A Recipe for Impact: Building a Business That Changes Lives feat. Kerry Brodie

Sep 30, 10:00 PM – Oct 1, 1:00 AM (UTC)

New York City

The Yard: Herald Square, 106 West 32nd Street, New York, 10001

Learn how founder Kerry Brodie turned an idea from a homeless shelter into a scalable social enterprise. She’ll share her playbook for building a business that's both mission-driven and data-informed, proving you can do good and do well at the same time.

In-person event

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About this event

What if a nonprofit could scale like a startup, measure like an investor, and still lead with humanity?

Kerry Brodie’s journey from public policy to founding Emma’s Torch is a masterclass in modern, mission-driven entrepreneurship. She took a simple idea — using food to empower refugees — and built it into a data-informed, multi-city enterprise by applying a founder's mindset to a social cause.

This isn’t just a fireside chat; it’s a deep dive into the strategic choices that allowed Kerry to grow from a small pop-up to a successful, repeatable model. 

If you're building a business with a mission, this is the playbook you need to learn.

What You'll Learn

  • Scaling the Mission: How to grow from one location to multiple cities and a new, custom-built campus without losing the core community and support that made the first café work.
  • The Nonprofit-as-Startup Playbook: The lessons learned from running a social enterprise with the agility of a startup — balancing fundraising, earned revenue, and a scrappy growth mindset.
  • Measuring What Matters: How to build an impact framework that captures both financial ROI and human transformation, moving beyond simple metrics to prove long-term value.

Who Should Attend

  • Social entrepreneurs and founders of mission-driven businesses.
  • Nonprofit leaders looking to build more scalable, business-like models.
  • Anyone interested in the practicalities of scaling an organization with both a human and financial bottom line. 👈

Tickets for this event include food and drinks, as well as exclusive access to this visionary founder. You'll also meet dozens of other high-performing entrepreneurs who are creating their next big thing. Seriously, it's some of the best founder networking in the city.

Getting a ticket guarantees admission. No waitlisting.

This event is hosted in collaboration with Carta. Issue equity and SAFEs, track ownership, and manage your cap table with Carta's free cap table software for startup founders.

📈 Sign up for Carta Launch today

Speaker

  • Kerry Brodie

    Emma's Torch

    Founder

When

When

September 30 – October 1, 2025
10:00 PM – 1:00 AM (UTC)

Agenda

10:00 PMFounder Networking w/ Food & Drinks
11:00 PMFireside Chat w/ Kerry Brodie
12:00 AMMeet the Speaker

Organizers

  • Joshua Ness

    IEEE

    Director, Startup Grind

  • Tova Feldheim

    York Effect

    Cofounder

  • Paul GUILLARD

    Chief of Staff / BizOps / Project Manager / BD

  • Prianka Ball

  • Daniel Silver

    IntegratedMarketers

    Owner

  • Rebecca Liang

  • Madison Simon

Global sponsor

Google Cloud logo

Google Cloud

Strategic

Codewalla logo

Codewalla

Partners

The Yard logo

The Yard

Carta logo

Carta

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