About StartSomeGood
The Team
StartSomeGood is a team comprised of four UCLA Bruins and an Aussie. The Bruins met while camping out for UCLA basketball games, and the co-founders met while working at Ashoka. All are connected by their passion for social entrepreneurship and their dream of empowering people anywhere and everywhere to do good in the world.
Alex Budak received an MPP from Georgetown University and a B.A. from UCLA in Geography and Political Science. A published travel writer, he’s swam with baby penguins in the Galapagos and visited rat temples in India. In 5th grade he competed in a POGs tournament. Alex is a StartingBloc fellow.
@Abudak
Tom Dawkins is a serial social entrepreneur and the Australian member of the StartSomeGood team. He previously founded Vibewire and was the first Social Media Director at Ashoka. He currently works at HopeLab and organizes the Black Rock City Farmers Market with his beautiful wife. They also jointly run the street art blog StreetSideSF.
More: http://about.me/tomjd.
@tomjd
Bryan Parker is a software engineer currently residing in Los Angeles. He recieved a B.S. in Computer Science/Engineering from UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. He hopes to one day have read every Star Wars book in the Expanded Universe.
@beeepark
Emerson Taymor is a managing partner at philosophie, an interactive agency in Los Angeles. Before co-founding philosophie, Emerson graduated from UCLA with a BA in Design | Media Arts and worked as a freelance web designer. When he isn't working, he can usually be found watching sports.
@etaymor
Nicole Ricchione is an MBA student at Rutgers Business School in Newark, NJ. She is passionate about social entrepreneurship and involves herself in various social change projects in the NYC area. Her interests include volunteer travel, urban entrepreneurship, social media, and healthy and sustainable living. In her spare time, she enjoys running and is sometimes crazy enough to compete in half marathons. She hopes to run in the NYC Marathon one day.
@nricchio
Sue Anne Reed is a huge fan of nonprofits and social enterprises and has been working in online marketing for over 15 years. In addition to her role at StartSomeGood, she currently works as communications manager at Care2 and previously worked helping children in crisis at the nonprofit EMQ FamiliesFirst. To escape from the world of computers, she can often be found making beautiful things with yarn.
@Sue_Anne
Vanessa Rhinesmith is a digital communications and community strategist with a passion for helping others achieve their potential. From New Hampshire, Vanessa currently lives on the prairie (aka East Central Illinois). She received her bachelors in marketing from Fairfield University and her MBA from Simmons College. When she isn't spending time with her lovely husband and daughter she can be found practicing yoga, eating sushi, or reading to the elderly at the local county nursing home.
@vrhinesmith
Ky Inthavong is a software engineer with ten years of experience. Though he originally planned on a career in the medical field to help care for people, he now uses his programming skills to give back to the community by working with companies and web sites that provide education and knowledge and empowers people. He has a family that includes four young children"
Want to get in touch? Say hi at hello@startsomegood.com