Cazenovia Campus Revitalization: Transforming A Closed College Into An Innovation Hub

When Cazenovia College closed in Upstate New York in 2023 after operating for nearly 200 years, a village was left with a hole in the heart of their downtown. The campus was shuttered and hundreds of people lost their jobs. Business slowed down for shops and cafes that relied on student customers and staff. It was a cultural shock for the people who lived there.

Colleges are centers of learning of course, and they also create community hubs for residents and help drive the local economy. In the U.S., one college campus closes a week on average, according to The Hechinger Report.

Trying to solve a problem in her own backyard, local resident Kate Brodock, founding partner of the W Fund, a VC investing in underrepresented-led tech start ups, had a big-picture vision to turn the campus into a mixed-use space for housing, office rentals, event space, retail, startup incubator hubs, and more.

Brodock created a group of investors across sectors, partnered with a real estate firm called The Oughtness Group, and helped form 9Fresh, a company focused on acquiring former college campuses, to successfully purchase the campus. Her goal is to transform the out-of-business Cazenovia campus into an innovation district that she can then blueprint and scale for other campuses.

“Given the problem of shuttered college campuses is not getting any better, can we create a repeatable model where we can go to other closed college campuses, or even apply this model to campuses before they close?” Brodock asks. “Campuses are real-estate heavy. The goal is not to just fill it with tenants, but to create an innovation district that is well-integrated into the community and also becomes an economic engine.”

This model may also help solve challenges such as the housing shortage, lack of affordable rental units, or the increased need for more senior communities.

“Focusing on the community that this college was in is important, and it also has to make sense from a business model perspective,” says Brodock. “Then it’s a matter of being thoughtful about the fact that we are entering into a community, so how do we want to engage with that community? How can we think big rather than just try to fill the place with tenants? Our goal is a highly functional innovation ecosystem.”

Gender Fair: Using Purchasing Power To Drive Gender Equity

It’s no secret that money is power, and spending your money with businesses that align with your values can have an impact. Case in point: Costco’s customers remained loyal when it stood by its DEI policies, while Target experienced customer boycotts after rolling back some diversity initiatives. Gender Fair, a public benefit company that independently rates organizations, colleges, business suppliers, and nonprofits on gender equality, lets people who want to help close the gender gaps make more conscious spending decisions based on data. Their ratings are determined by a 100-point scale across five areas: representation in leadership, employee policies (think: family leave and equal pay), advertising, diversity reporting, and community impact.

“We can use consumer power to advocate for more fairness, and that’s the idea behind Gender Fair,” says Amy Cross, founder of Gender Fair. “We’re working towards a consumer revolution for women to use their economic power mindfully. We want more women to understand that you don’t have to give up a dollar to any organization that isn’t fair to you. Think of all these companies that treat women unfairly internally, yet women are paying them a monthly subscription. We hope to change that.”

Women are a huge economic force, as they control roughly 85% of household spending decisions. While economic inequities remain a reality, with the wage gap widening for the second year in a row, other shifts are happening that will put more money into the hands of women. Dubbed as the “The Great Wealth Transfer,” trillions of dollars in Baby Boomer assets will be transferred to women through 2045 in an amount that is close to the equivalent of the annual U.S. GDP. “The more we can talk about how women have this untapped power, the more we can make them believe in it and then use it to drive fairness,” says Cross.

For example, women are 57% of educational consumers, yet there had not been a college rating rating done through a gender lens until Gender Fair partnered with Newsweek this year to release their inaugural America’s Best Colleges for Women 2026. The list uses federally reported data to assess U.S. colleges across four categories such as leadership, pay and policies, safety, and opportunity.

“I think younger people especially are going to drive values-based purchasing, whether it be in the area of sustainability, equality, diversity, or animal rights,” says Johanna Zeilstra, CEO of Gender Fair. “I really see a movement for consumers to pressure companies to do better in all of these areas, with individuals backing the things they are most passionate about.”

Information is also power, and Gender Fair is helping provide transparency for consumers to vote with their money. “It’s about making power accountable,” says Cross. “We have to keep saying to women as consumers, as donors, as voters, that we have the right to ask for accountability. Don’t stop asking.”

Avenues For Justice: Keeping Youth Out Of Detention With Community Care

Today there are more than a million people incarcerated in the United States, which—despite those levels dropping in the last 20 years—remains more than in any other country in the world, according to the World Population Review. Moreover, 52% of youth get detained or incarcerated for non-violent offenses (think: damaging others’ property, disturbing public order, or running away from home), reports The Annie E. Casey Foundation. Incarceration may not be an effective solution for crime, given that in many states up to 80% of the youth who are incarcerated are rearrested within three years of release, finds The Council of State Governments Justice Center.

Avenues for Justice (AFJ), one of the first alternative-to-incarceration for youth in the country, provides youth ages 13 to 24 years old with free court advocacy, as well as community centers offering safe spaces for youth to go for education, workforce development, and mental health support. Last year, nearly 600 youth participants attended their HIRE Up workshops that focus on job readiness.

“These are young people who come from communities who lack resources in terms of employment opportunities, adequate schools and education, and proper healthcare, as well as a lack of mental health care,” says Elizabeth Frederick, executive director at AFJ, who has been working in criminal, social, and juvenile justice for 20 years. “We have to address the needs of these young people, and provide a continuum of care.”

The program has proven to be effective: On average, 94% of AFJ’s court-involved participants are not reconvicted of a new crime within three years of starting the program. Not only does the program have a track record for keeping people out of prison, it also saves taxpayers money: It costs taxpayers $8,900 to put a young person through AFJ’s programing for one year, versus half a million dollars to incarcerate that same young person.

“Then what happens when [that young person] eventually gets out? They go back into this cycle of the criminal justice system, because they have not been empowered or equipped with solutions to turn their lives around,” says Frederick. “Our recidivism rates are low because we don’t put a stipulation on how long we work with a young person. To really course correct effectively, we must be in touch with them for at least a year.”

Another factor contributing to the effectiveness of AFJ is that it builds community through personal connections. Frederick has helped strengthen AFJ’s presence across all five boroughs of New York City while keeping its heart hyper local.

“All 12 of us who work at AFJ live in the same communities as our young people,” says Frederick. “We’re right there with them, so we understand what our youth are going through. What we do at Avenues for Justice is we go beyond statistics to tell a story. It’s an individual story of young people, one young person at a time.”

Flequity: Disrupting Financial Abuse By Design

Nearly one in three women globally experiences gender-based violence, according to the World Health Organization. Financial abuse, where money is used as a form of coercion and control, happens in more than 90% of intimate partner violence cases, finds the National Network To End Domestic Violence. It is a multi-billion dollar hidden epidemic often involving the misuse of financial products and technology, says Sydney-based Catherine Fitzpatrick, who founded Flequity Ventures in 2023 after nearly a decade as a senior bank executive. She is on a mission to make safer product design the global standard to block abusers and protect survivors.

“Racking up debt is one of the biggest tools a financial abuser will use,” says Fitzpatrick. “Perpetrators weaponize services like banks, telecommunications, and energy to threaten survivors or to accrue debt in their name. One of the more startling tactics is sending threats via e-payment descriptions, a problem banks and payment platforms in Australia, the UK, and Canada are now tackling.”

Businesses may be in a unique position to prevent financial abuse. Women are more likely to talk to their bank about financial abuse than they are to a domestic violence service, according to ABA Banking Journal. “This isn’t just a social issue,” says Fitzpatrick. “It’s a product, conduct, and reputational risk many organizations haven’t yet identified.”

Fitzpatrick’s newest tool takes that challenge into the boardroom—an AI-powered simulation that shows how ordinary financial products can be misused to control and financially devastate customers. “Most organisations test for what they already know, like fraud, scams, and cybercrime,” says Fitzpatrick. “This allows businesses to test whether their products are safe for customers in unsafe situations. That’s the gap I’m here to close.”

Through its Respect And Protect campaign and Designed to Disrupt reports documenting the perpetrator playbook for business, Flequity equips businesses to prevent financial abuse and understand how their products can be weaponized.

“It’s just snowballing,” says Fitzpatrick. “More than 80 organizations—including some of the biggest companies in Australia—across 12 sectors representing more than 20 million customers have banned the misuse of their products and services for financial abuse. What started as a social initiative is fast becoming a standard business response to risk.”