It can be difficult for entrepreneurs to get their businesses cooking. They have to blend passion with strategy.

That’s where New York Professional Advisors for Community Entrepreneurs, or NYPACE, comes in. The nonprofit connects people with business acumen to start-ups in underserved communities.

Arnav Mody is on the nonprofit’s board.


What You Need To Know

  • Arnav Mody helps small businesses through New York Professional Advisors for Community Entrepreneurs

  • Mody started volunteering with NYPACE in 2018

  • He also fundraised for education in India by running the Chicago Marathon, and sponsors a child in Nepal through Save the Children

“What we try to do is to level the playing field just a little bit to give entrepreneurs of small businesses the chance to really survive and thrive,” he said.

The Manhattanite started with NYPACE back in 2018. He was working at a consulting firm, advising nonprofit organizations on how to sort out their finances and plan ahead, but he wanted to do more.

“I could really use the skills that I was learning on the job, the skills that I was building on my own, outside of my job, and leverage it for real life impact that we can see with our eyes,” Mody said.

Mody now meets with entrepreneurs, recruits new mentors and helps map out NYPACE’s next steps. NY1 met up with him as he discussed business strategy with Dawn Kelly, who owns health food shops in Jamaica, Queens and Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

“Oftentimes you have all of these ideas in your head, right?” Kelly said. “And you’re not sure which one will work, and even if you do research. So it’s always great to have somebody to bounce ideas off of and get the benefit of their perspective and their experiences.”

It isn’t all business when it comes to Mody’s charity work. He fundraised for education in India by running the Chicago Marathon, and he sponsors a child in Nepal through Save the Children.

"I think it's, like, unfair that where you're born, something you don't choose defines so much of what you can be in your life,” Mody said.

For giving people a leg up in life and in business, Arnav Mody is our New Yorker of the Week.