1. Lending a Healing Hand

Lending a Healing Hand With the support of a Johnson Opportunity Grant, Sofia Iuteri '27 is expanding the reach of the nonprofit she founded at 16.

By Emily Innes
July 19, 2024

When Sofia Iuteri '27 first learned to knit, she never knew how many lives she would be able to touch with the craft.

Iuteri is the founder and president of Hats4Healing, a nonprofit dedicated to providing handmade hats for pediatric cancer patients. An economics and environmental studies major from Greenwich, Connecticut, she is spending this summer expanding the nonprofit's reach and infrastructure with the support of a Johnson Opportunity Grant.

Iuteri began knitting at 8 years old, and what started as a hobby to help her unwind after gymnastics practice quickly became a way to support a cause close to her heart. After losing her grandmother to liver cancer, Iuteri knew she wanted to do something to help other cancer patients, and she and her family realized her passion for knitting would be the perfect way to give back.

"I would go home at night after long practices and just want to unwind, so I found myself starting to knit and I started making hats," Iuteri said. "My family noticed how much I was knitting, and we began thinking about how the hats I made could make a difference."

Thus, Hats4Healing was born, and, at only 16, Iuteri found herself at the helm of a nonprofit. Witnessing the organization's impact on the lives of pediatric cancer patients and their families has been a gratifying experience.

"My favorite thing is getting letters and cards back and hearing people's stories," Iuteri said. "We're not only helping the patients but their families, too, and the community is so much bigger than I realized."

At first, Iuteri made all the hats to be donated by the nonprofit, knitting during any spare moment between school and gymnastics. However, by the time she arrived at W&L in the fall of 2023, she was unsure of the future of Hats4Healing. She began meeting with Emily Landry, assistant professor of business administration, to talk about her concerns, and Landry encouraged her to apply for a Johnson Opportunity Grant to support her nonprofit work.

"Through my conversations with Professor Landry, I realized I wanted to keep going and push to develop this nonprofit more, and I decided to apply for the grant," said Iuteri, who now occupies a managerial role within the nonprofit.

Hats4Healing currently has more than 250 volunteers who make and donate hats, and, as of March 2024, the nonprofit had donated 2,325 hats to pediatric cancer patients around the world. As Hats4Healing has grown, so have Iuteri's goals for what the nonprofit can accomplish.

"My vision is to impact as many people as possible, increase volunteer engagement and expand the community even further," Iuteri said.

Having previously relied on self-funding and small monetary donations, the Johnson Opportunity Grant will make it possible for Iuteri to build revenue streams and invest in market research, improving the financial sustainability of Hats4Healing. Expanding the nonprofit also allows Iuteri to apply the concepts and skills she has developed in the classes she's taking for her entrepreneurship minor and her involvement in W&L's Connolly Entrepreneurship Society.

Among Iuteri's goals for Hats4Healing is developing knitting kits that volunteers can purchase, which include the material and a pattern for the hats and a notecard to write a message to the patient receiving the hat, creating video tutorials to make knitting more accessible and hiring a social media content creator to expand the reach of Hats4Healing. In addition, Iuteri hopes to expand the nonprofit's community partnerships and has arranged meetings with hospitals in medically underserved regions of the Eastern U.S. to address cancer support needs.

Hats4Healing has long-standing partnerships with local groups and organizations in both Rockbridge County and her hometown of Greenwich, receiving handmade hats from student clubs and senior centers to donate to Yale New Haven Hospital. In 2023, Iuteri established a partnership with the Bridgeport Islanders hockey team (an affiliate of the New York Islanders) to raise awareness and collect donations. She has also pursued international partnerships with nonprofits and hospitals in Latin America and South America and is proud of the increasingly global and diverse community Hats4Healing serves.

Looking beyond this summer, Iuteri is unsure whether she wants to pursue nonprofit management as a postgraduate career, but she is confident her time building and leading Hats4Healing will guide her future ambitions.

"I'm not sure if I'll continue in the nonprofit space, but I love entrepreneurship, and this has been an entrepreneurial passion of mine that I've pursued for a long time," Iuteri said. "Whether it's with nonprofits or other for-profit businesses, I know I want to continue on an entrepreneurial route in the future."

And wherever the future takes her, Iuteri knows she'll carry the lessons she has learned from Hats4Healing with her as she continues to chase after her dreams.

"I've learned so much about how to start from nothing and go somewhere," Iuteri said. "But the biggest thing I've learned is that if you have an idea and you can see it even possibly going somewhere, try it out. I'm grateful I took that little spark I had for knitting and have created something that's on its way to becoming such a successful venture. I would say the big-picture lesson from this is to always go for it."

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