SI360 alum and current Cyber Risk Consultant for Deloitte, Chloe Potsklan created a “Hack for Venezuela Hackathon,” which seeks to bring programmers, developers, designers, program managers, etc., together to work on solving issues related to the ongoing humanitarian and refugee crisis in Venezuela.

Chloe’s mother and family live in Venezuela. While involved in Social Impact 360 (SI360), she closely followed the politics and current events unfolding in Venezuela where rapid inflation, lack of access to food, lack of medicine and medical equipment, violence, and corruption in government has led to spiraling economic, social, and political consequences for its people. Studying in New York, Chloe became increasingly passionate about addressing the ongoing humanitarian and refugee crisis in Venezuela.

Chloe was an SI360 fellow during 2013-2014, an SI360 mentor the following year, and served as the New York City Regional Director from 2014-2017, during which she organized a number of successful meetings for various groups located in the New York area. SI360 taught her new ways to address social issues.

Chloe is currently organizing the “Hack for Venezuela Hackathon,” an event which is seeking to join top Engineers, data scientists, designers and product managers in a Hackathon to help 30 million Venezuelans through mobile technology and artificial intelligence.

“The Hack for Venezuela” will run from July 13 to July 15, 2018 at the Fordham University School of Law, 150 W 62nd St, New York, NY 10023.  Chloe hopes the hackathon raises raise awareness, create action, and gather people who are interested in creating something tangible and technical to solve some of the many issues facing Venezuela.

To address the ongoing refugee and humanitarian crises in Venezuela, Chloe is also attempting to jumpstart a virtual platform which would hopefully allow individuals and organizations to communicate their needs to a broad audience and receive help in completing various projects.  For example, an NGO in Venezuela would be able to post on this platform that it needs two programmers to help create a business, and programmers would be alerted to this need and would be able to assist the NGO in whatever they are doing.

Chloe’s end goal is to start a business focused on social impact.

The SI360 connection

Si360 allowed Chloe to develop as a student, as an academic professional, and as an adult.  SI360’s network is both her lifelong friends and professional connections she continues to lean on. She notes that they hold her accountable to continue to try to have a social impact in the world as well as to innovate and adapt to new issues that may arise. She urges anyone interested in pursuing a path in social impact to take advantage of SI360 and the annual events.