Meet Jessica Matthews, The Nigerian-American Inventor Transforming Soccer Ball into Clean Energy
Jessica Matthews was born on February 13, 1988, and grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, as a dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria. She is the second of four children. Her parents run a software business, Decision Technologies International.
Matthews is best known for inventing Soccket, a soccer ball that harnesses kinetic energy from playing. The energy can then be used for everyday purposes, a sort of mini generator and power bank in places where electricity is scarce. For every half hour of play, the ball generates up to 3 hours of LED watts.
Growing up, Matthews had always wanted to be an inventor. In 2008, her junior (3rd) year in university, Matthews and her classmate at Harvard, Julia Silverman, invented Soccket as part of an assignment for an engineering class at drawing inspiration from attending her aunt’s wedding in Nigeria. As is usually the case in the country, the electricity was cut without prior notice which necessitated the use of diesel-powered generators. With the health hazards from fumes, Matthews decided to try to do something about it.
She and Silverman presented Soccket as their proposed solution. This way, children playing with the ball will also have reading light with which to do their homework after dark. This was the birth of their company, Uncharted Power. After college, Matthews worked at CrowdTap for a year before she left to work on Uncharted Power full-time.
Her success in entrepreneurship led to a White House invitation from President Barack Obama to represent small companies for the signing of the America Invents Act in 2012. In 2016, she raised what was at the time the largest Series A round ever raised by a black female founder in history and was selected to ring the NASDAQ opening ceremony bell, representing all Forbes 30 Under 30 alumni. In 2021, Matthews was appointed by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm to the Electricity Advisory Committee.
In 2012, Toyota recognised Soccket as an innovative invention that inspires social change and named Jessica Matthews as a 2012 Toyota Mother of Invention, giving her a grant that served as capital to grow the business.
The company’s technology is an energy harvesting building block that can be integrated into various infrastructure, objects and products like floor panels to strollers and more. The company also makes a jump rope that stores energy in a means similar to Soccket called the Pulse, which generates three hours of power for an LED through 15 minutes of jumping rope.
In 2016, Matthews raised $7 million in Series A funding for Uncharted Power, with the company valued at $57 million. This made Matthews the 13th black female founder to have raised more than $1 million in funding. The product was discontinued in 2016. By March 2017, 500,000 Socckets and Pulses had been reportedly used in developing regions, primarily in Africa and Latin America.
Jessica Matthews has a degree in psychology and economics from Harvard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Her patents have been cited over 40 times, influencing innovative products from companies like Qualcomm, Philips, Intel, IBM, Sony, and Toshiba. Her list of accolades includes Fortune’s Most Promising Women Entrepreneurs, Forbes 30 Under 30, Inc. Magazine 30 Under 30 and Female Founders 100, Harvard University Scientist of the Year, One Young World Entrepreneur of the Year, the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award, and Black Women Tech Talk’s Tech Trailblazer Award. She has appeared on the cover of Forbes and Forbes Africa, as well as featured in Marie Claire, Wired, Inc., TechCrunch, The New York Times and Fast Company, among others.
A relatable, down-to-earth speaker, she refers to herself as a “blend of Beyoncé and Bill Nye the Science Guy.”
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