Matthew Manos #PiMaker - Catalyst for Social Entrepreneurs

For us, Matthew is a #PiMaker because he is a catalyst for other social entrepreneurs. He inspires through his conscious leadership and the movements he fosters. 

It was a great pleasure to interview Matthew for our YouTooday blog (here the interview) some months back. We loved Matthew's approach to set the pro-bono work as a business model. Now, he is promoting a series of tools to support social entrepreneurship.

How did you come to do what you do? What’s your personal background story?

"This freelance practice eventually became verynice, a design strategy consultancy that I run in Los Angeles."

Growing up in Silicon Valley, I was a competitive skateboarder. This means that I was constantly training at skateparks for competitions. One weekend, I met a man at the skatepark who was the founder of a nonprofit organization. I was incredibly inspired by his story, and remembered that about a week prior my godmother had sent me a copy of Photoshop. I decided to volunteer for his organization by way of designing some stickers for him. That moment got me hooked on pro bono service as a meaningful way for designers to create impact, but also showed me that I wanted to pursue design as a career path. I ended up going to UCLA for design, and while I was a student I was taking on a large number of pro bono projects. This freelance practice eventually became verynice, a design strategy consultancy that I run in Los Angeles.

How do you feel you are positively impacting your community and our planet?

"I like to think that my role as a social entrepreneur is to serve as a catalyst for other social entrepreneurs."

I like to think that my role as a social entrepreneur is to serve as a catalyst for other social entrepreneurs. In 2013, I open sourced our "give half" business model in order to inspire other agencies and consultants to follow suit in being as generous as possible. Shortly after, I began launching a series of other tools to support the social enterprise movement, including Models of Impact. Models of Impact is a role playing and ideation game that simulates the process of launching a social enterprise. It is a free game, available at http://modelsofimpact.co.

Do you feel you have found your meaning and purpose in life? Why?

On paper it may look as though I have everything figured out, but I actually aspire to live a life in which I am constantly in the pursuit of discovering my true purpose. One of my greatest fears is complacency. So, no, I don't think I've figured that out yet ;)