Milken Conference 2024 Milken–Motsepe Innovation Prize Program

Hey, I want to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and I'm proud to announce that I am at the 2024 Milking Global Conference in Beverly Hills. This is our second year covering the conference, and I was able to get a repeat, an additional interview with Emily Musil Church, who, let me just say, First off, Emily, you were our top last year. We did a whole series around this. I think we did seven or eight interviews and your interview last year was our top interview with over 20, 000 views. So, Hey, welcome back. Thank you. And thanks to everybody who watched let's hope we can do another great show that people want to listen to. All right, Emily. So a little birdie told me that you were in a ballgown earlier giving away an award. Talk to me. What was going on? I missed the ballgown. Well, there's nothing really that's going to get you to wear a ballgown on a Monday morning at 9 a. m. other than getting to give out. A million dollars, a surprise million dollars to an entrepreneur who's been working to change the world. So today we had our milk and what's up a prize in green energy award ceremony. We had five finalists who out of thousands down to Hundreds down to 20 semi finalists who we funded. These are the five remaining finalists. We tested them in South Africa two months ago, judges selected a grand prize winner for a million and a runner up for 250, 000. So today. People got to meet all five. If you go to the website, we still, you should be able to watch the ceremony. If you missed it, you can meet and understand what these innovators were doing, creating green energy solutions that work off grid. So getting electricity from hydro, solar, geothermal, all these sources that are good for the planet, green sources that are affordable, reliable, sustainable electricity, Even if people are completely off the grid, they'd be able to have enough electricity to power, whatever they need, business, school, that sort of thing. So these are really world changers out there. So to be able to celebrate them is definitely worth getting in a ball gown for on a Monday morning. I'm all for it. And I I'm so curious just to be like in your shoes, what goes into into like, how many applications were there? Like what goes into this selection process? Cause I don't know how you do. I mean, your team is amazing. Yeah. What goes into this? Yeah. Well it, the word team is team. Team, of course. Yeah. Definitely. There. This is, there is a huge world of people who are part of this. You know, some may go and just see, oh, great, here's a trophy and a million dollar check. Yeah. But what goes into that process is really, it's not just selection. It starts earlier than that. It's about recruiting people to the world of entrepreneurship. Mm. So, so many people have ideas for things. Or they see a problem and they say, I wish somebody else would fix that. So part of our mission is to be able to say anybody who has a good idea or sees a problem and things, maybe, maybe I have an idea somewhere that we want to be able to help support them. Think about how do you turn that idea into something that is a prototype? How do you test that? How do you build a business plan? So it's not just. Only about down selecting. It is actually casting a wide net, getting people to be inspired by a particular topic. Last year was Agritech. This year is green energy and we give them capacity building. We had over 3000 hours of mentorship of Stanford online courses. So we really want to make sure that even if they don't win that million dollar prize, that being part of the milk and what's up a prize community is something of value to them. Talk a little bit more just about the prize in general and why it was originally developed. So the Milken Mutsepe Prize. Yes. So this is the Milken Mutsepe Innovation Prize Program was started in 2021 with the idea that every year there'll be a different challenge linked to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. So last year was Agritech and we awarded that. At last year's global conference, this year is green energy and we just announced today in the ball gown on stage, the next Malcolm would set a prize that has another 2 million. We're giving out. Yeah. It's going to be in. It's not where it's a, what it's Fintech. Oh, Fintech. Okay. Yes. So this is hot off the press. Wow. So you can, this is the first year when I get you on the show, we're going to be talking about the Fintech award. We'll be talking about Fintech. How do we get financial inclusion for people in emerging and frontier markets? Yeah. What went into, so this year some of the award winners, you don't have to say names if you don't want to, or otherwise, but like, what were some of the themes around those that were selected? So all of them had to create something that would be affordable is one criteria. So there's lots of things that we can do now. Happily. There's lots of new green tech that you can use fo

Mission Matters Business Podcast with Adam Torres