"Who are we and what are we trying to do?" When she started as President of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) in 2015, Nancy Yao Maasbach focused on this question.

The cute bowl of noodles on the bright blue background has become a ubiquitous icon around Yale.

Larissa Nguyen, a sophomore at Grace Hopper College, wasn’t planning to get up in front of an audience and share her idea for a new political app. But after she watched several students give their 2-minute pitches at the First Ever Yale Pitch Slam hosted by the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY), she decided to go for it.

The Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale has initiated the first cohort of teams into its Accelerator Program – a 6-week program for testing and developing new startup and nonprofit ideas with funding, workshops, mentorship and peer coaches known as Innovation Advisors.

Nya Holder (YC '17, MPH '18), a member of the new Student Advisory Board at Tsai CITY, says she “fell into entrepreneurship by accident.”

Julie Dorsey is a Computer Science professor at Yale and the founder of Mental Canvas, a software company that is developing a new class of graphical-media-design system that lies between 2D drawing and 3D computer-aided design.

This week, the University launched the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale. The center, which was funded by an undisclosed major donation from Joseph Tsai ’86 LAW ’90 through the Joe & Clara Tsai Foundation, will succeed the existing Yale Entrepreneurial Institute as the nucleus of entrepreneurship on campus.

A major donation by an alumnus of Yale College and Yale Law School will support the construction, launch, and programs of the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY).