Hopelab is honored to celebrate Margaret Laws’ leadership as our President & CEO. As Margaret transitions to Executive in Residence in January 2026, our team wants to take a moment to look back at the impact she has had on the organization, our staff, partners, and projects.
We’re out in the field with our investment fund, working on and learning about the products and services that young people use every day. We’re conducting research, with a particular focus on marginalized populations, including studies on Black, Brown, and Queer young people. We’re also working with young leaders to support their efforts in the youth mental health space.
We learn from each of those areas and apply those learnings to our other work. That’s one of the things that really sets us apart—the fingers we have in several different areas of the market, and the ways we get touchpoints from those different places and bring them back into the broader work that we do.
We have a fairly unique structure. We’re set up as an operating foundation. So we actually have a lot of person power, and a lot of ways that we bring our team into projects to develop new initiatives. And often, create things that other people can join.
We have an impact investment practice, and we have a focus on youth voice and power, where we’re really engaging young people. We do work in research, strategic communications, and policy. We have been working on what we call foundations for well-being, focusing on upstream issues such as purpose and belonging.
When we’re working at our best, we bring together aspects of all these different competencies. So, we can develop a project where we’re the doer, but also be out in the field serving as an influencer in the policy landscape and bringing in other funders to leverage the funding and resources we invest. It is a unique ability to both build and execute projects, as well as influence others to join in, and leverage the resources we have to allocate more funds and assets towards youth mental well-being.
From the very beginning, an important part of Hopelab’s DNA has been co-creation and collaboration with young people. And it’s been an incredible opportunity for me over the past decade to work with amazing young people, on everything from their participation in projects to collaborating with us on surveys, and most recently, adding a young person to our board.
The wisdom, experience, and passion that the young people we work with bring to the work make it so exciting to be at Hopelab. I feel truly honored to have had the opportunity to both get to know and hear from, as well as create a centered space for, those young people, and to work with colleagues who share my passion for this as much as I do.
In January, I will transition to Executive in Residence, where I will have more time to explore what I’m calling frontiers in mental health and well-being.
I’ll continue working on what has been a career-long, decades-long pursuit for me: supporting underserved populations and exploring the intersections of technology and policy, with a focus on what we can do in the technology for social good area. This past decade at Hopelab also has me thinking deeply about where I might be able to innovate and create impact in whatever the next chapter is.
I have a lot of interesting opportunities and irons in the fire, and I’m excited to have some time to explore and experiment.
With our founding values and spirit of experimentation and science translation, Hopelab built prototypes with young people to better understand loneliness and social connection, goal setting, and social and emotional support mechanisms.
In 2017, Hopelab launched its National Survey. The first was created in partnership with Susannah Fox, formerly of Pew Research Center, and Vicky Rideout, formerly of the Kaiser Family Foundation. Recent editions were developed with Common Sense Media, and in 2024, young people were involved in its creation and data co-distillation. In all, 11 research reports have been published about the impact of technology on youth mental health.
In 2019, Hopelab launched Hopelab Ventures to support entrepreneurs developing solutions that support young people, particularly in underserved communities. To date, we have invested in 25 companies that have reached 4.3 million young people, including 3.8 million BIPOC and 3.3 million low-income young people.
As youth mental health gained more attention and investment, Hopelab shifted to a partnership strategy in 2020 to leverage our capabilities with the financial investments of other funders. To date, we have supported over 90 young people and dozens of youth-led organizations.
In 2023, research supported by Omidyar Network — combined with Hopelab’s interest in youth co-creation and voice — led to the launch of the Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund. To date, the Fund has supported over 35 youth- or intergenerationally led nonprofits. Hopelab’s efforts have helped catalyze $15.2 million for youth-led, upstream, or equity-centered initiatives for youth well-being.
Starting in 2023, Hopelab expanded our team to focus more deeply on systems change and youth engagement. We have added expertise and funding for policy and narrative change work, which allows us to leverage our learnings to reach more diverse audiences and catalyze change.
Since our founding, Hopelab has always understood and been guided by the power of science to create meaningful impact for young people. Translating science into better policies and practice continues today through the Purpose Commons, the HBCU Fellowship, and our policymaker education work.
