It’s demo day for Conscious Venture Lab’s 10th cohort

On Wednesday, an initiative that offers guidance, mentorship, training and a focus on access to capital is holding a demo day for its 10th accelerator cohort.

Conscious Venture Lab (CVL), a program of the recently launched Novella Center for Entrepreneurship (NCE), collaborated with its related venture capital firm to support local founders in its latest cohort, which kicked off this fall. The nonprofit has supported impact-minded businesses with its accelerator since its inception in 2017.

Register for Conscious Venture Lab’s demo day

Nicole Foster founded Sommos, an AI-driven platform designed to connect families and preserve legacies. This member of the cohort said that participating in the accelerator “has been transformative, both for my personal growth and my entrepreneurial ventures.”

“As a two-time founder, I’m well-versed in the startup world, running Cajou Creamery, a local plant-based ice cream company,” Foster told Technical.ly via email, adding: “However, my latest venture, Sommos, is new and deeply personal to me. Being accepted into CVL was a vote of confidence. CVL’s workshops on conscious leadership and the experienced mentors have been instrumental in helping me hone various facets of my business.”

Marianna Pappas, program director of CVL and a 2023 RealLIST Connector, told Technical.ly in an email that the founders spent the last 12 weeks creating “businesses that matter” — a description borrowed from Novella Center CEO and CVP General Managing Partner Jeff Cherry.

“They have [also] worked on our company building platform FounderTrac to dig deep into the fundamentals of creating a repeatable and scalable business model,” she said.

Pappas additionally highlighted that the founders collaborated with NCE staff and consultants — both at NCE’s offices in Baltimore Peninsula and online — to further their understanding of “stakeholder capitalism” and how it might aid their startups.

Cherry echoed this sentiment and commended the latest CVL entrepreneurial community for their “resilience and dedication.”

“As we conclude Cohort 10 of the Conscious Venture Lab program at the Novella Center for Entrepreneurship, I’m yet again struck with the resilience and dedication of the founders with whom we get to work,” he said. “Entrepreneurship can be a lonely and difficult road, yet we consistently find founders – many of whom come from modest and under-represented backgrounds – who bring passion, drive and a supreme sense of optimism to these endeavors.

Register for Conscious Venture Lab’s demo day