Built on CareExploring and celebrating the place we all love to call home.
VOL. 307 / Built On Care
Meet this week’s guest editor, Penny Simpson Stein. As co-founder of CARE360, a Virginia-based social venture rooted in Richmond and Charlottesville, Penny is helping empower leaders to navigate a rapidly changing future shaped by AI, sustainability challenges, and social transformation. Through CARELab, CARE360’s educational initiative, she and her team are helping prepare the next generation of leaders, innovators, and changemakers through responsible AI, creativity, and human-centered leadership.
After a career leading innovation and product development teams for a Fortune 100 science and technology company, Penny shifted her focus toward building organizations and initiatives that create meaningful community impact. Her work has ranged from helping revive a woman-owned small business, to building a STEM program for a startup school, to supporting the Science Museum of Virginia and its growing environmental and educational initiatives.
After several career pivots, Penny thought she and her husband were entering an early “second act” focused on family, travel, and leisure. But as the mother of three next-generation children, she found herself drawn toward a bigger question: how do we help prepare young people to thrive — not just professionally, but as thoughtful, ethical, and deeply human leaders in an AI-driven world?
That question gained momentum after Penny met her cofounder, Dr. Ira Kaufman, at a local Encorepreneur event, where they discovered a shared passion for helping the next generation navigate a rapidly changing future. Together, they cofounded CARE360 and CARELab — an effort Penny often describes as a kind of love letter to the next generation and the future they will inherit.
CARELab focuses on helping late high school and college students unlock AI as a strategic thinking partner that expands creativity, innovation, and problem-solving. Students work alongside entrepreneurs, business professionals, and civic leaders to tackle real-world community challenges while strengthening the human leadership skills needed to guide technology wisely and create positive impact.
This July, CARELab will host two immersive summer studios, one at the University of Virginia and the second at the University of Richmond, for students interested in leadership, innovation, responsible AI, and social impact.
We’re excited to have her join us this week to share a few of her favorite Richmond discoveries.
Take it away, Penny…
The Green at the Science Museum of Virginia
If you work or live near the Science Museum of Virginia, I highly recommend taking a lunch break or afternoon walk around The Green. Let’s face it — Scott’s Addition is one of the coolest and fastest-growing parts of Richmond, but it has limited greenspace. In a world increasingly shaped by screens, speed, and constant stimulation, these kinds of community greenspaces are becoming more important than ever.
The Science Museum has already transformed portions of former parking lots into vibrant public greenspace and ultimately plans to convert more than 20 acres of its campus into native landscapes, gathering spaces, outdoor learning environments, and places for exploration and connection. Best of all, it’s free and open to everyone — you don’t even need a museum ticket to enjoy it. I honestly imagine The Green becoming something like Richmond’s own version of Central Park.
One of the things I love most about Richmond is that innovation here often starts at the grassroots level. I’d encourage Richmonders to explore our growing community composting movement through organizations like Compost RVA, which provides residential and business pickup services and community drop-off options across the region. Many people don’t realize how much food waste can be diverted from landfills and transformed into nutrient-rich compost that supports local gardens, farms, parks, and greenspaces.
Did you know that food waste makes up about 24% of material in landfills and is one of the largest sources of methane emissions — a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term? Richmond’s composting movement is a simple but powerful example of circular thinking in action: turning waste into a community resource while strengthening our environmental ecosystem. I love that Richmond is embracing this kind of practical, community-driven innovation!
Vitals: Compost RVA / Residential + Business Composting Services / Community Drop-Off Options
Experiences That Prepare Students for an AI-Driven Future
One of the best investments we can make as a community is helping young people prepare for a world being rapidly reshaped by AI and technological change. We’re entering what I often think of as the AI-Humanity Paradox: as technology becomes more powerful, uniquely human capabilities like empathy, ethics, creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking become even more important.
That’s why I’m passionate about programs like CARELab, which help students strengthen leadership, adaptability, innovation, and purpose-driven thinking alongside technological fluency. This summer’s CARELabs at the University of Richmond and University of Virginia will bring together students, entrepreneurs, business professionals, and civic leaders to tackle real-world community challenges while exploring responsible AI and human-centered leadership.
CARELab partners with the University of Virginia Contemplative Sciences Center and the University of Richmond Innovation Studio to provide immersive, intergenerational learning experiences for late high school and college students. Through the program, students work alongside entrepreneurs, business professionals, and civic leaders while developing leadership, collaboration, strategic creativity, and responsible AI skills. Students also tackle real-world community challenges provided personally by city mayors.
CARELab studios combine human-centered leadership and mindfulness, entrepreneurship and innovation, responsible AI and prompt engineering, sustainability and social impact, design thinking, and team collaboration and public speaking. Students leave with stronger confidence, expanded leadership capability, and a deeper understanding of how to use AI and innovation to create positive impact in both career and community. Limited partial and fully sponsored seats are available!
