- The 2022 cohort brings together five teams of innovators focused on tackling global sustainability challenges, from protecting our oceans and fighting climate change and plastic waste, to increasing educational opportunities across the African continent.
- Each of the winning teams will receive a $250,000 award and participate in a year-long program that will aid and guide them as they work to scale their systemic solutions.
Teesas, a Nigeria-based EdTech startup, delivering curriculum-aligned, online educational content to elementary school students across the African continent has been named among five winners of the 2022 Sustainable Solutions Collaborative (the Collaborative) cohort according to a press release published on the Morgan Stanley website on Thursday 26 May.
The Collaborative, launched in 2020, aims to identify breakthrough innovations that address systemic change to support a sustainable future. The second cohort of five winners will join a bespoke yearlong strategic collaboration with the Institute where they will tap into the full range of Morgan Stanley’s expertise, networks and resources to help them achieve scale. Each winner will also receive an award of $250,000 to increase the impact of their initiative.
The 2022 Sustainable Solutions Collaborative cohort is comprised of a diverse group of organizations. The other organizations in the group are CarbonBuilt, a startup from Los Angeles, California, delivering a scalable concrete product that reduces embodied carbon by 70 to over 100% compared with traditional concrete, without compromise to performance or production cost; ISeeChange, the data company from New Orleans, Louisiana, that empowers communities to report and track real-life climate change impact; Notpla, a sustainable packaging startup based in the UK, that delivers the convenience of single-use plastics without the environmental impact and OceanMind, a nonprofit based in the UK that powers enforcement and compliance to protect the world’s oceans.
“Each of these organizations has the potential to scale and contribute to creating the type of systemic change needed to achieve a more sustainable future,” said Matthew Slovik, Head of Global Sustainable Finance at Morgan Stanley.
In 2020, Morgan Stanley launched the Sustainable Solutions Collaborative to boost sustainability initiatives that would benefit from partnerships across private and public industries. This second cohort joins a group of global innovators thinking about health care, climate solutions, plastic waste reduction and ecosystem services through re-engineered distribution methods, technology platforms and a new perspective on the importance of nature.
“We are thrilled to welcome these visionary teams into the Collaborative and look forward to seeing their solutions scale as the need to reach a sustainable future is at an all time-high,” said Shelley O’Connor, Vice Chairman and Head of External Affairs for Morgan Stanley.
For this award, the Institute engaged a diverse network of sustainability thought leaders and practitioners from across a wide variety of industries and sectors to make anonymous nominations. Morgan Stanley carried out a rigorous selection process on the nominations received to identify the innovations with the greatest potential for systemic impact that would also benefit from deep and sustained engagement with Morgan Stanley.
Teesas was launched in 2021 and delivers engaging tutor-led videos and e-books in both English and local indigenous languages and its CEO and founder, Osayi Izedonmwen says that “it is gratifying that Teesas has been recognized by Morgan Stanley as ‘a breakthrough innovation that addresses systemic change to support a sustainable future,’ and even more so as the only African start-up to make the 2022 Sustainable Solutions Collaborative cohort.
“All of us at Teesas remain committed to our mission of becoming Africa’s learning gateway because we believe that with quality education, all other sustainable development goals can be achieved.”
The Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing (The Institute) builds scalable finance solutions that seek to deliver competitive financial returns while driving positive environmental and social impact. Founded in 2013, The Institute creates innovative financial products, thoughtful insights and capacity building programs that help maximize capital to create a more sustainable future.
