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On March 4 this year, Grace Bosco watched her own face appear on the Nasdaq Tower in Times Square – a name and a company logo, up in lights, next to just nine others chosen from thousands of entrepreneurs worldwide.

Grace arrived at the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation (CERI) as an African STARS YPP fellow in August 2025, and was already building something ambitious: a startup using seaweed to capture carbon dioxide at five to ten times the rate of land plants, then turning that seaweed into high-value agricultural products.

Grace’s company, SAB Biomanufactures, is developing carbon-cure solutions rooted in seaweed cultivation – a business that sits at the intersection of climate innovation and agricultural value creation. It’s exactly the kind of work the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center’s Winter 2026 Milestone Makers cohort was built for: a themed round supporting entrepreneurs building scalable solutions in clean tech, environmental sustainability, and the transition away from carbon-heavy industry.

Grace heard about the programme through her entrepreneurship network and applied on the strength of a simple ambition – to grow not just her business, but herself, as a founder and a leader. It was a competitive door to walk through: Milestone Makers selected just 10 entrepreneurs globally out of more than 4 000 applicants, the majority of them from the U.S. What set her application apart, she believes, was its clarity – a real environmental and agricultural challenge, tied directly to opportunity for local communities. “My passion and dedication came through in my application,” she says.

Over 12 weeks, from December 2, 2025 to March 3, 2026, Grace worked toward a single defining milestone: strengthening SAB Biomanufactures’ growth strategy and building relationships with bigger stakeholders and investors. She was paired with a dedicated business and life coach, and mentored directly by an investor and tech founder named a 2025 Visionary of the Year, alongside a venture capital professional with a background spanning Apple, Samsung, and the Forbes Communications Council.

This milestone wasn’t just a checkbox. “What we are building in Tanzania,” Grace says, “can create impact far beyond our borders.”

The Times Square feature itself is no small gesture – graduates are given a spot on the tower reserved for a display that costs upwards of 10 000 USD to secure. Grace and her fellow graduates were celebrated live over video by the CEO of the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center and programme sponsors. She couldn’t be there to see her own photo and company logo go up in person, but she felt every bit of it. “It gave me more motivation,” she says, “to keep building solutions that can impact Africa.”

Selection into Milestone Makers came with more than a moment of recognition. Grace now holds lifetime membership in the Nasdaq entrepreneurial community – access to annual summits, ongoing mentorship, and a global network of founders she can call on as SAB Biomanufactures grows. She has already cleared the interview stage for grant funding and investor access, with her next step being to hit the growth milestones investors are watching for.

Grace is clear that none of this happened in isolation. She completed the Nasdaq program while an active African STARS fellow at CERI – and it was the fellowship, she says, that made full participation possible. “The fellowship gave me the time, the space, and the environment to show up fully – to attend every session, hit every milestone, and never miss a deadline. And we were constantly encouraged: apply anyway, no matter how big the opportunity seems.”

Beyond the practical support, Grace points to something less tangible but just as important: the leadership, entrepreneurship, and personal development grounding the fellowship gave her – skills she now carries back to Tanzania as she scales her business.

Grace’s story is a clear thread from individual investment to something larger. At the individual level, she describes new confidence in decision-making and in speaking with investors – a direct shift in the kind of purposeful, dignified work the fellowship aims to create. At the community and institutional level, her ambitions are explicit: growing SAB Biomanufactures means growing local supply chains around seaweed cultivation in Tanzania, and, if the investor conversations she’s now in convert, creating employment for youth and women in her home country.

As Grace puts it: “This fellowship is helping founders like me learn how to compete in global opportunities – which will lead to creating employment for youth and women in Africa.”

ABOVE: Prof Tulio de Oliveira with Grace Bosco at the African STARS Fellowship - YPP 2025 cohort farewell dinner.

By Katrine Anker-Nilssen

News date: 2026-07-30

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