Lending Hands

Caleb Gardner: The Entrepreneur and one-time Obama staffer is putting his digital prowess to good use — literally.

Having worked for Barack Obama for three years — running the former president’s Twitter account, no less — Caleb Gardner is no stranger to mission-driven work. But in recent years, he felt that digital efforts in that realm had sometimes been misguided. With his startup digital consulting firm 18 Coffees, he is “hoping to blow up the way people think about how digital problems are solved,” he says. The catch? He only takes on clients doing purposeful work.

In his inaugural year, he’s worked with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center on its New American campaign, teamed up with an advocacy group based in the African Union working to end female genital mutilation and consulted for the Social Innovation Summit, as well as partnered with some early-stage entrepreneurship and innovators reimagining the way business is done. And that’s just what Gardner and his small-but-mighty staff are doing. “I’ve found that people who are there for the cause are really not selfish people,” Gardner says. “When people believe in the work, they will tolerate a lot of insanity.”

This piece was originally published in CS Magazine, highlighting 18 Coffees co-founder Caleb Gardner as one of Chicago’s top leaders who are giving back through business.