The Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School is now accepting applications for the Tamer Fund for Social Ventures.

This fund provides seed grants of up to $25,000 to nonprofit, for-profit, and hybrid early-stage social and environmental ventures. Tamer Fund seed grants will be made to approximately seven ventures each year. Two live information sessions will be held on Friday, July 16 at 1:00 PM ET and Tuesday, July 27 at 1:00 PM.

The Avery Workshop on Brand Management, hosted on July 15 at 7pm, will feature three GSAPP alumni who lead their own ventures—from toy design to wine and home fashion. Rajiv Fernandez ‘10 M.Arch (Lil’ Icon and Chief Executive Officer, Historicons, Inc.), Aimee Chang ‘06 M.Arch (Nine Suns), and Nasozi Kakembo ‘08 MSUP (xN Studio) will discuss how they manage their brands through the lens of cultural stewardship.

The Avery Workshops is a series of professional development programming that responds to the creative and professional practice of GSAPP graduates sponsored by the Alumni Programming and Professional Development Committee of the GSAPP Alumni Board.

Image Caption: Illustrations by Rajiv Fernandez, founder of Lil’ Icon.

• GSAPP alumni Roberta Washington ‘71 MArch and Laura Heim '84 MArch will participate in the event “Founders’ Showcase: Women-Owned Firms In the Spotlight” on July 13 at 6:30pm. Register for the event, organized by the AIANY Emerging New York Architects and Women in Architecture Committees, here.

• WIP Collaborative, which includes Faculty Bryony Roberts, launches “Restorative Ground” in Hudson Square on July 14 at 5pm. Details here.

• The 2021 Hacking for Humanity Hackathon (September 10-12) at Columbia University aims to harness the diverse talent and resources of the campus community and beyond to solve pressing global challenges affecting people and the planet. For three days, students, alumni, and researchers from across the campus will form interdisciplinary teams to design and develop innovative solutions to urgent problems. The Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at the Columbia Business School will host two information sessions on July 14 at 10am and 7pm EST. Register here and learn more here.

• The Graduate Initiative for Inclusion & Belonging will host a Financial Literacy workshop with a focus on credit building and budgeting for graduate and professional students on July 14 at 4pm. Register here.

• The EVCAU (Virtual Space in Architectural and Urban Design) Research lab at École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Val de Seine (ENSA PVS) announced a call for papers, films, posters, and installations related to the topic of contemporary Architecture and Artificial Intelligence by November 18, 2021. Details here.

This week on the Climate Change in the Arab World mini-series podcast, MArch student Bisher Tabbaa speaks with Gökçe Günel about utopian city projects, sustainable futures, and social justice with a specific focus on Masdar City in the UAE. The series is conceived and hosted by the student group Masaha.

Listen to the podcast series on Soundcloud or browse the full GSAPP Conversations archive online.