A Rhode Island innovation story may not get more homegrown than Katherine Messier’s. But the impact of her work resonates with nonprofits in every single state in the union, and beyond.
Born and raised in Rhode Island, she is executive director of Mobile Beacon – a company she founded in 2010 that provides broadband service to nonprofits at an affordable rate – and a second-generation entrepreneur.
The daughter of John Primeau, founder and CEO of North American Catholic Educational Programming Foundation Inc. of Johnston – the second-largest educational broadband service licensee in the U.S. – Messier did not have time to follow exactly in her father’s footsteps. She was busy working, exploring and making her own entrepreneurial path.
And work she did. Where most finish college and head to work, Messier could not wait. Workplace experience from co-op programs was a large part of her learning process, she said, and a significant priority when choosing a school.
So, choosing Merrimack College in Massachusetts for her undergraduate degree was based in part on its co-op program. Messier worked full time for pay while completing her business-administration degree, which she still knocked out in four years, doing some coursework nights and during the summers.
“For some reason I was drawn to that … It’s just sort of always been in my nature,” she said. “It’s the pragmatic part of me, being able to graduate from college with a year or two of work experience. I wanted to try out different kinds of jobs.” Over several years, Messier had worked for different companies in roles in marketing, finance, engineering and technology.
“Every job is a learning opportunity and never a waste,” Messier said. “For example, when I was working at an environmental engineering firm and writing proposals … it taught me different things about how that sector works. When I did event marketing out of college, I was forming initial partnerships, securing sponsorships and [learning how to] get us into conferences as an unknown [company],” she said. Messier found her time volunteering as part of one employer’s philanthropic initiative at Horizons for Homeless Children to be especially rewarding.
Game-changer
For Messier, it was on a visit to Boulder, Colo., to an NACEPF partner company called Mobile Citizen that sparked the idea for Mobile Beacon. Mobile Citizen had a similar business model. She headed back to New England motivated and inspired to go about building a startup. Everything began coming together.
“I understood the potential and took that leap, knowing we can figure it out,” she said. “I had grown up with this kind of vision all along, there was no one more invested and passionate.” Her memories of working at the Boston homeless children’s facility in her head, she worked to bridge the digital divide to better link nonprofits with the needy and with each other.
Mobile Beacon’s mission is to connect charity groups, schools, libraries and other community organizations who otherwise may not be able to afford high-speed broadband with low-cost, mobile 4G LTE internet. Internet is needed for more than students doing homework, said Messier, but also for job searching, accessing veterans’ benefits, applying for health care and opening up resources to low-income families that need them. Thirty-four million people in the U.S. still don’t have internet access, Messier said.
Mobile Beacon allows Messier to use her business acumen and passion for nonprofits, using a strong existing foundation as a parent company, NACEPF, to bring new services to market to a population in need. “I love working in business and solving problems. I was able to tie it back to social good … bringing those passions together,” she said.
Mobile Beacon’s Bridging the Gap program, for example, provided through a partnership with PCs for People, offers access to discounted computers and high-speed, unlimited internet service for those at or below the 200 percent poverty line, which Messier calls a seemingly invisible population.
The company started the first-ever library hotspot lending program so patrons could check out 4G mobile hotspot devices, as they would books, at Providence Community Library. The idea caught on, and it’s now the largest library hotspot program in the country.
Success equals growth
Messier has just made changes to accommodate expansion. Among them, new faces in the office. Over the past year and a half, employee numbers have more than doubled and are now at 16.
“The challenge has been creating new positions, a new staffing plan, trainings, developing new processes. It hasn’t been perfect, and it’s not always right the first time,” she said.
There has been some turnover and adjustments along the way, she said, but with help from Butler & Associates Human Resources Consulting of Jamestown, Messier now has a management team in place that allows her to focus less on details. Seeing the shift has been rewarding for her, and freeing, to be able to hand things off to new, knowledgeable talent.
“I want them to be empowered … and understand how their job is connected to our mission,” she said.