Building the foundation
“Over these 10 years, our colleagues at the Beeck Center have brought a vibrant vision for what an initiative focused at the intersection of data, design, technology, and policy can be.”
John J. DeGioia
President Emeritus, Georgetown University
10 Years of Social Impact
2010
The Beeck family sets their sights on social impact with ‘philanthropy, upside down.’
Over a period of six days in April 2010, Eyjafjallajokull—an ice cap-covered volcano in Iceland—erupted for the first time in nearly 200 years, blanketing large swaths of Europe in an impenetrable layer of ash and debris.
At the time, Alberto Beeck and his brother-in-law Carl Muñana were visiting Oxford University for the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, hoping to glean information for a passion project they had been researching with Olga María Beeck for the better part of two years. As the volcanic ash ground all air traffic to a halt across northern Europe, Alberto and Carl hunkered down in London with Olga María on speakerphone and decided to put pen to paper on the idea they hoped would shape the emerging field of social impact.
2013
The GU Impacts fellowship program launches, supporting the future of social impact leaders on a global scale.
GU Impacts was a student fellowship program started by the Beeck family, born from a commitment to serving others and contributing to the betterment of society as a whole. The fellowship guided students through an immersive experience centered around a 10-week project with partners across the globe—including nonprofits, NGOs, and corporations—whose goal was to show students positive social impact in all sectors. In total, 155 students worked in teams with global organizations, advancing their efforts toward sustainable change. As the Beeck Center’s very first program, the legacy of GU Impacts laid an important foundation for future student-facing programs and our commitment to fostering experiential learning.
2014
The Beeck Center finds its home at Georgetown University, led by Sonal Shah and an ethos of ‘do it differently.’
Late into the night on February 10, 2014, Sonal Shah sat on the floor of room 100 in the Intercultural Center on Georgetown University’s main campus, surrounded by half-built office furniture, mismatched chairs, and crowds of students. It was the eve of the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation’s official launch day and, despite exhaustion, the group’s energy was electric with possibility.
“Nobody was focused on how nice the space looked as much as we were focused on having a space and showing that we were a real place,” Shah said.
Two years earlier, Shah had been leading the White House Office for Social Innovation and Civic Participation when she got a call from Olga María and Alberto Beeck, Carl Muñana, and Georgetown University Interim President Robert Groves. The group described an idea for a new kind of center—one that would be based at Georgetown, but would not be tied to a particular school within the university, nor see its scope limited to a specific subject, faculty member, or theory of change.
2015
The Beeck Center launches its Student Analyst program, training the next generation of changemakers.
Building on the success of the GU Impacts program and its mission to develop the next generation of social impact leaders, the Beeck Center launched its Student Analyst program. This immersive, hands-on experiential learning opportunity allowed undergraduate and graduate Georgetown students to work alongside fellows and subject matter experts in topics ranging from impact investing, fair finance, data and technology, and more. Since its inception, the Student Analyst program has remained a core underpinning of the Beeck Center’s work. Each year, the Center hires three exclusive cohorts from more than 300 applicants to support our projects and operations. Today, student analysts collaborate with experts and government practitioners on a diverse range of projects from research on large language models in public benefits, to user experience research, to digital marketing, program evaluation, and much more. Through a unique combination of experiential learning, mentorship, and professional development, students that graduate from the Student Analyst program have gone on to become incredible leaders in social impact, civic technology, and policy, including at the White House, congressional offices, federal agencies, nonprofits, and philanthropies.
2018
The Beeck Center develops its Fair Finance portfolio to reimagine equitable financial systems.
With the goal of building more equitable systems for all, the Beeck Center developed its Fair Finance portfolio to tackle underinvestment in communities of color and underlying mistrust in financial institutions. Led by experts in community development, philanthropy, impact investing, and public policy, the Fair Finance team leveraged and accelerated ideas to improve access to financial capital and economic opportunity, particularly for historically excluded communities. Their efforts played an integral role in supporting and shaping the emerging impact investing field, including guiding the Group of Seven (G7) Social Impact Investing Task Force’s development of a policy framework and recommendations that galvanized global interest and bipartisan reform in impact investing.
2019
The Beeck Center ventures into data and digital technology to support and improve public institutions.
As public interest technology organizations and awareness expanded, the Beeck Center recognized an urgent need to bridge the gap between digital technology and public service. The rapidly evolving landscape required a coordinated approach to harness data and technology to support public institutions, modernize services, rebuild trust, and yield better outcomes for the public. To meet that demand, the Data + Digital portfolio was established with a core set of projects led by expert fellows. They covered topics across safety net benefits, state software, responsible data sharing and governance, and government technology workforces. The portfolio attracted top talent and senior federal leaders like former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer Denice Ross, former General Services Administrator Robin Carnahan, and former 18F Technologist Waldo Jaquith. This portfolio also included the formal launch of the State Chief Data Officers (CDO) Network, led by former Connecticut CDO Tyler Kleykamp, and connected emerging state data leaders with important resources and recommendations. Since the founding of the State CDO Network, the number of state chief data officer positions has grown from 25 states to 39. Today, the network lives on at the Beeck Center, where it empowers state data leaders to innovate and co-develop solutions for better governance.
2021
The Beeck Center expands its footprint as a leader in civic technology, led by Cori Zarek.
After leading the Beeck Center’s Data + Digital portfolio for two years, Cori Zarek was selected as the Beeck Center’s next executive director, bringing a wealth of expertise in public interest technology, policy, and social systems, including a stint in the White House as United States deputy chief technology officer. Under Zarek’s leadership and strategic direction, the Beeck Center entered its next phase of impact as a leading organization at the intersection of design, data, policy, and technology. On the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, this included a sharper focus on increasing access to critical benefits and services like cash assistance, health care, child care, unemployment insurance, and food assistance. With this new, ambitious agenda in mind, the Beeck Center launched two technical assistance projects in 2021—The Opportunity Project for Cities and Data Labs—focused specifically on merging data and technology with state and local government efforts across the country to better connect residents with services related to housing, education, employment, pandemic relief, and more. To date, these technical assistance programs have collectively supported more than 28 state and local teams, engaged more than 1,800 residents, and developed more than 12 digital products and prototypes.
2022
The Beeck Center scales its networks tackling digital benefits and service delivery.
Thanks to the deep research and expertise of past staff and fellows including Cori Zarek, Sara Soka, Emily Tavoulareas, and Christopher Wilson, the Beeck Center quickly gained a reputation as the go-to hub for knowledge, connections, resources, and recommendations on the social safety net and service delivery. The addition of senior experts Ariel Kennan and Kirsten Wyatt enabled the Beeck Center’s large networks and research agendas in digital public benefits and services to blossom into the Digital Benefits Network and Digital Service Network in 2022. Today, these networks continue to mobilize and collectively reach more than 7,000 practitioners from 57 states, territories, and provinces in North America. They support an infrastructure of shared tools, drive collective influence and goals, and shape implementation—all in the name of ensuring more accessible, secure, and equitable benefits and services for the public.
2023
Lynn Overmann is tapped to lead the Beeck Center in its next phase of people-centered impact.
One of Lynn Overmann’s most memorable possessions is a snakeskin belt—not because of the way it fits her or the brand name on the label, but because of where she got it: Louisiana State Penitentiary.
In the 90s, Overmann was a young New York University law student and summer intern for a firm handling death penalty appeal cases. She spent months getting to know clients who were incarcerated on Angola’s death row—interviewing them, reviewing their case information, and helping her bosses prepare their appeals. It was exactly the work she had gone to law school to do: “take the tools it would provide me with and “apply them in the place that felt the most unfair.”
2024
The Beeck Center celebrates 10 years of impact and reimagines the future of civic technology.
In 2024, we celebrated our 10th anniversary as a leading organization in social impact and innovation. We hosted two events that brought together friends, partners, supporters, and students to commemorate and recognize all of our accomplishments in the last decade. Our first event included remarks from former Georgetown University President Emeritus John J. DeGioia and Beeck Center Co-Founder Alberto Beeck, along with an engaging panel featuring the voices of Beeck Center alums and social impact leaders Robin Carnahan, Amen Ra Mashariki, and Alberto Rodríguez Alvarez.
As we reflect on the last decade, we also take stock of the major milestones we hit as a center this year, including the launch of our Digital Government Hub—an open-source digital library with thousands of resources on government design, data, and technology to improve the delivery of benefits and services for those who need them most. We also launched our Innovation + Incubation Fellowship program, to experiment and push the boundaries of what’s possible in civic technology and government innovation around benefits access, AI and automation, and data sharing.
