AUSTIN, Texas, Dec. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Chad Houser of Dallas-based Café Momentum, a restaurant
training platform for juvenile offenders, won the top prize of
$50,000 last week as the BBVA
Momentum program for social entrepreneurs closed out its inaugural
season in the U.S.
BBVA Momentum has been operating since 2011 in other countries
throughout the global footprint of BBVA, the Madrid-based bank, but this year marked its
first foray into the U.S. Its goal is to help social entrepreneurs
— those who are hoping to change the world through their work —
scale up and make a positive impact on the lives of more people. On
Friday, to close out its first BBVA Momentum class, BBVA Compass
convened a panel of judges at the AT&T Executive Education and
Conference Center at the University of
Texas at Austin to hear 10-minute pitches from its six
BBVA Momentum finalists.
The judges — entrepreneurs, UT-Austin McCombs School of Business
educators and BBVA Compass executives — selected those considered
most sustainable and with the highest social impact to receive cash
awards. In addition to Café Momentum, two other social
entrepreneurs were awarded prizes: Margo
Baines of Houston-based
Chicks With Class was awarded $25,000
for second place, while Andy Lovley
of Dallas-based Education Opens
Doors received $5,000 for third.
"Chad's belief in and passion for Café Momentum is contagious,
but what put it on top is that it already has a viable business
model that has a big impact on young, vulnerable lives," said BBVA
Compass Director of Corporate Responsibility & Reputation
Reymundo Ocañas. "And there's real potential for him to expand into
other cities. We're fully confident this $50,000 award is going to help Café Momentum
create more opportunities for these young people to build the kind
of lives they deserve to have."
Ocañas served on the judges panel, along with Kevin Dasch, a partner at Social Starts;
Kurt Faulhaber, a partner at
Stafford Capital Partners; Jose "Pepe" Olalla, head of Business
Development at BBVA Compass; and Jim
Nolen, a distinguished senior lecturer at UT-Austin's McCombs School of Business.
About the winners
Café Momentum is a restaurant training platform that
provides post-release paid internships for juvenile offenders
through which they receive intensive culinary, job and life skills
training as well as continued mentoring and support to foster
successful reentry into the community. Its first brick-and-mortar
restaurant and classroom space opened in January 2015 in downtown Dallas. It serves dinner Thursday through
Saturday beginning at 5:30 p.m. The
restaurant has been featured on local, regional and national media
outlets including "The Chew," "The Rachael Ray Show," and The
Atlantic to name a few, and it was named Eater Dallas' 2015
"Restaurant of the Year."
In his final pitch to the BBVA Momentum judges, Houser related
his rise as a chef over 17 years — he received multiple nominations
from D Magazine for Best Up-And-Coming Chef and Best Chef, and
received the Edible Dallas/Fort Worth Local Hero-Chef award — and
why he decided to sell his stake in Parigi Restaurant to devote his
full attention to being Café Momentum's executive director.
"I get to fly back to Dallas
tonight and those kids working in the restaurant are going to walk
by this check and understand that BBVA Compass believes in them and
what they're doing," Houser said after being announced as the
winner. "This validates Café Momentum and recognizes that what
we're doing is effective, and it creates an opportunity for us to
be able to scale and impact more kids."
The other prize-winners were:
Margo Baines, Chicks With
Class, which offers etiquette programs and empowerment
workshops, giving girls and boys the tools they need to help shape
the world into a better place.
Andy Lovley, Education Opens
Doors, which empowers students to purposefully navigate through
high school to college through the Roadmap to Success Program. Its
college and career-readiness program focuses on middle and high
school students, and is delivered by teachers during in-school
hours.
About BBVA Momentum
BBVA Momentum gives participants access to online and in-person
training, strategic support, potential funding, networking
opportunities and visibility. Before this year, the program had
already driven the expansion of 114 companies with high social
impact in Spain, Mexico and Peru. Jointly, those companies employ 3,200
people and their activities have benefited more than a million
people.
After BBVA decided to bring the program to the U.S., BBVA
Compass put out the call for social entrepreneurs in Texas to apply. The top candidates were
invited to Austin, where judges
from BBVA Compass and UT-Austin's
McCombs School of Business conducted 6-minute speed interviews to
determine which ones would be invited to join the program. Priority
was given to those with the most sustainable business models and
the highest social impact. The final participants were announced in
June, and have channeled their passions into solving an array of
society's issues, including how to seed more capital in underserved
communities and providing housing options for HIV-positive
individuals.
The participants received in-person training at the AT&T
Executive Education & Conference Center by professors at the
McCombs School of Business, one of the nation's most prestigious.
The educators — distinguished senior lecturers and award-winning
professors — gave the social entrepreneurs their undivided
attention over three separate multi-day training sessions, covering
down-in-the-trenches topics on financial planning, marketing, and
how to pitch investors, among other things. The online training was
provided by the Corporate Learning Alliance, a joint initiative
between the Financial Times and Spain's IE Business School.
"At McCombs, we felt privileged to work with BBVA Compass on
this innovative program that has such positive and significant
impact on our communities," said Chantal
Delys, Assistant Dean and the Director of Executive
Education at the McCombs School of Business. "All of the BBVA
Momentum participants are winners. They leave with clarity on the
path forward to grow their company, with BBVA Compass mentors who
want them all to succeed, with McCombs professors who will be
accessible when needed and are connecting them to other resources
available at UT, and with each other as a supportive network of
like-minded social entrepreneurs."
Indeed, several networking opportunities were built into the
program, giving the social entrepreneurs the chance to learn from
previous BBVA Momentum participants and investors.
"This was an incredibly comprehensive program that hits on
several angles, and when you're trying to rapidly grow and scale
up, it's exactly the support you need," Houser said. "I knew if I
lost here, I would lose to someone amazing because the competition
was so stiff."
The other BBVA Momentum 2017 participants included:
A Caring Safe Place Inc., Stanley
Phill (Houston): A Caring
Safe Place Inc. develops, constructs, and operates transitional and
permanent housing programs and provides supportive social services
to vulnerable populations of homeless persons living with HIV and
substance abuse histories.
Capital Plus Financial, Eric
Donnelly (Bedford): Capital
Plus Financial is a certified community development financial
institution (CDFI) dedicated to providing the families it supports
the opportunity for homeownership through residential mortgage
loans and other educational services.
Community Loan Center of Texas,
Matt Hull (Austin): The Community Loan Center is an
employer-based small dollar loan program serving as an alternative
to payday and auto-title loans for low-income borrowers.
E4 Youth, Carl Settles
(Austin): Through partnerships
with area schools and educators, E4 Youth helps bridge the gap
between underserved youth and creative commercial arts careers. It
identifies, nurtures and promotes talent through training,
mentoring and internships.
Ensosoft, Noor Alnahhas
(Houston): Ensosoft delivers
advanced engineering software solutions for the upstream and
midstream oil & gas industry through its two main products:
real-time pipeline integrity & asset management and real-time
artificial lift monitoring, control, optimization and failure
prediction and prevention.
Give More HUGS, Christopher
McGilvery (San Antonio):
Give More HUGS is a national nonprofit organization that unites
businesses, community organizations, global leaders and educators
to mentor and train youth and young adults to carry out the mission
to help underprivileged students develop a lifelong love for
learning, reading and creativity.
JUST, Steve Wanta (Austin): JUST invests in low-income
entrepreneurs in Texas with
capital, coaching and community to help clients save and earn more
money.
LOHAS Capital, Rick Davis
(Austin): LOHAS Capital is
developing a comprehensive marketing automation platform to support
the crowdfunding marketing campaigns of health and sustainability
and other social impact ventures seeking to bridge their funding
gaps and engage their communities more effectively.
International Consortium of Minority Cybersecurity Professionals
(ICMCP), David Elcock (Austin): ICMCP is a national organization
focused on achieving the consistent representation of women and
minorities in the cybersecurity industry through programs designed
to foster recruitment, inclusion and retention.
Magpies & Peacocks, Sarah-Jayne
Smith (Houston): Magpies
& Peacocks is dedicated to the collection and sustainable reuse
of fashion, textiles and accessories. It works with local students,
educators, designers and artists to create up-cycled collections
from donated items, provides a resource library of post-consumer
textiles for reuse and offers sustainability education.
Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Michael
Pazzaglini (Dallas): The
Society of St. Vincent de Paul is a community-based volunteer
organization that offers direct aid to people in need across nine
counties in North Texas. It
provides short-term financial, material and emotional support.
The Giving Field, Sharon Begnaud
(Beaumont): The Giving Field is a
one-acre garden program at St. Anne Catholic Church of Beaumont, Texas, with the mission of feeding
the hungry. The garden provides fresh, organically grown fruits and
vegetables to area soup kitchens. Volunteers help weed, plant,
harvest, and develop the crops.
Looking ahead to BBVA Momentum 2018
BBVA Compass Community Relations Executive for Texas Yolanda
Davila, the bank's chief liaison with the social entrepreneurs,
said the goal is to expand BBVA Momentum beyond Texas next year.
"This has been an amazing experience, top to bottom, not least
because we got to spend time with people who're pouring their
hearts into trying to make the world a better place," she said.
"It's important for us to support their work by building out BBVA
Momentum here in the U.S., so we plan to open it up to social
entrepreneurs across the bank's footprint."
The bank's seven-state footprint includes California, Colorado, Arizona, New
Mexico, Texas, Alabama and Florida. Social entrepreneurs based in those
states who are interested in participating should monitor bbva.com
for details.
To learn more about BBVA Compass, visit: www.bbvacompass.com
For more news visit: www.bbva.com and
newsroom.bbvacompass.com
About BBVA Group
BBVA (NYSE: BBVA) is a
customer-centric global financial services group founded in 1857.
The Group has a strong leadership position in the Spanish market,
is the largest financial institution in Mexico, and has leading franchises in
South America and the Sunbelt
Region of the United States; it is
also the leading shareholder in Garanti, Turkey's biggest bank for market
capitalization. Its diversified business is focused on high-growth
markets and it relies on technology as a key sustainable
competitive advantage. Corporate responsibility is at the core of
its business model. BBVA fosters financial education and inclusion,
and supports scientific research and culture. It operates with the
highest integrity, a long-term vision and applies the best
practices. More information about BBVA Group can be found at
bbva.com.
About BBVA Compass
BBVA Compass is a Sunbelt-based financial institution that operates
649 branches, including 336 in Texas, 89 in Alabama, 63 in Arizona, 61 in California, 45 in Florida, 37 in Colorado and 18 in New Mexico. BBVA Compass ranks among the top
25 largest U.S. commercial banks based on deposit market share and
ranks among the largest banks in Alabama (2nd), Texas (4th) and Arizona (5th). BBVA Compass has been
recognized as one of the leading small business lenders by the
Small Business Administration (SBA) and ranked 5th nationally in
the total number of SBA loans originated in fiscal year 2016.
Additional information about BBVA Compass can be found at
www.bbvacompass.com. For more BBVA Compass news, follow
@BBVACompassNews on Twitter or visit
newsroom.bbvacompass.com.
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SOURCE BBVA Compass