After two years in the role, Amir Rizwan has stepped down as director of London Social Ventures, an initiative to bolster the pipeline of social ventures emerging out of London’s universities.
Rizwan had steered London Social Ventures through its two-year pilot phase. He was employed through Queen Mary University’s tech transfer office, Queen Mary Innovation.
Last month, London Social Ventures published its report about the pilot phase, showing that it had engaged with 215 researchers from 15 universities across London. In total, it worked with 94 social ventures.
Participants in the programme nearly doubled revenue from a combined £1.1 million to £2.1 million, with London Social Ventures demonstrating that it was directly responsible for half of that growth and 16 new jobs.
Costing £350,000, the programme has thus far delivered more than £453,000 in economic value, and the report projects a 202% return on investment to the UK government over four years.
The report used the expertise of Divine Ox, an impact intelligence startup that was incubated by Oxford University Innovation and co-founded by Mark Mann, who previously joined The Next Leap podcast.
“When I stepped into the role, there was an opportunity to help build something from the ground up and explore what a more intentional approach to supporting social ventures within universities could look like in practice.
“One of the biggest learnings from the pilot has been the scale of opportunity that exists when universities create the right support, infrastructure and networks around social ventures. It has also shown the wider impact economy the important role universities can play not just as places of research and knowledge creation, but as active institutions helping ventures emerge, grow and tackle complex societal challenges.”
Amir Rizwan
Rizwan added that he would be exploring his options for his next challenge after having taken a break.
