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Khoury students put on AI workshops for Oakland businesses and nonprofits

In a series of clinics, Khoury undergraduates taught attendees to use AI to meet their business needs and streamline their workdays, and absorbed some business know-how for themselves along the way.

May 28, 2026

by Benjamin Hosking

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Companion read: Khoury team helps Oakland government employees navigate AI productivity and safety

Even in the early stages of their undergraduate careers, Khoury students can deliver real value to local businesses and nonprofits. Thanks to a $1 million grant from the Kapor Foundation and an earlier sponsorship grant from financial technology company Block, students at Northeastern’s Oakland campus are doing just that.

In a series of recent AI clinics, Khoury students led dozens of Oakland businesses and nonprofits in a collaborative series of workshops, with Khoury faculty and Oakland campus staff facilitating. Students were paired as consultants for local small businesses and provided technical advice on how to leverage AI to improve business outcomes.

“Everyone is trying to figure out a place in an ever-evolving AI economy,” said Nikki Lowy, director of city and community outreach and programming at Northeastern Oakland. “The program is great for businesses and for students, who learn what it takes to run a small business.”

Several Northeastern students helped co-found the AI clinics program, including rising-third-year computer science students Rohan Kathuria and Esha Kanakapura.

Kathuria highlights his experience working with Rize Up Bakery in Oakland, which has more than 20 employees and multiple delivery routes. He helped the owner use AI to automate emails, appointments, deliveries, and delivery confirmations.

“These things would require phone calls and can be automated with AI,” Kathuria said. “He gets to focus on the baking. I was going into this thinking it was just about teaching AI, but I learned a lot about the business side of working with clients.”

Kanakapura, who worked with elder care company Phlex65, emphasized the importance of detailed and iterative prompting when using Claude.

“My client needed help with social media posts, and she inputted ‘generate social media post ideas for my business,’” Kanakapura said. “We taught her to be more descriptive by telling Claude what the intended audience was. It was an opportunity to show clients what the AI could do. Clients were also impressed by the AI agent that uses LinkedIn to find users who might be interested in their product.”

Such opportunities for real-world experiences excite Lowy and Carrie Maultsby-Lute, head of partnerships at Northeastern Oakland. They cite the examples of students working on city projects to prevent illegal dumping and connect residents to services before eviction.

“These projects can connect our students with our city and community,” Lowy said. “That’s the kind of university–community relationship we hope to have.”

Maultsby-Lute hopes to see the clinics become an every-weekend event, such that local organizations can drop in at any time for student-led technical and consulting assistance.

“Students learn about entrepreneurship and the challenges of being a founder,” she said. “The clinics give them opportunities in an AI world to learn human-oriented skills like critical thinking, communication, and collaboration.”

Broader university–community partnerships in Oakland

The Kapor Foundation’s broader mission is to create a more inclusive technology ecosystem with a focus on Oakland communities. Their social impact partnerships with Northeastern go beyond the AI clinics to include additional programs in educational pathways and social-venture creation. 

First piloted in 2024, Bridge to AI brings 60 local high school students to campus for a five-week program to gain career-focused AI literacy and fluency. Future iterations may employ Khoury undergraduates as the trainers for these high school students.

With the support of the Kapor Foundation grant, five co-op students worked with nonprofit Lead by Learning and Oakland Unified School District educators to understand their AI needs and incorporate AI safety in the classroom. Lead by Learning has operated on the Oakland campus for several decades and has a longstanding relationship with local schools to credential and certify teachers.

Northeastern and Kapor also partnered on social-venture creation through a 10-week accelerator program, Social Innovation Launchpad, for Oakland resident-founders taught by Northeastern faculty and guest entrepreneurs. A final pitch session featured venture capital investors and a keynote by Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee.

“As much as these initiatives have an Oakland social impact focus, they only exist because of our desire to connect our Northeastern students with real projects that matter,” Maultsby-Lute said. “Experiential learning is the foundation and baked into everything. We describe our work as building ‘resume-able’ experience that is valuable throughout all stages of the academic journey.”

Experiential learning driving resumes and focus

Inspired by his work at the AI clinics, Kathuria is researching mechanistic interpretability by reverse-engineering the neural networks behind large language models (LLMs), part of the broader AI safety field. He recently accepted a research fellowship at the Cambridge Boston Alignment Initiative working on AI safety.

“Presenting AI technology to people who are new to it — and the power you wield when you correctly prompt a LLM to do something — made me realize what I was getting into with AI safety,” he said.

Kanakapura’s resume stood out thanks to her experiential learning in Oakland, with the AI clinic leadership helping her to secure her current co-op at IBM.

“I had the exact mindset the company was looking for,” she said. “Every experience taught me something new about communication and tech. There were so many opportunities like this at the Oakland campus.”