[A note from Nathan Graber-Lipperman, founder of Unplugg'd]
For a lot of us, things have changed pretty drastically in the last six or so weeks. It’s been pretty overwhelming seeing headlines about the tanking economy, dealing with the Zoom-work-recreation complex, and distancing ourselves from physical interaction.
I know that for me, when this pandemic really started to gain steam, it seemed like the entire trajectory of my life had changed. I thought I had figured things out, that I’d learned from the past and would proceed to take those lessons with me onto the next chapter, whatever it may be. It was difficult to grapple with the feeling of this invisible rug being swept out from underneath me as I drove home to my parent’s house and learned to adjust to what’s amounted to being the new normal.
[A note from Nathan Graber-Lipperman, founder of Unplugg'd]
When Tejas Sekhar and our team started talking about a collaboration, we knew that we needed to learn his story before creating ours.
First, we recorded a podcast exploring Tejas’ time growing up in the St. Louis area, his wide variety of experiences at Northwestern, and how’s he’s channeling his time and energy to do his part in fighting COVID-19. You can listen to that podcast on Spotify, as well as all of your favorite streaming platforms here.
[A note from Nathan Graber-Lipperman, founder of Unplugg'd]
During a pandemic the likes of which we haven’t seen in over a century, I’ve thought a lot about why. Why release this piece? For starters, it’s pretty personal, and vulnerable, and — like seemingly everything I write — long. Past just that, though, there’s this: "If your greatest problem right now is boredom, that is a privilege. And while this describes what is the relative adaptability that some of us experience it fails to acknowledge that it is the outlier — a lot of folks will not be fine at all," — Astead W. Herndon, NYT.The inaugural 2020 Northwestern Social Innovation Challenge was hosted virtually by Teach For America during April 4th — 5th. Teams of up to four were assembled and given just 24 hours to create an eight minute long pitch addressing how they could tackle a challenge facing Chicago through either (or a combination of) education, healthcare, and economic mobility.
EndingCOVID.org is a nonprofit initiative nested within TejHospitality, a registered 501(c)(3) charitable organization focused on local asset-based community development in the Greater St. Louis Area.