Alumni Spotlight: Lafci on Forbes 30 Under 30 List
Alexandria Lafci, alumna of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, has been named a member of the “30 Under 30” list published by Forbes magazine.
The annual list collects 30 young entrepreneurs and change agents in a variety of fields ranging from sports to entertainment, business and technology.
In total, nine BU alums made the list, with Alexandria Lafci (Pardee’11) among them. Lafci is one of the founders of New Story Charity, an organization that builds homes for displaced people around the world.
Lafci’s accomplishment was chronicled in a Jan. 29 article in BU Today entitled “Making a Better World, From Neuroscience to Sandwiches.”
From the text of the article:
At BU, Lafci earned a bachelor’s in international relations, having studied abroad in Morocco and led a Global Business Brigades delegation to Panama. After graduation, she spent two years teaching sixth grade English in Washington, D.C., for Teach for America. She also worked in operations management for an industrial supply firm in Atlanta. “I hated it,” she says. “I was not waking up feeling like my day had an immense purpose.”
Lafci spent her off-hours looking for a way to build a prosocial organization. She met Hagler and Marshall at a gathering for social entrepreneurs, and within a few months they and a fourth founder, Mike Arrieta, started New Story. Last year, when they were accepted into the well-known Y Combinator start-up incubator program in San Francisco, they quit their day jobs and moved there to work on it full-time. Tech industry leaders who signed on as advisors contributed operating expenses, and all money raised goes to building homes. Lafci is chief operating officer.
You can read the entire article here.
Donors to New Story Charity receive a video of the home funded by their contribution. 100 percent of public donations go to funding home construction. Learn more about them here.