I’d come to realize that if we don’t invest in people then it’s not possible to achieve both sustainable profits and personal fulfillment in the long term.

Landon Taylor

Landon Taylor once made a speech where he predicted that human development would prove to become the 21st century equivalent of the Industrial Revolution.

But, for some time, he wasn’t doing much about it. Having been raised by a young single dad in a poor urban area, he beat the odds and made it through college and into the workforce. He rose through the ranks, ultimately serving as a division president and a member of the board of directors. He was doing well for himself.

Then a friend reminded him about his prediction, triggering Taylor to take a hard look at what he was doing with his life. He quickly realized that he wanted to focus on helping to establish a sustainable middle class inclusive of all Americans.

Taylor and his friend went on to build an innovative a program to solve two of the United States’ biggest problems: the growing STEM talent crisis and the underrepresentation of women and ethnic minorities in the emerging middle class.

Base 11 now helps build ecosystems with stakeholders from academia, industry, philanthropy and government. They have state-of-the-art, MIT-inspired fab labs designed to set students on a direct pathway to four-year STEM degrees, highly paid STEM jobs, and/or being trained as a STEM entrepreneur. They also provide community college students with internships and paid summer fellowships at world-class research institutions with mentorship, exposure to high-tech labs and experience with graduate-level research projects.

Our new Making a Difference series takes a look what drives Landon Taylor, and the inspirational results. Watch the video below, and then read more in Compass about how Base 11 has worked with over 8,000 students towards a goal of 11,000 students by 2021. Not not only does their mission help the individuals going through the program, but it can help all of us by shaping the next frontier of leaders by exposing them skills that can help solve some of the world’s biggest problems.