The inspiration for NCL came from a series of lectures I heard in the car while dropping off my brother-in-law, Zab, at the airport. He had downloaded some lectures from itunes U – the Standford Social Enterprise Series, I believe – and we were listening to them.
We were basically mesmerized by the premise of social entrepreneurship – the concept of building a business that invested a portion of its profits into a particular cause. The ceo’s of ethos water and pura-vida coffee spoke of the transformative power of business when applied to problems of poverty, sanitation, establishment and protection of human rights and education. At the time, I was struggling with obtaining funding for our little research entity, the HOPEresearch initiative, and had recently developed the idea for a calendar that would be sold in support of the initiative. Suddenly the somewhat unidirectional and occasionally thankless task of fundraising seemed infused with purpose, and well, hope. I bounced the idea off of Zab (currently working with the UN, and no stranger to novel funding mechanisms for social projects) and he approved. I then approached my longtime friend, Francis and we began setting forth the goals of our little company.
Simply put, we would enmesh our passions of medicine, learning, information technology, and geek culture. Our love of John Nash’s game theory and the promise it holds in terms of helping people learning large amounts of complex information would provide the foundation for our work. But lastly, we would promise ourselves from the very outset and via the bylaws that we would apply a portion of our profits towards social projects that continue to inspire us. Building the world’s first inter-hospital gaming community? Check. Supporting amazing front-line organizations such as the International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders? Check.
So, echoing Conan O’Brien’s graceful exit from ‘The Tonight Show’, I would say that the best part of what we do entails never being cynical. If you remain intellectually curious, and convey a sense of passion and wonderment to those around you – be it your friends, relatives, teachers or even patients – rest assured you will be nerdcore. Mathews out.