About the Plus 1 Project

From our founder, Winston Chen:

“I don’t care if you get fired or can’t get a girlfriend. All I ask is that you take care of your health,” my mother always said as I got in the car to head back to Chicago. At the time, it felt like a parting line, but it stayed with me.

Health sits quietly in the background of our everyday lives. Knowing there was a hospital back home that my family could rely on made it possible for me to build a life in Chicago, far from home. That trust is easy to take for granted, and I wanted to do something to help maintain it.

Whenever I came back to LA for the holidays, I found myself having the same conversations with the same people. We would sit over coffee in familiar places and talk about how LA was home, how we would all end up back here eventually. It always felt true. Over time, though, I started to wonder what it meant to love a place if we weren’t actively investing in it, in the people around us, and in the community we were still part of.

I started the Plus1 Project to give people an outlet to reconnect with our home while making a meaningful impact at USC Arcadia Hospital, where we could see tangible results.

Our mission is to normalize doing good while having fun. We host happy hours, galas, tournaments, and competitions, the same things you would normally do with friends on the weekend, but all under the umbrella of making our home a healthier place.

What impact do you want to have on the hospital?

“USC Arcadia Hospital is a strong, high-performing institution, and that success is drawing patients from across the USC Keck system. As demand grows, the nurses, tools, and resources that make that level of care possible are stretched further.

In short, I want to help build the hospital’s capacity for long-term, sustainable impact. Through Plus1 and our partnership with the USC Arcadia Hospital Foundation, that means investing in initiatives that scale, such as the Magnet Nursing Program to attract and retain top clinical talent, and best-in-class medical equipment that supports preventative care.

These investments strengthen the hospital’s foundation so it can continue delivering exceptional care through periods of growth and challenge, whether that’s federal budget cuts, pandemics, fires, or whatever comes next.”