Margaret worked for healthcare organizations and started two different programs that dealt with policies and the underserved community. She later started a social venture fund and has now found her home as the CEO at Hopelab. 

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Hopelab is a mission investor and a social innovation lab that develops health technology products. Hopelab was founded on the premise of building a video game for kids with cancer. Through diligent effort, Hopelab is working toward a significant increase in mental health providers reaching young people, especially those who are underserved. Hopelab aims to see youth co-creating solutions that support their aspirations, and they are building a youth lab right now to accomplish that. On a bigger scale, Hopelab wants to see increased funding in adoption of mental health interventions that benefit youth. 

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“We envision a future where all young people, particularly young people of color, LGBTQ + young people and others in traditionally under-invested communities are thriving, free from barriers to their mental health and well-being.”

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Margaret has learned that if she is not designing products with youth in the communities she is seeking to serve, she is not going to get it right. Youth in the community understand how their environment works and what their community needs. She has found that respecting the community and its dynamics is crucial, especially when working with health. Respecting the community builds trust, and Margaret believes trust to be vital to success.  

Margaret has experienced funding and being funded. This has given her a unique perspective of the process. There is an art to funding and as a steward over funds that are donated, she takes it very seriously. She seeks to always have some kind of impact target she is shooting for. 

“Here is a problem that this organization was created to help impact. Hopefully I have a network that can help me direct those resources effectively.” 

Some investments will fail. This is easier for people to accept from the venture side but when it comes to philanthropy people feel immense pressure and struggle to admit failure. Margaret takes advantage of the learning that comes from failure. She testified that it’s important to have the discipline and humility to take a step back, admit failure, learn, then move forward. 

Before investing into or starting a project, Margaret looks at the social return the company is striving to achieve. Along with Hopelab, Margaret is teaching a course at Stanford that deals with startups in the business world. She seeks to teach her students that every business has a social impact. After identifying a social impact goal, the students then need to create a business model that will help them hold to the values and goals they set. 

Through her years of experience, Margaret says there are two key principles in creating a nonprofit organization. First, there must be a patient centered approach, and second there needs to be a real solution to a real problem. One of Margaret’s greatest joys has been to meet people and then connect them to others. In looking back at her career Margaret wants to be able to say this:

“I played a role in really defining and demonstrating what impact investing could be, and what value it could bring. And that I’ve created a pathway for people that work with me to launch and support organizations in the same way.” 

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• The essential involvement of youth in creating solutions for them

• How healthcare and tech can bring mental health to teens

• The impact of Margaret's prior corporate experience on her development of Hopelab

• The ripple effect of seeing what impact investing can do