E150 The Public School Built to Heal: Inside Sarah Elizabeth Ippel’s Ecosystem for Access and Equity

This might be the most hopeful conversation of the year.

In this episode of The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, host Michael Stamatinos sits down with Sarah Elizabeth Ippel, the visionary Founder and Executive Director of the Academy for Global Citizenship and the Cultivate Collective.

At just 23 years old, Sarah Elizabeth biked to the Chicago Board of Education with a 400-page proposal and a vision that many called unrealistic. She wasn’t looking to improve the system—she came to reimagine it from the ground up.

What emerged is the Academy for Global Citizenship, a public K through 8 school on the Southwest side of Chicago that doesn’t just teach students—it nourishes them. Students harvest vegetables in school gardens, eat farm-to-table meals, practice mindfulness, and learn core subjects through the lens of climate justice, global citizenship, and regenerative design.

But her work extends far beyond the school walls.

Sarah Elizabeth also founded Cultivate Collective, a six-acre net-positive community campus that integrates early childhood education, pediatric care, green job training, behavioral health, urban agriculture, teaching kitchens, and food access. Every element is built on a single foundational truth: community is medicine.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Michael and Sarah Elizabeth explore:

0:00 - The origin story: a bike helmet, a bold charter, and a vision

6:18 - Lessons from visiting over 100 schools around the world

10:34 - How trust was earned long before any data proved it

16:16 - A story of an AGC graduate now shaping global finance

21:01 - What it feels like to walk into Cultivate Collective for the first time

25:54 - Partnering with experts across health, food, and education

29:30 - Why AGC chose open-source innovation over replication

35:23 - The rituals Sarah Elizabeth uses to stay grounded through adversity

37:26 - How listeners can experience the work firsthand or support its growth

Viewers will hear how:

* Sarah Elizabeth built an ecosystem of trust in a place where trust doesn’t come easy

* She scaled a model that blends education, health, food, and economic opportunity

* Public schools can lead innovation and treat equity as infrastructure

* Culture, love, and audacity can be designed into the very architecture of a community

Michael Stamatinos, known for drawing out the heart behind innovation, guides this conversation with curiosity, depth, and clarity. Whether you work in healthcare, education, economic development, or policy...or simply believe we’re capable of better systems, this story is an invitation to rethink what’s possible.

To learn more or get involved:

Academy for Global Citizenship – https://agcchicago.org

Cultivate Collective – https://cultivate-collective.org

If this conversation moves you, do not keep it to yourself. Share it. Comment. Bring the story to someone who needs to hear what’s possible when vision meets commitment.

Subscribe to The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show for more conversations with real leaders building the future of access and equity from the ground up.

#AccessMatters #HealthcareInnovation #PublicHealth #EducationInnovation #CultivateCollective #CommunityHealth #LeadershipInAction #SystemChange #healthcareinnovation

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

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