Ally Melvin, MSW candidate ’16, wins IdeaBounce® entrepreneurship event

Ally Melvin, a second-year MSW student, was one of five recent winners in an IdeaBounce® competition sponsored by Washington University’s Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Melvin won $100 after pitching her idea for a phone app: “Save the World.” The app operates as a game and portrays a virtual world of villages and communities that suffer from five social injustices: hunger, disease, education, crime and poverty. Players select one of the five to combat, and profits from the game are donated to organizations fighting those injustices. In addition to the cash prize, winners are invited to a private mentoring session with the IdeaBounce® judges.

This was Melvin’s first IdeaBounce® competition, but she’s been practicing pitches during her Social Entrepreneurship course at the Brown School. She said her Social Entrepreneurship class and the Start-Up Training Lab have been especially valuable to her efforts, but “all of my Brown experience has been helpful in some way or another.”

Her CurrentSee Game Company made it through the first round of the Skandalaris Center’s Social Enterprise and Innovation Competition and is participating in the Center’s Boeing Patent Challenge.

The Skandalaris Center offers a number of real-world, practical training opportunities to Washington University students and faculty. The Brown School recently added a MSW specialization in social entrepreneurship, increasing the prominence of entrepreneurship among socially-minded students.