Honoree | Katherine Messier, Mobile Beacon
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 2007 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 graduate school, she took part in another co-op program at Emerson College in Boston, earning a degree in integrated marketing and communications.
For Messier, it was on a visit to Boulder, Colo., to an NACEPF partner company called Clearwire that sparked the idea for Mobile Beacon. Clearwire 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.
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.