Using Business to Solve Social and Environmental Challenges

Ready to launch a career in solving social or environmental challenges? UW Bothell has recruited leading Directors and CEOs of international nonprofit organizations to create a cutting edge curriculum that empowers students to develop market-based business ideas to solve social and environmental challenges. The UWB Certificate is an evolution of nonprofit management courses that teaches students how to go beyond fundraising to create more sustainable revenue streams for their social cause. In a collaborative entrepreneurial environment, students are provided the practical tools and marketing methodology to develop and lead their own initiatives.  

Open to all majors in all three UW campuses!

To apply and/or learn more please visit the website or email the program manager at satamian@uwb.edu with questions

Read more below to see the dates, information about the instructors, and testimonials from current students

Dates: Building off the success of this summer’s cohort, this year’s fall program will run from  October 16  – January 15 (No class from Dec 19-Jan 2), on Tuesday and Thursdays evenings, from 6:30-8:30pm (with optional one hour labs after each class).  Students will have the choice to attend classes at either UWB or the HUB in downtown Seattle (a space for social enterprise collaboration). 

About the instructors: Steve Atamian is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Global Brigades, the world’s largest student-led health and sustainable development organization. Under Steve’s leadership of Global Brigades, more than 10,000 university students and professionals have mobilized to support communities in Central America and Ghana through nine skill-based service programs. Starting with just one student chapter in 2004, it has organically institutionalized on more than 400 university chapters across North America and Europe. 

Cole is the co-founder and Director of Programs at Lumana, an organization that works to reduce poverty and increase opportunity for rural Africans through the provision of better financial services. In addition to the design of better tools for the rural poor to save, borrow and receive business education. Cole began his career as an organizer and educator by helping to found the start up Your Revolution which created applications for online voter registration during the 2008 election. Since then he has worked with a team building a social network for renewable energy coalitions, as the VP of business development for a tech start up and as a volunteer coordinator for Real Change magazine’s Initiative 100. Cole has also worked as a guest lecturer, mentor and curriculum creator in Universities all over the world focusing on poverty alleviation and the millennial generation’s role in global change. Cole currently lives between Seattle and Ghana.

Testimonials: Click here to read what current students have to say about the course