Written by: Mike Tozer, CEO & Founder.
If you missed it, yesterday was a big day for Xceptional with the news of our BOLD agreement and our $600,000 funding round in the Australian and other press.
I remember sitting in my class at Harvard listening to one of the guests that visited – Tracy Palandjian from Social Finance – talk about social impact bonds. At that point I did not expect I would one day be involved in something similar.
In fact, at that point I didn’t even see myself as ever being a founder. I was happy supporting other founders. Then, my son and my sister were diagnosed as autistic and my world changed. I just had to dive in and do something.
Behind the scenes to make this happen there is months, years of hard work. I’m so grateful to our whole team for all they have poured into this. Special thanks to our super star COO Kurt McLachlan who has taken the lead on this for Xceptional.
It has been a real pleasure to work with Dan Madhavan and Rachel Yang at the Impact Investing Group (IIG). We are excited to be join forces with IIG, as well as the Snow Foundation, Tripple, the Community Impact Foundation and the Disability Impact Fund.
Jessica Roth and her team at the Social Impact Hub have been our provider through the impact investing readiness grant. Jessica and her advisors have helped me wade through a sea of acronyms in the investment world and helped us get prepared to take on investment.
Another major milestone for us in this round of funding sees us take on one new equity investor, Roslyn Baguley. Roslyn brings a wealth of experience and is a seasoned marketing, communications and sales strategy professional and is very passionate about the work we do.
This funding round will enable us to continue expanding the business. Now that we have proven our model of connecting autistic jobseekers to work, we are looking forward to ramping up our success.
