Reflecting on 2024 and Embracing 2025: A New Year Message from Our Founder

By Laura Thomas

As we step into 2025, I find myself reflecting on the growth, lessons, and milestones of the past year. One of the greatest insights I gained in 2024 was a deeper understanding of the value of community connections. A healthy community fosters trust, safety, and collective growth—it’s essential for well-being.

As a child, I often struggled to find a community where I felt truly accepted. Now, as a mindfulness-practicing adult, I see how the scars of past trauma can hinder one’s sense of connection. Sharing my personal story to help elevate our startup last year, I discovered an overwhelming sense of belonging. This experience gave me a profound understanding of how healthy communities are cultivated—affirming our venture’s resolve to make mental health and well-being education integral to core learning. For these reasons, 2024 was truly transformational, both personally and professionally.

Thanks to the support of our incredible community, Effective to Great Education (ETGE) celebrated many milestones last year:

• We produced our first promotional video, sharing ETGE’s purpose and vision.

• Secured a major win at the Johns Hopkins Ward Infinity Pitch Competition.

• Featured in the Washington, DC startup ecosystem through InnovateDMV by US Ignite and highlighted on WTOP News.

• Recognized as a 2024 Village Capital - LIFT Equitable Health Innovation Venture and included in Health Affairs' Research & Justice for All: Drivers of Health Podcast Report, sponsored by the Deloitte Health Equity Institute.

• Closed the year with an exciting victory as the grand prize winner of the Dream Pitch Competition, hosted by the DC Department of Small & Local Business Development.

We also contributed to critical conversations on equity, education, and mental health through impactful research last year, with three papers culminating release in 2025:

• Cultural Conundrum in the Classroom: How Institutionalized Disparities Affect the Mental Health of Students of Color.
  

• Bridging the Gap and Defining Homelessness: A Comparative Analysis of the Complexities of Youth and Family Homelessness.
  

• Language Standardization and Linguistic Subordination in the English-Language Learning Classroom: Lessons for Culturally-Sensitive Teaching.
  

Looking ahead, 2025 marks an exciting period of growth and transition for ETGE. Our primary focus will be the launch of Mindfulness Labs, a platform to integrate culturally responsive mental health and well-being into schools seamlessly. Alongside this, we’re revamping our communication channels—including social media—to better connect with you, share our progress, and amplify the importance of culturally responsive, trauma-informed well-being in education.

We invite you to join us on this journey. Whether you’re interested in bringing Mindfulness Labs to your school, partnering with ETGE, or supporting our work, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can reimagine education as a foundation for equity, mental health, and thriving communities.

Here’s to 2025—a year of innovation, connection, and impact.

Happy New Year🎉

Laura Thomas