Shin Cai ’19 on starting a dialogue, inspiring a movement, and making a difference in the Boston community

Shin Cai leads a new breed of student activist. As co-president of CASE Impact, the academic club she founded in November 2016, she heads up a team hard at work helping social enterprise startups measure their impact. In just a little over a year, they’ve gone from campus forum for dialogue to creating real change in the Greater Boston community.

We talked with Shin recently about the impetus for the club, the causes they’re supporting, their problem-solving process, and what’s next for this passionate, socially minded BS Business ’19 major from Farmington, CT.

CASE Impact sounds like such a worthwhile venture. What does CASE stand for and what inspired you to launch the club?

My sophomore year happened to coincide with the 2016 election, a socially and politically turbulent time to be a college student. We started to see a bipartisan need for having a dialogue on campus and wanted to bring together intellectually curious people. CASE stands for Conversations About Social and Environmental impact. Our first topic was the opioid crisis. We ultimately decided we wanted to be more about the Greater Boston community and partner with different organizations where we could make an impact in the community.

How many members did you have when you started and how many now?

We started out with eight to 10 people at each meeting, plus the four people on our executive board. We’ve grown to 25 to 30 people who meet once a week, plus we have one e-board meeting per week. And we have four subgroups (organized around projects) that have their own weekly meetings outside the main meeting.

Who’s on your e-board?

Tiffany Liu ’19, Andrew Kubicek ’19, Becky Reilly ’19, and Jillian Pruner ’21. They’re the incredibly creative, intelligent, passionate, and humorous people who embody the culture of CASE. I started out as co-president and founder, but we’re not required to have titles anymore. Now we’re all just teammates.

What social enterprise startups are you working with?

Right now, we’re working with two. One is Autism Eats, which was launched by Lenard Zohn, whose son Adin has autism. He realized it was hard for families with autism to feel comfortable in restaurants, because they tend to be unfriendly environments for autistic children. So he had the idea to rent restaurants and make them more welcoming for these families. The idea caught on, and now events are popping up all over the country. We’re helping Lenard with marketing and creating more awareness around the organization’s events.

The other organization is InnerCity Weightlifting (IWC), a gym based in Dorchester and Cambridge with trainers who are members of lower-income communities. ICW was founded by Jon Feinman with a mission of reducing violence and recidivism. The less tangible outcome is spreading social capital by bringing people together and eliminating socioeconomic barriers. They’re doing quite well on the operational side, but Jon needed help with impact evaluation. It’s revenue-generating and sustaining so it’s a great partner for impact.

Sounds like really meaningful work. What about student organizations? Are there any other issues you’re tackling here on campus?

We’re working with a student-led environmental initiative called Element Hope. Their mission is to create a nonprofit organization that serves ocean and marine life conservation, with a focus on endangered sea turtles. We’re helping them define their scope and find resources.

So you’re involved in environmental issues too. Nice complement to your other work. By the way, are professors involved in CASE Impact?

Yes, our main faculty resource is Ed Frechette, our social entrepreneur-in-residence. He teaches a class on social innovation and one on managing for social impact, so he’s a great mentor. He helps us with our decisions and has helped us navigate through pivots. It’s nice to be able to barge into his office with updates and questions.

How do you find organizations to work with in the first place?

Referrals come from students, professors, the marketing team, and different resources on campus like the volunteer center and other academic departments.

What about your problem-solving process? Are you following industry best practices or have you developed a process of your own?

We moved toward good old-fashioned brainstorming for problem solving. One of our e-board members spent a semester abroad at Oxford, and she brought a curriculum back from there which has been a great guiding star. We sit in a circle, share ideas, throw topics out, people ask questions. We always have next step deliverables for each project. Each meeting, we cover past deliverables and move on to the next.

The meeting pace and frequency was a deliberate decision. We keep meetings short and purposeful (about 45 minutes), but keep the culture lighthearted. We find a blend of that culture is a healthy balance. We also find it’s more productive to give each team the independence to meet outside of our meeting. That flexibility has gone a long way.

Do you invite speakers in for events? Anyone that stands out?

The social innovation arm of the Shea Center brings on speakers. Guests we like to host are the founders of the organizations we partner with.

So what’s next for you, Shin, when you graduate in the spring?

My degree will be a BS in Business with concentrations in Operations Management and Economics. I interned with the Boston office of Goldman Sachs over the summer, and it was a great experience. They offered me a job, and I signed on to work in their investment management division in New York for two years. I’m hoping to learn how to work hard and apply that knowledge to different organizations and industries.

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Autism Eats is an autism-friendly dinner club based in Andover, MA, and founded by Lenard Zohn, whose son Adin has autism. The organization collaborates with restaurants around the country to host events in a welcoming, judgment-free environment for families with autism to socialize and connect with others. Learn more.

InnerCity Weightlifting is a mission-driven gym dedicated to reducing youth violence by connecting high-impact youth with new networks and opportunities, including meaningful career tracks in and beyond personal training. Founded by Jon Feinman, a former AmeriCorps member and personal trainer, ICW has locations in Dorchester and Cambridge, MA. Learn more.