SailFuture

When I was 14 I was arrested and jailed behind bars. It is a long story, but my life could have turned out very different.

    • Personal experience with the system and all its flaws (insiders know best)

    • Largely ignored by main stream philanthropy despite having massive costs to society

    In 2015 I was fortunate to meet a talented young man with a vision for disrupting this archaic industry and I made a high conviction bet on him. The more I learned about the industry, the more I got involved and took an active role in getting the idea off the ground and stabilized.

    As the nonprofit grew in scope and impact, I was fortunate to be able to extend more than $1M to help SailFuture grow from an after school activity, to a licensed residential care provider, to a private high school for youth that do not fit in the traditional system.

    The investment in time and money has paid off as we've been able to turn SailFuture from a pipe dream (offshore yachts as an alternative to incarceration?!?) to a thriving leader in the juvenile justice reform movement nationwide.

    Like all startups, regardless if they are for profit or for societal change, the pre-seed stage is a bet not necessarily on the product/service but an investment in the founder. To this day I still have not found a better founder/market fit than Michael Long. He is extraordinarily capable and our society is lucky he has chosen to disrupt this backwards industry.

    The wins in this industry are small and personal. There are no grand balls or charity galas. No media coverage. No celebrities.

    The work is largely thankless. Most youth in the system will be incarcerated again. Many will struggle with addiction for the rest of their lives. Many will become homeless. While we cannot save everyone, I'm proud that all lives we touch will have seen a little more kindness in the world.

 
 
 

Built With Love

Built With Love is an effort to help those people that are new to America to start and run their own business, get a social security number, file taxes, apply for a green card, build credit, become homeowners, and live the American dream🇺🇸

 

15th Street Farm

Building connected, healthy communities

  • The 15th St farm is an urban agriculture project to enhance nutrition and public health in a traditionally underserved community. The next big evolution in our understanding of nutrition is likely to come from two areas where we are actively working with the University of South Florida: (1) gut microbiome and (2) nutritional density.

    The next trend to become popular (we hope!) is to evaluate the nutritional density in produce. Not all tomatoes are the same! The health of the soil and time since harvest are critically important nutritionally but largely ignored by the current US healthcare system and food industry.