Interview: Jessica Yinka Thomas, co-founder, past president and executive director of B Academics
Reflect on the milestones, memories, and best moments as we celebrate our 10 year anniversary! Hear from one of the B Academics co-founders and current executive director, Jessica Yinka Thomas, about the early days of building B Academics. Stay tuned for a new article each month for the remainder of the year as we celebrate our journey together.
Read 10 Year Anniversary Interview #1: The Founding of B Academics
Following the initial momentum, B Academics continued to build the community and host regular roundtables. What were the goals of these early meetings?
After the success of the first B Academics Roundtable in Philadelphia in 2016, the momentum built incredibly fast. In 2017, we convened our second Global B Corp Academic Roundtable in Toronto and later the 3rd annual Global B Corp Academic Roundtable in New Orleans alongside the B Local Communities Summit, we realized we were evolving into something much larger than a localized network.
A true defining moment came when we collaborated with Maria Emilia Correa, the co-founder of Sistema B and Academia B, along with Veronica Devenin at EADA Business School in Barcelona to engage the academic community across Latin America. We wanted to set a global precedent for academic collaboration, proving that researchers could play a core role in building inclusive and regenerative societies.
However, the flow between academia and the fast-paced practitioner movement wasn’t always seamless. Traditional academia moves slowly and values long peer-review cycles, while the corporate movement moved much more quickly. Our biggest obstacle was bridging that gap—organizing a highly fragmented, global group of busy volunteers to create a unified platform that served both rigorous scholarship and real-world business needs.
2019 was a major turning point when B Academics formally incorporated as a non-profit. How did you navigate that achievement?
In 2019, as we were rapidly growing the network globally, we recognized the need to formalize our community of practice. In a year long effort led by Maria Ballesteros-Sola at Cal State Channel Islands, we explored almost a dozen different models. We engaging experts ranging from Marshall Worshman, a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley to Bill Clark, the lawyer who developed the model benefit corporation legislation and extensively surveyed our network. We took a leap of faith to become an independent 501(c)3, formally incorporated in Washington, D.C. on October 10, 2019.
We were fortunate to collaborate with committed B Corp partners to build some of early key infrastructure. Kevin Christopher at Rockridge Venture Law provided pro bono expertise to handle our legal incorporation as a 501(c)3 nonprofit. Sirena Andras at Creative Chi breathed life into our visual identity by working with us to develop our first formal B Academics branding. We even anchored our values financially by opening our first bank account with Beneficial State Bank, where Manny Barragan-Alcaraz remains our trusted banker to this day.
The ultimate validation of this collective effort came at the 2019 B Corp Champions Retreat in Los Angeles. While hosting our fourth annual Global B Corp Academic Roundtable alongside the broader B Corp community, B Academics was honored with the B Lab Collective Action Award. It was a profound moment of recognition that we were an important driver in the broader global B Corp movement. It was an honor to accept that award on behalf of B Academics along with some of early champions including Fiona Wilson at University of New Hampshire, Jake Mosely at University of Georgia, Maria Ballesteros-Sola at Cal State Channel Islands, Emily Landry then at University of Tennesse and others.
As you planned for future growth back then, how did you envision the evolution of the non-profit? What was your focus moving into 2020?
Our focus at the end of 2019 was entirely on infrastructure and scale. We wanted to transition from a tight-knit group of founders into a digitized, globally accessible ecosystem. We spent those final months of the year preparing the launch of our bacademics.org website and formal membership model. When the platform officially launched in January 2020, it felt like opening the floodgates. Instantly, a massive wave of new members joined the ranks—ranging from veteran global scholars and undergraduate students to sustainability representatives from actual B Corps. Our underlying philosophy was simple: build a digital home that democratizes access to purpose-driven business research. Seeing that community materialize overnight gave us immense hope for the future of the movement.
Then, COVID 19 engulfed the world and changed everything.
Stay tuned for article #3.
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