Margaret Lee ’14 and Caroline Smith ’14 are co-founders of Collab, a community-centered accelerator for Connecticut entrepreneurs and project builders based in New Haven. Collab is an organization that empowers individuals and families to use entrepreneurship to gain autonomy, build wealth, and shape their communities. They prioritize serving people of color and women — particularly Black and Latinx entrepreneurs — who face persistent and significant barriers because of structural racism and sexism.
On the heels of Impact 2 – join us for a conversation with Caroline and Margaret about their work and how it makes an impact in the community by fully embracing diversity, moving toward equity, and providing tools for positive change.
No Facebook? No problem — register to join us on Zoom.
Before Collab, Margaret and Caroline were the Co-Directors of Marketing at SeeClickFix, a New Haven civic technology startup. Classmates at Yale, Margaret and Caroline were also heavily involved on campus and in New Haven. Margaret worked at the Yale Entrepreneurship Institute (now the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale) where she managed Yale’s academic year and summer accelerators, seeing through more than 100 student and faculty ventures. She is the former Chair of the Elm City Innovation Collaborative and currently serves as Commissioner of the Economic Development Commission. She received the New Haven Biz Women in Business Award for her work. Caroline founded New Haven Bike Month — an effort to build bicycle justice through neighborhood empowerment. Currently, she was elected the Chair of the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team. She’s received the New Haven Biz Women in Business Award, Connecticut Magazine 40 Under 40, City of New Haven Individual Innovator Award, Yale Presidential Public Service Fellowship, and Yale Seton Elm-Ivy Award for her work.
