About Us
Weaving Fragments
The Big Table Institute addresses a fragmented and tightening impact economy in which policy shifts, labor market disruption, and constrained funding are pushing mission-driven professionals toward entrepreneurship without the connective infrastructure, capital coordination, and trust-based systems needed to succeed at scale.
The ecosystem faces a number of unique challenges and opportunities:
Disruption Pressure on the Job Market
Government restructuring, policy retrenchment, and AI-driven labor shifts are displacing mission-driven talent and shrinking traditional pathways to stable, values-aligned work.
Entrepreneurship as a Means to Job and Wealth Creation
Entrepreneurship can serve as a valuable tool to help grow wealth and circulate capital within communities.
A Stalled Impact Economy
Defined as the overarching strategic framework for systemic transformation by Laurie Lane-Zucker, the founder and president of Impact Entrepreneur, the Impact Economy has stalled due to weak coordination, limited transparency, and fraying trust among civic organizations, funders, government, and communities.
Capital and Model Gaps
Early-stage impact innovation faces tightening public funding and underutilized alternative investment models that could better circulate capital and build local wealth.
Program Pillars
Impact Studio
A network-based, entrepreneurship-led program inspired by “economic gardening” philosophies to connect and empower mission-driven professionals and civic builders to co-create new human-centered ventures, rooted in community needs and market realities, and boosted with the support of innovative technology.
Learn more.
Ecosystem Capacity Building
A focused effort to connect and convene ecosystem stakeholders in order to develop community-building and trust infrastructure across regions.
Finance HQ
Development of a blended finance funding pipeline that includes intentional strategies to mitigate the growing wealth gap by pursuing opportunities for distributed ownership, shared value creation, and alternative exit strategies.
“While the range of people, organizations, resources, and conditions involved in an entrepreneurial ecosystem are useful to understand, they are not the most critical construct. Instead, the interaction between each of the components is what matters.”
~ Brad Feld, The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
“You are never too small to make a difference.”
~ Greta Thunberg
Collaborative Ecosystem
Weaving a Network
We understand that mission-driven professionals in our current social, political, and economic environment face a unique set of challenges as they work to design, test, and launch systemic solutions.
To help facilitate efforts to develop and launch new impactful enterprises, BTI seeks to align with partners who value systems-thinking approaches to impact investing and ecosystem development and recognize the critical role of strategic partnerships in unlocking sustainable social change.
Patty Simonton, Founder
A conscious capitalist and ecosystem builder at heart, Patty has spent most of her career working to facilitate entrepreneurship and innovation to help build and strengthen resilient communities, fight climate change, and open up opportunities for individuals to change the world. Patty was the former director of Bethesda Green’s Innovation Lab, a federally recognized entrepreneurship support program, and a strategic manager for the Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation. She is certified by the International Economic Development Council as an Entrepreneurship Development Professional, and is currently a board member for the Maryland Business Innovation Association. (LinkedIn)