Laurin Hodge, Mission: Launch founder, receives StartingBloc social innovation fellowship [VIDEO]

Laurin Hodge with Maryland governor, Martin O’Malley.
Social entrepreneur Laurin Hodge — the founder of Mission: Launch, a nonprofit created to help ex-offenders receive job training and professional experience, ultimately in the hope they’ll start their own businesses or find other work — is now a StartingBloc fellow.
Since 2005 StartingBloc, a New York-based organization, “has been training the next generation of leaders on how to do well and do good,” according to its website. The fellowship is one component of StartingBloc’s overall program whereby 18- to 30-year-olds are recruited into a global network of some 1,800 social innovators and changemakers and offered a variety of resources “they need to address the most pressing global challenges of our time.”

As a new fellow, Hodge will spend five days in Los Angeles in February at the Institute for Social Innovation.
“I am pumped because, with any startup, things take longer and cost more and I’ve had to make the decision in the last two weeks to do a small pivot so [Mission: Launch] can get to funding quicker,” said Hodge in an e-mail. “So this news came at a great time because I really do need to expand my world to get Mission: Launch off the ground.”
While Hodge isn’t yet ready to share the details of her company’s new direction, she said within three to four months she’ll “have something actually worth sharing.”
Watch a video about the StartingBloc fellowship:
[vimeo 24879699 w=400 h=300]