Philadelphia will host some of the nation’s brightest entrepreneurs, innovators and inventors over the next three days at the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit, which kicked off Sunday with a concert at the Piazza at Schmidt’s, headlined by Wiz Khalifa.
Concert tickets were available for free to 5,000 member of the public who got involved with Global Citizen to pledge their support for causes ranging from ending the Ebola epidemic to guaranteeing clean water in foreign countries.
“We wanted to share it with all of Philly,” said Randall Lane, editor of Forbes magazine, of the free-ticket partnership with Global Citizen. “Five thousand people got free tickets doing good things for the world. It’s good for everybody.”
Global Citizen is a group focused on ending extreme poverty by 2030, in part by enlisting the masses who support their goals to join social media campaigns.
“Rather than asking people to donate a dollar, we ask them to use their voice to sign a petition to a world leader, to get that world leader to commit millions and billions of dollar to supporting the poor,” said Justine Lucas, U.S. country director for Global Citizen’s Global Poverty Project. “It’s about leveraging those voices for large scale change.”
The partnership also provided a way to open the concert to the public, Lane said.
“We made a commitment when we decided to come to Philadelphia directly to Mayor Nutter that everyone in Philadelphia would get a chance to participate if they wanted to,” Lane said.
During the summit, entrepreneurs will also speak at Philadelphia schools, network with local businesses, and 300 girls are invited to see a talk by Pakistani women’s rights and education activist Malala Yousafzai.
“To share that with school kids and inspire school kids in Philly — it’s awesome,” Lane said.
Meanwhile, summit attendees from New York and San Francisco will see all that Philly has to offer.
“It’s the first time I’ve been to Philly. The summit’s great and all, but I’m really looking forward to enjoying the city as a city,” said Jake Fuentes, 28, founder of Level Money, a financial technology company.
Visit Forbes.com for the agenda of the 30 under 30 Summit.
Highlights from the schedule include:
Monday:
Talks by Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal, and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Tuesday:
Entrepreneurs get to pitch business ideas in competition for $400,000 in capital. Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani activist, will speak.
Wednesday:
Summit members tour Philly businesses and talk at schools.
