Transformative Startups Start with Connection, Communication, and Reflection

Sarah Morrill, Activate’s program continuum director

In 2019, Sarah Morrill did something that many would consider unorthodox for a principal of an elementary/middle school serving a low-income population. She (simultaneously) went to business school. 

“I decided to get my MBA because I've always been really interested in efficiency and effective organizational structure and I wanted to bring that perspective into the education environment,” says Morrill, who started her career at the nonprofit Teach for America. But she says the experience changed her perspective and her career path.

“I had been really focused on the career I was building,” she says. “But business school opened my aperture way wider, to all of the different ways to have a meaningful impact in the world.”

Morrill joined Activate as education director in late 2021 after earning her MBA from UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, and her first priority was to assemble of an internal cross-functional working group comprised of managing directors (Aimee Rose and Randy Allen) as well as fellowship team members (Brenna Teigler and Katie Sharp) and senior strategic partnerships manager Nikhil Gargeya and alumna fellow (and recently appointed managing director) Jill Fuss, and executive-in-residence Tom Boussie.

Using her deep background in program development and with the working group’s expertise on fellow needs, Morrill has scaffolded, codified, and strengthened Activate’s educational programming. The working group’s focus was to develop a vision for fellow learning that is comprehensive and responsive, but also scalable to meet future needs as Activate continues to grow.

“We are recognizing that the knowledge, skills, and mindsets that we support fellows to build over the course of the two-year fellowship can translate into tremendous growth for them,” Morrill explains, in an interview following the Cohort 2022 three-day onboarding retreat in late June.

Cohort 2022 fellows Sudharsan Dwaraknath and Margaret Lumley at the retreat.

That building can start even before a fellow joins the program, and it should extend well beyond the two years of the fellowship. That’s why Morrill is building Activate’s programming with consideration for not only active cohorts but also the future fellows we cultivate through recruitment, and the needs of Activate alumni. That spectrum is reflected in her new title: program continuum director. 

The core of Morrill’s mission is to empower Activate Fellows to become effective entrepreneurs, and she says building empathy, trust, and community is an essential first step. 

“The fellowship is a transformational experience. And there's actually a whole set of pedagogical practices around transformational learning experiences. One of them is that they need to be done within community,” she says.

For the 39 newly minted Activate Fellows in Cohort 2022, that work started in earnest with a three-day retreat in Santa Cruz, CA, last month.

“The whole retreat was rooted in connection, communication, and reflection. We spent very little time talking about science or technology. And I tried to be very explicit about why and assure people that we would talk about that eventually, but we weren't going to start there.”

That’s not to say it came easy for fellows, she notes. Many might have preferred to focus on market strategy or product development, but the goal of the retreat was to help fellows understand and connect around what motivations and values drive them, and how or why they’ve come to this moment of transformation. She added that while the fellows are launching companies that are often very different from one another, they’re all trying to build successful organizations, and that is all about building connections.

“We did some exercises based on the Gallup StrengthsFinder so the fellows could assess their top strengths and think about building teams of people with complementary strengths,” she says.

Weaving into the Wider Activate Ecosystem

Current and alumni fellows also joined Cohort 2022 during the retreat to share their experiences and perspectives.

“The culture that Activate has built, specifically by focusing on and investing in fellows to help them achieve success and fulfillment as they define it, really shined through at the retreat,” says Cohort 2021 fellow Francesco M. Benedetti, CEO of Osmoses. “The retreat provided fellows an opportunity to be vulnerable and reflect on their path, which is unique to this community and makes it invaluable for the fellows."

Cohort 2021 fellows Francesco M. Benedetti speaks to incoming fellows at the retreat.

That reflection and connection feeds into Activate’s focus on helping fellows build strong company culture at their own organizations, and that stood out to incoming Cohort 2022 fellow Garrett Boudinot, co-founder of N3GATIVE CO.

“The cultural aspects of launching a startup are really important but they’re often left out of founder trainings,” he says. “But it’s critical, especially at the earliest stages of company-building.”

Following the retreat, we convened fellows from all current and past cohorts, along with board members, staff, and more than one hundred other close Activate community members for the annual Activate Summit at San Francisco’s Exploratorium. Check out our recap here. 

The Summit also served as a celebration of Cohort 2020 fellows as their fellowship comes to an end, and we asked three of those new alumni for their thoughts on building their own company cultures.

Finally, the Summit served as the perfect venue for introducing our newest managing director, Jill Fuss, who will be leading the Activate Berkeley Community. Fuss was a fellow in Cohort 2018, so her new role is perhaps the strongest proof point about the power of connection and community at Activate.

Jill Fuss at the 2022 Activate Summit

“I've known since I was a fellow that Activate's community is its superpower, but I felt it acutely when I heard the cheers and whoops after announcing I was the new Berkeley MD,” Fuss says. “I'm excited to share that community with the fellows and amplify all of my learnings to help them be successful.”