Meet the 2025 O'Shaughnessy Fellows | Culture & Society
Launched in 2023, the O'Shaughnessy Fellowships program discovers and empowers creatives, builders, and researchers who are ready to make their mark on the world. Fellows receive a $100,000 grant, plus access to OSV’s network of founders, investors, and experts. Applications are currently closed, but they’ll reopen on January 1, 2026. If you’re curious to learn more, head over to OSV’s website.
Israel Goodnews Balogun
Israel spent 12 years homeless before founding the nonprofit AKHIN Africa in 2019. He has since rescued 100+ homeless individuals and opened support centers in three Nigerian states. He learned to read English at the age of 22 and now holds two master’s degrees from the University of Ibadan.
WHAT’S HE BUILDING?
A “rehabilitation village” in Nigeria that will house 200 homeless and out-of-school youths while providing vocational training, mentorship, and food via a sustainable agriculture system.
Charlie Becker
Charlie is a Houston-native, second-generation bookseller who works at the bookstore his family has run since 1993. He previously spent three years in China scaling an education startup to 60 employees across 12 cities, before becoming a professor and managing director at the University of Houston's SURE Program, where he helped grow more than 1,200 small businesses. You can hear more from Charlie via his newsletter,
, where he pens regular essays on books, philosophy, culture, and legacy.WHAT’S HE BUILDING?
An AI sidekick that helps indie booksellers identify and catalog rare or obscure titles in seconds. Better cataloging keeps forgotten works in circulation, boosts margins for small stores, and helps readers discover what they didn’t know they were missing.
Long-term, Charlie is building an open-source database to serve as an Alexandrian library of overlooked books, pamphlets, monographs, and magazines.
Michelle Huang
Michelle is a Nagano-based artist, researcher, and founder of the nonprofit Akiya Collective. Last year, Akiya Collective acquired its pilot property, a traditional Japanese folk house, and renovated it into a community makerspace that has since hosted artist residencies and workshops. Michelle’s earlier projects span AI in mental health applications, citizen-science initiatives, and algae-yarn wearables. Her projects have been featured in Business Insider, NPR, ABC, and the BBC.
WHAT’S SHE BUILDING?
Turning Japan’s abandoned rural houses—aka akiya—into community-run studios and makerspaces. By 2030, one-third of Japanese homes will stand empty. Reviving even a fraction of these as community hubs will inject life into shrinking villages and offer a new template for rural revival, one that has already inspired projects in Thailand, Korea, and India.
John Kennedy
John is a North Carolina-based founder, investor, and education expert. He founded the ed-tech company Mesa Cloud as a high schooler (acquired by Panorama Education in 2023). Now, he directs AI Solutions at Panorama Education and chairs Clean Air K12 for the Corsi-Rosenthal Foundation. John is also an angel investor and sits on the investment committee of a southeastern family office. He graduated from the University of North Carolina, where he was an Innovation Scholar.
WHAT’S HE BUILDING?
John is transforming classroom air with affordable, DIY air purifiers via the Corsi-Rosenthal Foundation's Clean Air K12 initiative.
Poor ventilation in elementary schools harms both health and cognitive performance. The Corsi-Rosenthal Box is a powerful, DIY air purifier that users can easily build for $60. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency testing has demonstrated that, after running for just one hour, the box is 99.4% effective in removing infectious aerosols in a typical room, making it an affordable fix that any district can replicate.
Mark Nelson
Based in Chicago, Mark is the founder of Radiant Energy Group and a Cambridge-trained nuclear engineer. He has spent 10 years researching and advising on national and international energy systems, and his analytical work has been covered in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other leading European outlets.
WHAT’S HE BUILDING?
Mark organized the sold-out “Anschalt Konferenz” (Restart Conference) in Berlin on May 22 to advocate for restarting Germany’s dormant nuclear reactors. The event welcomed speakers and attendees from all over the world, and drew key German politicians and media, as well as thousands more who tuned in online.
A nuclear restart could quickly generate power for millions of Germans, restore German energy independence, and help reverse the country's industrial decline.
Rob Stephenson
Rob is an award-winning, Brooklyn-based musician and photographer, whose work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, and in venues across North America and Europe. His commissions include work for the Center for Architecture and the Architectural League of New York. His photography has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and Bloomberg Businessweek, among other publications.
WHAT’S HE BUILDING?
Rob is expanding The Neighborhoods, his long-running documentary project that combines photography, field recordings, and research-based writing into a living archive of New York City’s 300+ neighborhoods, preserving the city’s constantly changing street corners for historians, city planners, and NY lovers alike.
Congrats to the fellow! What a great group 💚 🥃