Welcome back to Startup health now. The podcast where we celebrate the entrepreneurs and innovators for a transforming health. I'm Logan Plaster. This week, we're talking about youth well being in the digital age with Kat Hancock, founding executive director of young futures. Last year, Katy helped launch this nonprofit with funding from pivotal ventures, Melinda French Gates and Susan Crown exchange. Before that, she was part of the court team that builds Startup Health and remains an
active member of our impact board. I wanted to take a few minutes to learn more about how she's bringing her experience with startups into the nonprofit world. Young futures is all about helping young people thrive in a digital world, but it's not all about limiting screen time. In fact, a core message for Kat is that we need to shift the narrative away from moral panic. Like throwing away all kids devices and focus
on real world solutions. It's all about innovating within the digital tension that young people feel today. Most teenagers know that they are on their phones too much, and they wanna have a healthy relationship with tech and they know they need to log off say at 11PM because they have a midterm in the morning, but they might have a friend who's having a mental health crisis, and they feel like they have to be available.
To that friend. And our conversation we'll hear about young futures first funding challenge where they committed a million dollars to profits focused on loneliness. Social connection and well being. The reason we started there is we're building on, doctor Vi Murphy, the Us surgeon General's advisory around the loneliness crisis. In our country as well as youth mental health crisis.
We'll also hear about a few of the companies that received that funding this year, including some youth fled efforts. Let's dive in. Got you a hancock. Thank you for joining me today. I'm excited talk to you and share with our audience a bit more about members of our impact board. So thanks for joining me. So happy to be here. So I wanna start by just getting to know you a little bit more. You are the your title. Correct. Founding exact executive director
of the nonprofit, young futures. And so I wanna hear all about the work that you're doing there and what it was like as a executive founding executive director. Since I know you are really there at the beginning at the formation of everything from the logo to really how this was gonna roll out online. So let's just start with by tell me a little bit about the work you're doing there, what you're focused on Absolutely.
So young futures is a new organization focused on making it easier for young people to grow up in the digital world. And I come to this space as you know, from... For the last 10 years, I spent help building startup health. As a founding team member there, and and my background is really from the tech the the tech startup side, of the world in the 4 profit world.
So I have built multiple tech startups from from early stages, a couple of which were acquired and then help build startup up health for a decade and really caught the bug of supporting innovators and the power of ecosystems to solve big challenges, which you know very well, what what that's all about. But I found this opportunity to address this particular, challenge around youth well being and youth mental health, 1 that I just couldn't resist diving into. Yeah. And so
young features is a really unique organization. It was founded, you know, we just started building it last November. And several fund came together who had been c funding work in this space for a number of years, and and 2 initial fund, are pivotal ventures, Melinda French gates this company, and Susan Crown Exchange, and other amazing female philanthropist, Susan Crown, leads that organization.
And they had been funding work around youth mental health youth well being, and the impacts of technology and how that has transformed the experience of of growing up as digital natives, and saw that there needed to be a lot more than just some programmatic funding and funding of research, but an ecosystem play.
So how can we lift up a lot of solutions specifically non funding solutions, and community organizations, grassroots, org that are in schools in communities, etcetera, across America, already working with teens, And we actually work with pre teens and teens, so ages 10 to 19. And so that that was the idea that I came and and met with those fund when they were forming that idea, and we really saw eye to eye and and they asked me to, build this organization and
and lead this team. Okay. I wanna hear more about the work that has come out of that, but first, talk to me about the challenge a little bit more, you know, there's a lot of hand ringing around young people growing up in the digital age and there's a desire to just sort of throw away their smartphones entirely, and I talked to me about some of the tent pole health challenges that are real and tangible that we need to be thinking about. Around young people in today's digital environment.
Yes. So there's a number of ways to approach this space we talk mainly about youth well being, which encompasses youth mental health. So we are definitely worried about teens that are already diagnosed with anxiety and depression, for example, and we're also trying to support more broadly all young people. So that also includes a teen who's just kind of doing okay, and they're not thriving. So, you know, well
being is is the larger umbrella. We're also really concerned with with marginalized communities, kids of color, Lgbtq kids who are... Experiencing the worst mental health outcomes in America. So so we're taking this approach of how can we shift the narrative in this country from frankly, moral panic and just ob over the challenges to what are we gonna do about it? How can we help? How can we serve up solutions because you know as a parent, every family is really left to
their own devices? Literally in figuratively, to figure out how to navigate this. And so there's a real lack of solutions. The solutions actually exist, but they need support. There's also a funding gap at the earlier stage non nonprofit level. And then those nonprofit leaders could use some support as they're trying to scale their impact and get to the next level, and that's where we come in. Give us a sense of some of the innovative companies and startups that have that you've
started to work with. That are trying to address some of these challenges. Yes. So they're all non nonprofit. They're not startups. Okay. We host... 2 funding challenges a year. We commit a million dollars each time, and we have done 1 funding challenge to date. Our first funding challenge was called the Lonely Hearts club challenge. And it was focused on loneliness, social connection and well being.
The reason we started there is we're building on doctor Vi Murphy, the Us surgeon General's advisory around the loneliness crisis in our country as well as youth mental health crisis, and we know there's a huge body of research to show that when young people have protective relationships. Such as close relationships with their family, their friends, their community, they are much better equipped to handle hurdles that come their way and challenges that come
their way. And when they don't have those kinds of real meaningful social connections, and they hit speed bumps, they're more likely to have anxiety. Or be depressed. So so these are these are really sort of protective factors. These social connection relationships. So we started there because we wanna go upstream and and help build a foundation where young people can start from a strong footing as they're growing up in the digital world.
So we put out our Rfp when we launched it south by Southwest. This year, we had about 200 nonprofit apply, and we just selected and announced our first 10 grand teas at the beginning of this month, So they are incredible. They're they're all over the country. We have a few that are working in
sort of the creative realm. So for example, there's an organization called Hip hop into learning out of Louisville Kentucky and they are really focused on helping kids express themselves through hip hop and and connect in to their emotions and find community and belonging.
Through that kind of programming. So, They're really helping kids, hey, you know, have a place to be and and feel that their voice really matters and find belonging through expressing themselves and a lot of what they talk about also is what does it mean to be living in this... Digital world and how can you harness things like social media, and technology in a way that makes you empowered and have agency
Interesting. Are you finding that as you get into actually selecting the companies and working with them that the, the aperture around what what you were defining as young people thriving in a digital age that that's sort of widening. I mean you just mentioned hip hop, it's not, like, directly connected to, say social media or maybe what I would, like, immediately think of as, like, youth youth plus digital, you know, plus health. So is it's the... Yeah. It's the the view widening.
The view is is really wide. There's a lot of ways in and a lot of ways to support Young people and their well being. And, again, if we go upstream and and provide some support at this at the social emotional level, then as they're using social media and technology, they're better equipped to have a healthier relationship. So that's 1 way in social connection. We... We're gonna have 2 funding challenges a year, So we have a long list, along pipeline of potential funding
challenges. So we're also talking about supporting... Programs around safe digital play and gaming, tools for educators, supporting youth, community builders, and and movement builders. So there's all kinds of ways in on this. And so the idea is we wanna support hundreds of these... We call them young futures innovators, the grand ts, hundreds of these young futures innovators, and then bring them together in an ecosystem.
And so they can... Collaborate, which we got to be with our first 10 grant ts in person last week in Dc for retreat. And the amount of excitement between them around wow. I'm not alone anymore. We're part of a movement together and Also, let's work together. Let's collaborate. It was really special. So are you finding that the breadth of... You you said there's lots of ways.
Into the family to the community? The breath is more of a strength than a challenge in terms of saying, like, how are we actually needed together as a community? Yeah. The the breath is... You know, there's... Like I said, there's a number of ways in. There are lots of different approaches. Some are... Of our of our 10 grand ts, 3 have a regional focus, 7 have a national focus, for example. Got it. They're serving different communities, different...
Demographics, they themselves. The wife innovators are very diverse. I'm in terms of of gender, race, age, you know, we've got a number of youth led organizations as grant ts. All the way up to... We have a grant t called Sesame g, which is led by a gentleman, gentleman named Lewis Bernstein. You know, he's he's on the the older end of the spectrum. He worked for Sesame Street for 40 years. And so he has a nonprofit that brings together seniors with teams and preschool, in 3 person mentoring.
Uses social emotional lessons from Sesame Street, and the teens have amazing outcomes because they all of a sudden feel really needed. They're mentoring these preschool. They're learning from the seniors. It's just this amazing kind of cycle of of positive reinforcement. So Yes. The I... Love it. The the approaches and and the demographics are are really wide. And yet. Helping youth thrive in today's digital age. That's the connecting tissue. It is. Yes. Each 1
of them... For this first funding challenge, they had to be able to answer that question. How are you helping young people grow up in the digital world. How are you addressing The digital tension that young people feel, and we talk about that a lot, the the concept of digital tension because... And that that concept is why the answer to this is not limit screen time.
And so when I say digital tension, it's things like, you know, most teenagers know that they're on their phones too much, and they wanna have a healthy relationship with tech, and they know they need to log off, say at 11PM, because have a midterm in the morning, but they might have a friend who's having a mental health crisis, and they feel like they have to be available to that friend. Or they wanna use their phone less, but they they need to even email
their teachers from their phone. They need to do school work on their computer. They need a phone to order anything at a restaurant oftentimes. So we're just... They're growing up in such a
different experience than we did. And so a big thing that that we really talk about is for for parents especially is just having an empathetic approach when you're talking to your teens about about what's going on instead of just assuming Oh, all your problems are caused by the phone, You know, Like, there... A lot of things playing out on the phone. They mirror the offline experiences. They're just amplified with technology.
Yeah. I feel like parents ought to be pretty empathetic because most of us struggle with overuse of technology as well. So it's... It's it should be easy for us to understand the challenge. Yeah. Having talked to the first 10 grand ts, you mentioned before that, you know, you from this startup world moving into the non nonprofit space. What are some of the concrete ways you've been able to bring some of
that... That knowledge over, where are you seeing some sort of maybe some nonprofit gaps where some startup wisdom can be helpful. Yeah. So we're really excited because with our Grant ts, we're going to support them in a 6 month program called on Futures Academy. And we're really there to support them as as leaders. And, of course, that will translate to their work. They're all very successful in their own right already, and we wanna help them get to the next level.
And so we're gonna bring in a series of experts. From both the nonprofit and the for profit spaces to help them with leadership skills around scaling and growing an organization, fundraising, storytelling, and communications, and then lastly, subject matter experts around things like social connection, youth engagement, etcetera, but, you know, some of the things that we're gonna provide are are simple things like
office hours with an Hr expert. We're office hours with an accountant who can help you. Talk through your budgeting for for the following year. And those things are expensive, and and they're time consuming to track down for a profit leader, but some of the things that I think really translate from the, the for profit startup up world to the non profit.
World are around goal setting, and and communications with fund, and potential fund around k. This is where I wanna go, and this is how I'm going to get there, and these are my priorities over the next quarter, year, 3 years, and even this is my 10 year goal. And it it can be difficult from a cultural perspective for nonprofit to always think about those longer term goals.
Because funding is so scarce, and they're often just really in this cycle of, you know, worrying about funding and applying for grants, etcetera, And at the same time, it's sort of a a double edged sword because fund wanna hear about big visions in the nonprofit space.
As well as the for profit space. So those would be some some, an example really of of of a alerting, And then The other is in the in the for profit startup world, there are a lot of organizations, you know, like, startup health as as an example, that supports Ceos as in founders. There are meetups ups and and peer communities and accelerators, and and there's a whole venture capital, industry, And so there's just less of that
kind of support for nonprofit leaders. That infrastructure for the ecosystem is not... As robust. And so even bringing them together as peer groups, and and forming kind of these these peer advisory boards is has already been really powerful. Very nice for us. Shifting gears slightly. We're talking today because of your presence on star health. Impact board. What do you hope to bring to that that group?
What are you excited about in terms of the work that the startup health leadership is is currently engaged in. Yeah. I mean, I think it's really always especially now, my job to make sure that young people are part of the conversation. When it comes to health, young, you know, children's health, youth health, youth mental health does not get the majority of the funding by any stretch. Or attention because young people don't cost the system as much money. Like, that's the the bottom line.
That being said, we are in a youth mental health crisis. I think organizations like startup health, the model, the the media, company which which you're leading so well, can do a lot to raise awareness for things like that. And and also, you know, I'm I'm building a different network than than the 1 that I had at startup up, health, and so anything I can do to support the work that you all are doing? I'm I'm always a number 1 fan.
What do you wish more people understand? Still in and appreciated about today's youth mental health crisis. Mh. It's really that piece around digital tension and how complicated it is. And youth are not a monolith. They are not Wednesday's fits all. And so to come in and just say, you know, screen time is the issue, it it just doesn't cut it. It won't encourage any conversation, inter generational. That's not to say there isn't a really important discussion to be had around delaying act.
Success. Right? There's there's, you know, Tiktok, 9 year olds shouldn't be on tiktok. It's... There's there's there should be many conversations and boundaries around usage and access, etcetera. But as we just talked about, young people are growing up in a digital world. It exists. It's it's know, they're don't... They don't even really reconcile online versus offline behavior. So for adults to come in asking questions, you and and really being more of a coach versus a referee as as a colleague
of... Or friend of mine at center for digital thriving, Emily Weinstein says, that's that's really always a good a good message to leave people with. Yeah. I have to ask because you have young children and I do too, how if at all, have you changed your view of devices and technology since you started since you helped found young futures. Yeah. That's a great question. So who my kids are 7 and 9, They don't have cell phones yet. They do have ipads. I will say, as
screen time has... Has gotten less over the the last 7 months that I've been working on on young futures That being said, that was kinda already on our radar, for example, we just find it's better to have screen time only happen on the weekends. Because during the week now, my older son has homework. There's just not really time. The the thing I think that is the most significant is is myself, and and my husband Unity, are so much more aware of the behavior
we're modeling. And you mentioned that earlier. I really go out of my way to not have my phone around at meal times. I try to just leave it upstairs in my bedroom as much as possible when I'm around my kids. I'm not really on social media much anymore at although that's a little challenging because I have to be for young futures, but you know, I'm... I'm definitely very aware. The behavior and modeling and nobody's perfect, but doing my best.
What I'm hearing from you is on 1 hand, there's this tension and you're trying to not reach digital abs and say, look, it's a very, very nuance conversation. On the other hand, you personally are moving towards trying to regulate and trying to Yeah. Yes. I'm I'm not trying to have abs, but I'm definitely trying to have a healthier relationship myself. And and model that. And, of course, I... My whole life functions on technology. Use my phone for everything like
all of us. Yeah and I now have just more of an awareness of how my kids are perceiving my behavior and how intentional, I wanna be about being present when I'm with them. Here here's always sort of a wildcard question to close with. We talk a lot about collaboration at startup Health, and I'll bet you do too at young futures. And, and I'm always thinking about if, you know, if I could wave a magic wand and bring 2 companies together or 3 companies together. Oh what would some of those magical
collaborations look like? And it's interesting to think about startup health and the kind of companies we work with? Very few of them have, a youth health angle. There many of them could benefit from the work that you're doing and kind of blending these different visions, And I wonder if you could bring a couple or 3 different types of businesses together. Do you have an idea of? Kind of what that might look like or just what would be what would be cool to see?
My dream is for young features to be more. Kind of an entertaining media company, in order to dis the solutions that we're supporting, so in this world where we're just saturated with content. As you know, you can't talk at people you have to... Draw them in and be engaging. So when I think about how I want our voice to develop, I I want us to feel that we're not a nonprofit that we're more of a just a consumer facing organization that that here to help people, and that does it in a way that's
entertaining. So so I'd love to partner with with any consumer facing companies who share our core values and and our brands. I love the messaging of of some of the sports companies like Nike and adidas and the way that they they highlight athletes leads in a way that celebrates who they are as humans. Mh. I think of our young futures innovators in those ways too and wanna make them superstars because they are.
So I'm I'm pretty open, but, I'd love to you know, strike up some pretty unconventional partnerships in terms of the non nonprofit base. First, the kim comes to mind as as someone like mister Beast, someone who's already, you know, in front of kids eyeballs. Absolutely. Start start getting someone of that of that caliber or someone of great influence to start talking about these issues. Mister Beast is part of your your lexicon. Yep. Yep. You you you heard it here, mister Beast.
Yeah. But, basically, you know, figure out where the eyeballs already are. Figure out what those media companies. Well, I say that because my first because now I'm old. My first response was, oh, so like, young futures meets Mtv. That was where my head went, and I realized. That's not it. Yeah. Although we do know some some great people over at Mtv. They have a a group that does impact work and Okay. And they're doing a lot to support youth mental health actually. Okay. Okay.
So So so it's so it's still around... They're they're still around just not in the way that we knew. Growing up absolutely. Okay. T r, all the good stuff. Very nice. Okay. Katy. Thanks for taking time with me. I'm so happy that you are... On the impact board currently, you're bringing not only just a decade plus of time with startup up health to
your experience. But now this really fascinating and important work at young futures, exciting to read about, which I already have, the, the, you know, the inaugural class, and to know that you're gonna keep doing that and keep building this community forward. So, look forward to reading more about the progress and getting another update in the future. Thanks, Logan. Tower. Take care of. Thanks for listening to start Health now. We'll be back again with another episode next week.