Entrepreneurs embrace tikkun olam to make an impact(1)

Businesses large and small can use their power and influence to solve problems and drive positive change. Three young local Jewish entrepreneurs recognized their opportunity to live the Jewish value of tikkun olam and be a force for good in the world through their work.

Josh Evnin, President of Fixer, a Chicago startup which employs handymen and -women, has prioritized helping others throughout his career. He credits Jewish summer camp with inspiring his lifelong drive to help others.

“Camp had a major influence on the work I do today. As an entrepreneur, the central theme of my work is finding ways to encourage people to behave differently-to try a new app or service that makes their life better in some way,” he said. “At camp, I learned that the best way to spur behavioral change is to make it a part of daily life-[such as by] incorporating Judaism into our daily activities that I ended up continuing at home.”

Fixer seeks to address two issues Evnin and his business partners identified in the home repair arena: There were not enough people with home repair skills, and there was a lack of streamlined technology to simplify the process of matching the right home repair expert for the job.

“We have this sort of mixed business model where we are helping homeowners get repairs done and helping our employees and communities to bring people into the trades,” explained Evnin, who started his career making software systems easier to use-and helped create GrubHub.

Employing what he knew about people and how they interact with technology, Evnin set out to help create Fixer-along with Founder Mike Evans-and the platform is changing the way people tackle household repair.

“We are able to take folks who want to contribute and also who want to build a career for themselves, and [leverage] their ability to learn and serve customers,” Envin said.

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Lindsay Barnett has also used her expertise to help close a gap. Barnett, a second-grade teacher for Chicago Public Schools, was constantly thinking about creative ways to engage her students. After finding a lack of certain types of learning tools in her classroom, she and fellow teacher Victoria Goldfarb co-created Pup Quiz®, a toolbox of math learning resources-like flashcards, word problem cards, and dry erase worksheets-for grade school children.

Barnett, now Pup Quiz® CEO, had planned to launch the company in March 2020, but the pandemic hit just as she was striking up her first deals with school districts. So, along with the rest of the world, she pivoted.

“Originally, it was designed to be for classroom use, but during the pandemic it ended up helping families at home,” said Barnett.

Tapping into her network of coworkers and friends, Barnett posted about Pup Quiz® learning kits on social media and started distributing them to interested families. As word of mouth spread about the product, Barnett recognized that the kits could also help students who did not have the ability to access their teachers online during the pandemic.

“I had so many of my friends go out in the freezing cold of Chicago and pass out kits at different food distribution centers because that’s a great way to get them to kids who really need educational support,” Barnett said.

Barnett, whose mom was a longtime JCC teacher, supplied the kits to the local JCCs. She credits her mom for inspiring her passion for education, “I got to see the best teacher and was like ‘I want to do what she is doing,'” Barnett said.

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Caroline Novack Greenwood, of Glencoe, is also helping people, through her unique therapy practice. True Mind + Body, based in the North Shore, is one of the only practices in the country to combine traditional therapeutic services with comprehensive mind and body therapies.

Greenwood, a licensed clinical social worker and mother of three, was inspired to start True Mind + Body with her sister Melissa Novack, also a social worker, after attending a yoga class that proved transformational.

“I remember leaving [the class] and feeling like night and day,” Greenwood said. “The mindfulness and true movement that was happening in there was really personally helpful.”

Greenwood wanted to bring these benefits to her clients, so she became a yoga instructor and began infusing yoga into her therapy practice. Then, in 2012, she and her sister came up with True Mind + Body.

“We had a little office-two rooms and a rec room–where we innovated at the time doing yoga and personal fitness while engaging in psychotherapy,” Greenwood said.

They started by focusing their services on girls and women but soon people started asking, “‘What about our sons, brothers, and husbands?'” Greenwood said.

Shortly thereafter, the sisters opened a bigger center in Northbrook which presently includes spaces for therapy and movement-based activities from yoga to basketball and soccer. Greenwood and Novack are currently expanding their practice.

“I am really proud of what we have accomplished and the thousands of people we have impacted,” Greenwood said.