Public Service Incubator
Where Purpose Meets Possibility
The Public Service Incubator is a three-month cohort-based program designed to turn social impact ideas into action.
Program Overview
The Public Service Incubator was created by a team of displaced public servants who, like many of us, faced sudden shifts in their careers. They believed transitions can open doors to new beginnings, turning layoffs into launchpads.
This program launched as a way to honor our shared commitment to public service, community, and transformation. Through it, we are cultivating the future of public service and nurturing new generations of conscious social innovators.
This is a space for exploration, not just execution. Through a co-created, supportive, coaching-centered, and innovation-driven space, this program focuses on both the person and the project. Whether you have a seed of an idea, a social issue you care deeply about, or just a sense that you want to do something meaningful, this program is designed to help you take the next step.
Reconnect with your mission and values.
Deepen your connection to purpose and service by nurturing your inner development and clarifying the change you want to see.
Design, test, and refine your ideas.
Iterate and fine-tune your big idea with guidance from accredited coaches, master facilitators, and a community that gets it.
Pitch and validate your concept.
Strengthen your launch with hands-on practice and feedback from fellow public servants and experienced social entrepreneurs.
Meet our social innovators!
We are pleased to introduce several Fellows from our first PVG cohort and their powerful ideas. Click to explore!
Kathleen Borgueta
Founder, Pivoting Parents
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Pivoting Parents is a grassroots community for professionals navigating job loss while caregiving. When I was terminated from USAID on maternity leave, I realized I needed a community that understood the collision of job loss, identity, and caregiving at a time when I could barely form a sentence or string together three hours of sleep. When I couldn’t find that space, I built one.
Now Pivoting Parents has about 1000 followers across platforms, spanning 12 federal agencies, 25+ states and three continents. We aim to hold a space for parents to gather, learn, and rise together. Through workshops, peer support, and collaborative childcare pilots, we connect parents with recruiters, mental health experts, entrepreneurs, and each other—offering both practical tools and emotional solidarity.
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For Pivoting Parents, success means that parents navigating job loss are no longer forced to choose between caregiving and their own professional recovery. It means helping parents move through career transitions with fewer obstacles by providing childcare, expert guidance, and a community that functions as the “village” so many families lack in moments of crisis.
Success is measured not only in tangible outcomes (e.g., resumes completed, interviews secured, and jobs gained) but in the strength of the networks parents build with one another.
Ultimately, success is elevating the lived realities of caregiving while job seeking into the national conversation, ensuring that parents’ voices shape the future of work and family policy; that my story, my son's story is one of resilience, joy, and a brighter horizon for families like mine.
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The PVG program has accelerated my journey as a social entrepreneur by giving me the confidence and structure to fully commit to this work. In just a few weeks, I’ve registered my venture as an LLC, launched a website, created marketing materials, and even produced swag. All milestones I never imagined achieving on my own. The mentorship, coaching, and tools I’ve received have helped me move past my hesitation to claim the title of Founder and embrace entrepreneurship as part of my identity. My work now has real momentum, and I feel prepared to pursue partnerships, seek funding, and begin considering this as a full-time path; one that can both sustain my family and create meaningful social impact.
Sujata Bijou
Founder, Sweet Tea and Chai
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In my southern coastal community, I see how loneliness connects to many other problems such as mental health challenges, teen suicide, isolated elders, veterans struggling with PTSD. I believe healing begins with connection, so creating safe and respectful spaces where people can have honest conversations across differences is important to me. Building these kinds of conversations can help bring people closer in a community that sometimes feels divided. I'm building the Sweet Tea & Chai Society, a no-phone zone fun place that will inspire connection and understanding among adolescents and others in the community while they are attending fun attractions, creating herbal drinks and mocktails, and eating health snacks. Through respectful dialogue and mental health and other community resources, Sweet Tea & Chai Society will overcome divisiveness, fight isolation, and build belonging. I hope to help create a stronger, more inclusive community where everyone feels seen, heard, and cared for.
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Success will be measured by the number of teens attending Sweet Tea & Chai Society, satisfaction surveys to capture enjoyment and engagement, and outcome metrics around sense of belonging and mental health.
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The PVG program has helped me build my self-confidence in social entrepreneurship. Through PVG, I have felt supported by peers and experts. The program has also provided strong feedback and fine-tuning of my idea.
Autumn Gorman
Founder, United Horizons Initiative
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The United Horizons Initiative builds fit-for-purpose platforms around specific corporate or supply-chain challenges, combining blended finance with other tools to unlock growth and engage SMEs — ensuring that blended finance is applied with discipline and best practice, and with the initiative serving as the backbone for faster, smarter replication and scale.
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We’ll know we’re successful when platforms can be stood up efficiently around different corporate or supply-chain challenges, delivering both capital and complementary support in ways that prove replicable across contexts. Success also means the Initiative (and ultimately myself as a steward of it) finding a home where it can continue to grow, share lessons, and drive broader adoption.
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PVG has helped me sharpen the Initiative from a USAID-born concept into a clear idea with potential to work beyond that context. The program created space to pressure-test the model, refine the narrative, and connect with peers and mentors who pushed me to think bigger. It also gave me the confidence and practical tools to approach potential partners with a stronger, more compelling proposition.
Founder, Feenix Collaborative
Minal Amin
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What if the most successful and sustainable solutions for young people are the ones they design for themselves? The challenges facing today’s youth – the need to belong, the need for equitable access to education, health, and social resources, and the need for purpose – are more complex than ever. In Wheaton, MD, more than half of the community’s 6,000 adolescents are not engaged in extracurricular activities, leaving too many young people without spaces to belong, lead, and flourish.
Feenix Collaborative was born to close this gap. And we’re flipping the script with a bold model: every program is designed by youth, for youth. Guided by design thinking, we train youth leaders to facilitate co-design workshops where youth come together to analyze data, identify pressing needs, and prototype bold out-of-school experiences—everything from financial literacy to creative expression. These offerings aren’t just programs; they are pipelines for confidence, capabilities, and improved social health. We aim to prove that when young people design their own opportunities, the results are not only powerful but sustainable.
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We’ll know we’re successful when youth not only participate but lead; when surveys and testimonials show growth in belonging, confidence, and leadership. More importantly, success means reaching and engaging those who have traditionally been left out of extracurricular opportunities—ensuring equity and access for every young person in our community. Success also means programs that start as prototypes are refined into ongoing offerings with strong community demand.
On the organizational side, success looks like building a diversified revenue base, formalizing partnerships, and developing a replicable model that allows Fenix Collaborative to expand beyond Wheaton while staying youth-led at its core.
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The PVG program has been an important part of my journey as a social entrepreneur. The program’s network of advisors and fellow entrepreneurs gave me not only practical tools but also a community that fuels resilience and grit. The program boosted my confidence and equipped me with the discipline to take my business idea from concept to launch, while staying anchored in my core values of equity, justice, and youth leadership.
Kasia Hatcher
Founder, The Trusted Edge
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When the organization I loved, one of the most values-driven, trust-centered cultures I’d experienced in my 20-year career, was forced to close after USAID was dismantled, I knew something fundamental had shifted. The international development world I had poured two decades into would never be the same. But in that loss, I saw something deeper: a growing need far beyond our field. Strong, high-performing women leaders, especially those with soft hearts, and purpose-driven organizations were under immense pressure, carrying heavy loads alone, navigating complexity without the trusted support they deserved. I realized the very skills I had honed globally: building trust in broken systems, aligning strategy with humanity, helping leaders find clarity amid chaos, were exactly what women and mission-driven teams needed here, now.
That’s why I started The Trusted Edge: to create a space where clarity, trust, and transformation meet. A place where women learn to lead differently, from the inside out and build the community to support them, the type of community I had, and organizations grow impact without losing their soul. After 20 years helping others build systems that scale, it was time to build my own, one that equips leaders to rise with courage, emotional agility, and the right kind of community around them. Because sustainable impact doesn’t come from doing more; it comes from leading with wholeness. And that’s the trusted edge every leader and every organization deserves.
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I’ll know I’ve succeeded when the women and organizations I serve as a trusted advisor start leading from a place of peace, not pressure, when clarity replaces confusion, trust replaces striving, and they begin building what truly lasts. Tangibly, I’ll see it in the fruit: women who once carried everything alone now anchored in community, leading with grounded confidence and emotional agility. Organizations that once ran on urgency now moving with alignment, trust, and measurable impact where strategy, culture, and results move together.
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The PVG program gave me the space and community I needed to refine my vision and clarify my voice as a founder. It helped me get grounded in who I’m called to serve and how to speak directly to them. I know I’m not for everyone, but for the women and organizations I’m meant to walk alongside, I want to be unmistakable. PVG helped me align my purpose, message, and business so those clients can find me and know they’re in the right place.
Lorine Ghabranious
Founder, Missing Link
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When you lose your job, it doesn't just shake your routine- it shakes you. The questions come fast: Who am I without this? How will I pay rent? What if I can't find something else? What if I have to settle?
And beneath it all, a quieter fear: What if I'm the problem?
You're not.
The truth is, the system was never designed for you to thrive. It was designed to keep you moving—applying, performing, proving yourself over and over—while your healthcare hangs by a thread and your worth gets measured in productivity. You're told to hustle harder, brand yourself better, network smarter. But nobody's asking: What do you actually need? What do you want to build? Who do you want to become?
That's the Missing Link.
Instead of facing the search alone, you step into a community that sees you, not as a resume, but as a whole person. A place where you're not just hunting for the next paycheck, but discovering what's actually possible when the pressure to "just survive" is lifted. We're building something radically different: a platform and community where you don't have to choose between paying rent and doing work that matters. Where health insurance, childcare support, and housing assistance aren't tied to a job you hate (or love)—they're part of the foundation that lets you breathe while you figure out what's next.
Here, you're not a job seeker. You're a creator, a learner, a collaborator. You have access to mentors who've been where you are. Navigators who guide you through the overwhelm. Peers who share knowledge in real time. Resources that adapt to your needs, not a corporate playbook. And most importantly- ownership. This isn't someone else's company. It's ours. Collectively.
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We have a solution that is challenging the status quo, where people feel supported and safe to imagine, create, to support one another.
Rest is valued, not just hustle. We have time to reflect, explore, and imagine.
Resources are accessible-mentors, training, tools-as we grow into new skills.
Our circumstances shape the work, not the other way around. We design what serves us.
Basic needs are accessible- health insurance, rent support, childcare-so we can think beyond survival.
Ownership is shared. We're building a village, not padding someone else's portfolio.
Community is constant. Encouragement. Accountability. Care. We're never alone in this.
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The program has provided much needed structure and milestones to keep ideation progressing but also the space to dream and create. We have been able to explore blue sky concepts but also ground them in ways that allows these ideas to become reality.
