Jada Wyatt

I've been working in social innovation since 2020 professionally, though I started doing community-based work back in 2016 when I was in high school. I'm a first-generation college student from Lexington, North Carolina, and I graduated from NC State in 2024 where I studied business and social innovation, interdisciplinary entrepreneurship, arts entrepreneurship, and psychology. Throughout my career, I've worked in diverse industries including tech and design at Lenovo, finance at Lincoln Financial, sales training with the National Association of Sales Professionals, and various roles at NC State including as an assistant director for the Park Scholars program. After graduation, I co-founded a social impact travel agency focused on bringing people to see community work in El Salvador, but I realized my true calling was in education and research rather than being a hands-on entrepreneur. Now, as a program associate for the Social and Sustainable Innovation Entrepreneurship Department at NC State, I do everything from research and retreat planning to developing fundraising strategies. I've had the privilege of working with communities in Raleigh, along the North Carolina coast, my hometown of Lexington, and in El Salvador, where I've learned that the most effective social innovation comes from supporting community leaders who are already doing amazing work. I'm preparing to start my PhD in entrepreneurship at Iowa State this fall, where my boyfriend will also be pursuing his master's in entrepreneurship. We both met through the Social Innovation Fellows Program, and I'm excited to continue learning, teaching, and researching social innovation frameworks at a deeper level.