The Workplace Innovation Now (WIN) Challenge has named 18 awardees who will receive a combined $60 million to advance bold solutions designed to remove barriers women face in the workplace and build better workplaces for everyone.
To mark the milestone, Melinda French Gates, founder of Pivotal, congratulated the awardees and reflected on the opportunity to rethink workplace practices that have failed to keep pace with how people live and work today.
“These extraordinary innovators are proving that these problems can be solved,” said French Gates. “They’ve brought forward a bold set of ideas to remove barriers that prevent people from accessing economic opportunity and reaching their full potential—and finally bring our workplaces into the future.”
Led by Aspen Digital, a program of the Aspen Institute, and supported by Pivotal, the WIN Challenge launched in 2025 as a nationwide search for transformative ideas across three areas: Culture & Practices, AI, and Narrative.
The response was significant. Nearly 900 organizations from across the United States and U.S. territories submitted ideas for helping women—and everyone—succeed amid rapid economic and technological change.
Carrot partnered with Aspen Digital to help bring the WIN Challenge to life, supporting the program's design, branding, digital experience, and competition management. The Carrot platform powered the application and evaluation process across all three Challenge areas.
Applicants advanced through a rigorous, multi-stage review process that included peer review, evaluation by an external panel of experts from the corporate, philanthropic, academic, technology, and nonprofit sectors, and review by the WIN Council, a group of distinguished workplace leaders and innovators.
From that process, 18 awardees were selected to receive grants of $2.5 million or $5 million.
The award-winning solutions demonstrate just how many different approaches it will take to build workplaces that work better for everyone.
They include new models for financing and expanding childcare infrastructure in rural communities; technology that gives hourly workers greater flexibility and predictability in their schedules; AI-powered tools that help small businesses identify funding opportunities; and new approaches to preparing workers to use AI effectively.
Other awardees are addressing the culture surrounding work, bringing greater attention to issues such as menopause and women's health, challenging outdated workplace narratives, and exploring how businesses can better embrace family-oriented values.
Together, the 18 awardees represent a portfolio of practical ideas with the potential to change how people experience work—and how employers think about the systems, technologies, and cultural expectations shaping the workplace.
The ideas uncovered through the WIN Challenge don't end with the 18 awardees.
Additional solutions submitted to the Challenge will be featured through WIN Solutions, a searchable resource designed for business leaders, funders, investors, organizations, and other decision makers looking for promising approaches, potential partnerships, and investment opportunities.
By making more of the ideas generated through the Challenge discoverable, WIN Solutions extends the value of the competition beyond the final awards and creates another pathway for promising solutions to reach the people and organizations capable of putting them into practice.
The 18 awardees will also be spotlighted at the inaugural WIN Summit on October 22 in New York City, where leaders from business, philanthropy, academia, and the social sector will come together to explore ideas for helping women thrive and shaping a better future of work.
For Carrot, the announcement marks the culmination of a national competition built to move from a broad call for ideas, through rigorous and equitable evaluation, to a portfolio of solutions positioned for meaningful impact.
