Camelback Ventures aims to diversify social innovation, by giving underrepresented, early-stage entrepreneurs access to the tools they need to be successful. Camelback was built with the notion that genius is equally distributed across communities, but access to funding and start-up mentoring is often limited in communities of color and with women.

Camelback provides entrepreneurs with greater access to resources. Camelback Ventures awards its fellows with start-up funding (capital), coaching and access to investors and networks (connections). Camelback Venture fellows, most of which identify as people of color and/ or female, reside in Camelback’s five priority regions: Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Oakland, and Washington, D.C.

To date, Camelback fellows have built social organizations that have impacted the lives of tens of thousands of young people across the country. Camelback fellows have built STEM-based social mobile games, a charter school network in New Orleans, a mobile app to help recognize strong academic performance, and a platform to help universities track and develop at risk scholarship students. The 2015 Camelback Fellows class has gone on to raise $4 million to grow their ventures. Additionally, 10% of the Forbes 30 Under 30 had participated in Camelback’s programming.