those, 11 have secured full-time employment in fields including education, healthcare, government, startups, investing, law, and sustainability. Another 16 are currently enrolled in school, with five pursuing advanced degrees in public health, law, social justice, and education.

This year’s cohort will continue their work through the fall—some through the Innovation Pathway program, others through independent development of their ventures, and all through the connections they built over ten weeks of workshops, coaching sessions, and evenings at BU Beach talking about how to change the world.

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From Hospitals to Rooftop Farms, How the 2025 Enlight Fellows Spent Their Summer

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