Nonprofit Founders & Social Impact Builders - Regain Hope in Humanity
Please help me (Nicole Hao) regain hope in humanity!!!
I'm serious.
In 2023, I went through a family crisis and serious health issues that caused neurocognitive symptoms, including a sudden decline in my auditory memory. At its lowest, my hearing memory was in the fifth percentile for people my age.
While seeking treatment alone in a foreign country, I met many others facing invisible barriers: CS majors with PTSD who struggled to attend large lectures, PhD students with visual disabilities whose schools were charged $100/hour for note-taking support, and students trying to survive systems not built for them.
That experience shaped why I started InkSight AI, a non-profit helping students with neurocognitive disabilities learn better in classrooms. But when I introduced it, I was met with doubt and layers of pushback from different sources. Someone even told me InkSight was “not solving a real problem.”
But the reality is that illness and health challenges can happen to anyone, but they should never determine who gets access to education.
The past few years changed me. After going through some of the darkest moments of my life, I nearly lost faith in humanity. I was on the PhD track, but everything I experienced made me question what I truly wanted to dedicate my life to. I knew I wanted to make a difference, but I wasn’t sure how, or whether academic research was the path that would get me there. Mostly, I found myself wondering: do people still care about each other?
My honest answer was: I didn’t know yet.
But in 2026, after recovering and rebuilding, I want to at least regain that hope, with YOUR help.
By the end of this year, I want to speak with 100 nonprofit founders, scientists, engineers, and builders working for social good - people using technology, research, and empathy to solve urgent problems and build a better future.
Today, I spoke with my Cornell friends Micah Sher and Darian Lee, who are building a nonprofit, Mishkanim, to revive American chestnut trees and restore soil, and bolster indigenous communities.
Talking to them actually filled me with hope. I haven't felt this way in years.
So, if you’re building a nonprofit, working on social welfare, or using technology, science, art, or community-building to help others, I’d love to hear from you & support you as much as possible! Please DM me!! I’d love to learn about your work and help highlight it! ☺️
Help me believe that people are built for good again!!!!!
2/100 (shoutout to Arjun Maitra for the inspo)
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