In 2009, The Lewis Family Foundation gave a generous gift to Babson College in Massachusetts, with the express desire to galvanize faculty, students, staff, and alumni around the greater notions of social entrepreneurship and social impact – to further generosity by investing in the education of entrepreneurs.
They wanted to influence Babson’s core strategy to educate leaders who will create economic and social value simultaneously.
President-Elect Stephen Spinelli MBA’92, who will become Babson’s 14th president on July 1, met Alan Lewis in 2007. He recalls: “Alan Lewis is a very intentional leader. It was clear to me his vision was about sustaining entrepreneurship with a deep understanding of how to improve the human condition.”
This gift, not endowment, seeded a startup mindset within The Lewis Institute that ensured the investment would be relevant and responsive to all Babson stakeholders around the world. The Lewis Institute planned to educate, amplify, accelerate, and communicate social value creation in all its forms. We helped students prepare to enter established businesses as social innovators, create new ventures with social responsibility and social benefit as a core value proposition, and establish new nonprofits to fill gaps in addressing societal and environmental challenges.