Social enterprise aims to tackle mental health crisis in Dundee with More Than Profit model

Social enterprise aims to tackle mental health crisis in Dundee with More Than Profit model

(IN BRIEF) The McGhee Award, a £25,000 prize for new business ideas, has been introduced by the Centre for Entrepreneurship at a University in Dundee. The award was donated to the university by alumni Christopher McGhee and Dr Jo-Ann Nugent, and is intended to recognise businesses in the competition based on their impact, their potential for global growth and scalability ambitions. The inaugural winners were announced at the Venture Competition Final, hosted by the Centre for Entrepreneurship, with Stephanie Graham and Ricardo Moreno Ballesteros the successful finalists, taking away £12,500 of business funding each.

(PRESS RELEASE) CITY, Country, 29-Mar-2023 — /EuropaWire/ —The Centre for Entrepreneurship was delighted to introduce the McGhee Award at the Venture 2023 New Business Ideas competition. The £25,000 award was donated to the university by alumni Christopher McGhee and his partner Dr Jo-Ann Nugent. Chris and Jo-Ann met whilst studying at the University and dedicated the award to their shared past, alongside Chris’ family connections to the City of Dundee. Keen to encourage the entrepreneurial potential in Dundee, their generous donation helped the Venture competition swell to a record-breaking £68,000 worth of funding.

The McGhee Award intends to recognise businesses in the competition based on their impact, their potential for global growth and scalability ambitions. Cristopher McGhee, founder and CEO of Current Health, began developing his business whilst in his third year studying at the School of Medicine and within 7 years, Current Health was acquired by Best Buy in the USA for a reported $400 million.

The inaugural McGhee winners for the competition were announced at the Venture Competition Final, hosted, and run by the Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University on Thursday 23 February 2023. Stephanie Graham and Ricardo Moreno Ballesteros were the successful finalists, taking away £12,500 of business funding each.

Ricardo’s GenProTex and Stephanie’s Natla Jewellery Studio & Dundee Community Craft CIC were chosen by the judging panel to have the potential of becoming outstanding businesses based in Dundee, which could have exceptional impacts both locally and internationally.

A More Than Profit(R) Organisation, Dundee Community Craft CIC offers a variety of products and services that shape a common identity of social and economic recovery across the community as a way to halt poverty, trauma and addiction. Founder and CEO Stephanie Graham is on a social mission to tackle Dundee’s mental health and substance misuse crisis by providing collective healing through craft and contributing to making Dundee the Recovery Capital of Europe.

‘There is so much power in how somebody perceives themselves; if you change that perception, you can change how people interact with the world. If you have a negative self-image, you will negatively interact with the world, and you will choose relationships and situations based on that negative self-image. When you have that worldview, you don’t feel that you are deserving of much’, Stephanie explained.

Having completed her Master of Science degree in Product Design at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in 2021, Stephanie found a safe space to overcome her personal struggles in the Jewellery and Metal Design Workshop at the University of Dundee: ‘It was like a different reality to what I knew, like a playground for adults.’ She thought of all the people in Dundee that could have benefitted from that experience the same way that she did and worked to create a service out of this idea. By providing a safe space to nurture the needs of those that do not get to go to university and therefore master new skills, Stephanie has been making a difference in the lives of many in Dundee. ‘All I am trying to do is make people feel happier about themselves and create an identity that is in favour of themselves,’ she said.

Working in partnership with Criminal Justice, Third Sector Organisations as well as the V&A Dundee, Dundee Community Craft CIC is already making a significant impact on people’s lives.

“There is so much power in how somebody perceives themselves; if you change that perception, you can change how people interact with the world.”

Stephanie Graham, MSc student at the University of Dundee, graduated 2021

Ricardo Moreno Ballesteros, born in Colombia and raised in Spain, completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry in Poland, focusing on medicinal chemistry and more specifically drug development. He is now studying for a PhD at the University of Dundee, expanding his knowledge in biochemistry, genetics, and tissue culture. When talking about his experience living in multiple countries, Ricardo said: ‘Something that I have always wanted to do is to somehow give back to all those countries and places that support me along the way.’

Working to revolutionise the world of drug discovery, Ricardo aims to provide services that will promote the development of new medicines and therefore have an unforeseen social impact on the field of life sciences. GenProtEx aims to be a B2B Biotech to accelerate the process of drug discovery by mimicking the effects of a drug without the need of using one.

The most significant benefit of Ricardo’s project would be to enable new medicines into the market, which could consequently lead to new therapies to treat diseases with previously unmet treatment.

‘Pharma spends trillions every year on testing new drugs, and most of the time it fails; if we can provide them with tools that are more effective in the process of finding the right target, we would avoid wasting an incredible amount of time and resources’, Ricardo explained. Dundee is home to one of the most impressive life sciences clusters in the UK, hosting phenomenal companies, and of course, the research that emanates from the university. Aiming to base GenProTex in Dundee, Ricardo is looking to have an outstanding economic and social impact on the community, creating new opportunities for those living and studying in Dundee as well as further contributing to the reputation of the city in the life sciences arena.

“Something that I have always wanted to do is to somehow give back to all those countries and places that support me along the way.”

Ricardo Moreno Ballesteros, PhD student at the University of Dundee.

Notes to editors

Written by Elena Gastaldo.

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SOURCE: University of Dundee