What Shifted for Me at the King’s E-Lab Social Venture Residential 2026
Written by Damilola Oyeyemi
I started the King’s E-Lab Social Venture Residential thinking mostly about impact scale, outcomes, and measurable change. I left thinking much more about responsibility. Across the sessions, what stayed with me was not just what social ventures do, but how they do it, who they are designed for, and the kinds of systems they reinforce or disrupt along the way.
Case Studies and Challenges
Across the three days, we were shown various examples of social ventures; their logics and their impacts. For me, one of the most interesting of these case studies was Harry Specters Ltd. On the surface, it’s a chocolate company creating employment for autistic people. But as we unpacked the model, I realised how intentional the design was. The venture didn’t try to fit autistic employees into an existing structure. Instead, the structure itself was built around strengths like focus, consistency, and comfort with repetitive tasks. It made me reflect on how often inclusion is treated as an add-on rather than a design principle. This felt different; inclusion was not symbolic, it was operational.
A little later in the week, I encountered a moment that really challenged me: learning about HERA UK, founded by Simon Stockley. Its work tackling human trafficking reframed social enterprise for me entirely. HERA operates almost like a quiet layer of social protection, stepping in where formal systems fall short, detecting risks, and preventing harm before it happens. It made me uncomfortable, but in a useful way. Not all impact is visible. Some of the most important work happens in prevention, not celebration.
Connections and Culture
One of my favourite parts of the residential, though there may be many to pick from, was the interactive session on visual thinking and systems mapping with Michelle Fava Darlington from the Centre for Social Innovation. Sketching relationships, power dynamics, incentives, and unintended consequences forced me to slow down, to see the connections that link all of these aspects together. I began to realise how easily well-intentioned ventures can create new problems if they don’t understand the systems in which they intervene. It reminded me that social ventures do not exist in isolation. Every action sits within a wider web, and while we may not always be able to track each and every vibration of such an action, we must dedicate efforts to tracing the ways our work effects a whole network.
The week saw us organised into interdisciplinary teams to tackle different Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) based on our experiences and our interests. As a part of this, during the venture design sprint, my group worked on SDG 11: the preservation of natural and cultural heritage. We focused on the extinction of traditional textile practices in Pakistan, driven by fast fashion, consumerism, and technological change. This challenged me to think more carefully about how economic progress can unintentionally erode cultural value when systems are designed without cultural preservation in mind. As a team, we brought different perspectives to this question and the time spent reflecting together has given me new insights into the topic which I would otherwise not have gained.
Conversations and Collaborations
Right in the middle of the three days, the fireside conversation with Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, Honourable Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development of Nigeria, moderated by Benedetta Asher, was particularly memorable. Hearing about leadership across complex systems reinforced my belief that scaling impact is not just about growth. It is about timing, partnerships, politics, and restraint. To follow from what was already a rewarding evening of discussion, sitting beside the Minister at dinner was a meaningful moment for me as a Nigerian; reminding me how representation and proximity can shape aspiration.
I am deeply grateful to the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at the University of Cambridge, and to the King’s E-Lab and Cambridge Social Ventures team, for creating a space that felt both challenging and supportive.
I left the residential with fewer neat answers, but better questions. I am focusing less on doing good fast, and more committed to designing social ventures with intention, humility, and ethical awareness.
And that, for me, feels like the real mindset shift.
Damilola Oyeyemi is a public policy leader and creative strategist from Nigeria, passionate about youth empowerment, digital inclusion, and equitable development across Africa. She has a background in NGO leadership and ed-tech operations, and currently serves as the Founder of Craftdemy, a startup focused on expanding career access for young people through skills development and digital tools. Damilola is an MPhil Public Policy Candidate at the University of Cambridge, where her research focuses on climate-smart agriculture, green growth, and institutional reform. She is particularly interested in how policy can unlock economic opportunity through education, technology, and sustainable enterprise models and is committed to influencing inclusive policymaking across West Africa, amplifying the voices of underrepresented communities, and building systems that enable young people to thrive.