Center for Transformative Action now affiliated within Entrepreneurship at Cornell

Founded in 1971, the Center for Transformative Action (CTA) serves as a fiscal sponsor and incubator for change-making non-profits with local, national and even international reach. A new affiliation with Entrepreneurship at Cornell helps the center to continue that work in an environment of other startups and creators

"Whether you call this social entrepreneurship or non-profit work, this is entrepreneurship," said Zach Shulman '87 J.D. '90, director of Entrepreneurship at Cornell. "What CTA does in the non-profit world is very important."

CTA was born out of a wave of student activism at Cornell in the 1960s, said Anke Wessels, CTA executive director, and Cornell is the only major university affiliated with a nonprofit incubator such as CTA. The Center offers a legal structure, financial oversight and shared back-office services for 40 non-profit organizations.

"Our long-standing, yet legally and financially separate, relationship with Cornell allows us to serve as a bridge-translating engaged scholarship into community-based innovation and connecting grassroots action with academic inquiry," Wessels said. "Some of our projects have emerged from the passion of Cornell students, faculty, and staff seeking to apply their research and learning to real-world challenges. Others are led by community members whose lived experience drives their vision for change."

The projects that are part of CTA offer students hands-on experience in social impact work and community leaders the benefit of academic collaboration and scholarship, she said.

"Since we're handling the operational details, our projects are freed up to build their programs, test their business models, pivot as needed, and drive impact," Wessels said.

One of the center's organizations is Anabel's Grocery, a student-founded, student-run grocery store in Anabel Taylor Hall that provides fresh, affordable food, much of it from local farmers. The store operates as part of a class, Social Entrepreneurship Practicum: Anabel's Grocery, offered each semester and taught by Wessels, but CTA carries all of the legal and financial responsibility for the store.

"It is so powerful to discover that I can make decisions with real stakes, that I can have an idea and then realize it, that I can make mistakes and then take accountability for them," said Isla Chadsey '27, a purchasing coordinator for the grocery "I can be an agent of change. First as a student and now in my second semester as a coordinator, I have seen my confidence as a leader grow so much."

Along with time working in and managing the store, students work on educational programs and events and study and research issues of nutrition, food justice and food insecurity, Wessels said.

"Anabel's model says we will invest in local businesses and farms; we will provide diverse, nutritious, whole foods for our customers; and we will subsidize our products to be affordable," Chadsey said. "And we will engage with our community and create a space for people to connect over food."

CTA's many projects focus on a wide range of issues such as food, agriculture, and environmental justice; human rights and education; incarceration and reentry; migrant rights; gender and women's empowerment; community arts; and circular economies.

Some of the projects include Ithaca Murals, the Dorothy Cotton Institute, the Christopherson Center for Community Planning, and Story House Ithaca. One organization, Rio Limpio, was founded by a Cornell post doc in entomology and works with communities in the Peruvian Amazon to mitigate dengue fever by tackling the management of plastic waste. Another, the Global Strategic Litigation Council, stems from work led by Ian Kysel, an associate clinical professor of law at Cornell Law School, in collaboration with colleagues at the New School.

"Collectively, CTA-incubated projects reach tens of thousands of people annually with life-changing programs that educate, build community, empower and offer critically needed services at a critical moment when communities are more dependent than ever on a robust civil society," Wessels said.