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Meet this year’s Hunter Brooks Watson Scholar, Jack Ramza ’22

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Jack Ramza Portrait Unsung Hero MLK Dinner 2020

Jack Ramza – a senior studying accounting and advertising in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management and S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications – has been selected as the Syracuse University Hunter Brooks Watson Scholar for the 2021 – 2022 academic year.

Inspired by Syracuse University’s Remembrance Scholar program, of which Ramza is a part of, the role is funded by the Hunter Brooks Watson Memorial Fund to honor the life of Hunter Brooks Watson – a Syracuse University student majoring in Information Management and Technology in the iSchool who died tragically in 2016 in a distracted driving car accident.

In addition to raising awareness on the dangers of distracted driving among young people across the country, Hunter’s Fund provides grants each year to young people interested in areas related to Hunter’s passions – the performing arts, music, computer science, and entrepreneurship.

The LaunchPad coordinates the Hunter Brooks Watson Scholar program and the Hunter Brooks Watson Spirit of Entrepreneurship Awards for Syracuse University.

In the fall of 2018, Ramza was first introduced to the LaunchPad and entrepreneurship through the Hult Prize – a global competition challenging students to tackle social issues through entrepreneurship. Along with three team members, Ramza was invited to the regional competition in San Francisco where he pitched an idea of right-sized markets supplied by urban farming systems to combat high obesity rates and food deserts.

It was through this opportunity where Ramza became interested in community engagement and entrepreneurship. “In a world where resources have become increasingly more inaccessible, cultivating an attitude of entrepreneurship can connect peoples’ motivation to make money with improving the lives of those within their local communities.”

Ramza’s experiences with community engagement and social impact continued through his involvement with OrangeSeeds – a first-year leadership empowerment program dedicated to service, leadership, and professional development.

In 2019, he served on the Executive Board as the Community Relations Chair in which he planned weekly service projects that concluded with meaningful group reflections. This role eventually led him to serving as the Co-Director last year.

In January of 2020, Ramza received the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Unsung Hero Award for his work with OrangeSeeds. The largest celebration of its kind on a college campus, this award is given annually to five community members, students, or faculty and staff who have carried on the spirit of Dr. King by making an impact on others but have not received significant recognition.

Additionally, Ramza was recently asked to join the Civic and Global Responsibility community of practice. Assembled by the Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Shared Competencies, this group has been charged with the task of developing an implementation plan for the Civic and Global Responsibility competency. In collaboration with fellow students, faculty and staff, and community partners, Ramza is helping to formulate the best ways to both communicate the importance of this competency to the learning experiences of students and to integrate it into the teaching practices of the faculty and staff.

As the Syracuse University Hunter Brooks Watson Scholar, Ramza will be helping to organize the Hunter Brooks Watson Spirit of Entrepreneurship Awards at Syracuse University, an annual spring competition that is part of the Raymond von Dran iPrize competition.

Made possible through the generous support of the Hunter Brooks Watson Memorial Fund, four awards of $2,500 each are presented to Syracuse University students who best demonstra­­te: passion and spirit; intrinsic drive; level of cooperation and candor between the team members; innovative idea; clear plan as to the continuation of the venture; proficiency and personality that exemplifies charisma and competence.

Along with the competition, Ramza will be working with the LaunchPad to mentor and assist fellow students who are in the process of developing their own ideas for ventures or preparing for awards programs and competitions.

Ramza is humbled to be this year’s Hunter Brooks Watson Scholar and is excited to get to work. “I am honored to be carrying on Hunter’s passionate and entrepreneurial spirit by working with other inspiring and curious go-getters to make a positive societal impact.”

Sam Hollander ’21 named Program Manager at the Syracuse Blackstone LaunchPad

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Sam Hollander has been named the new Program Manager at the Blackstone LaunchPad at Syracuse University.  He will be working with LaunchPad executive director Linda Dickerson-Hartsock to expand programming and capacity to serve the more than 5,000 students, faculty and staff and alumni who are part of the program.  A high-achieving dual Whitman and Newhouse graduate who is completing his studies this fall, Hollander was selected by an interdisciplinary search committee who recognized his longstanding contributions to building the LaunchPad at Syracuse University.

Hollander came to the LaunchPad the first month of his freshman year and literally helped build the program as a student team member throughout his college career.  He has been a Launch student employee for several years, serving as a Blackstone Global Fellow, Rubin Family Innovation Mentor and LaunchPad Orange Ambassador.  As a student, he mentored scores of other student startups and also won top business plan competitions s across campus. 

He is widely admired by faculty, students and alumni he has worked with in his capacity at the LaunchPad and has earned the respect of colleagues at the Blackstone Charitable Foundation and Techstars.

“I’m so glad to be joining the LaunchPad full-time this year,” said Hollander.  “I’m excited to bring my insights and expertise to other student entrepreneurs, as well as help grow one of the top campus innovation hubs in the country.  Being able to work with such collaborative, innovative and entrepreneurial people is a great opportunity to make an impact through the give-first mentality.”

Among the highlights of his student tenure with the LaunchPad, Sam:

  • Was selected as a freshman to participate in Techstars Startup Weekend UCLA – a national honor
  • Worked with the Syracuse LaunchPad to create and manage the first ever sold-out LaunchPad Syracuse University Techstars Weekend, attended by more than 200 students
  • Participated in the first ever Techstars Startup Weekend USA – COVID 19 Innovation and won the distinction as one of the top ten teams in the east, and national event finalist
  • Was a LaunchPad Syracuse Todd B. Rubin Innovation Mentor in 2020 – 2021 and coached scores of LaunchPad teams
  • Concurrently served as the LaunchPad Syracuse Orange Ambassador in 2020 – 2021, managing multiple events for us and helping us develop a pipeline of new students
  • Served as a LaunchPad Syracuse Global Fellow since 2018
  • Volunteered as a Peer Mentor for the 2020 – 2021 Inaugural Intelligence ++ program with VPA, InclusiveU and the LaunchPad
  • Was selected by the Blackstone Charitable Foundation, Techstars and Future Founders for a prestigious national LaunchPad fellowship, which is a highly competitive program that selects top student entrepreneurs in the country for a 15-week accelerator
  • Is a successful student entrepreneur.  He was co-founder of Visos – winner of the Syracuse University 2020 ACC InVenture Prize
  • Went on to found his own venture, FSCL, a social impact venture which he has legally incorporated
  • Was the first recipient of the LaunchPad Innovation Award – a donor funded innovation grant to accelerate high growth ventures
  • Was the winner of number campus business competitions, including the top prize in the 2021 Panasci Business Plan Competition, top prize at the RvD iPrize, top contestant at the NYS Business Plan Competition, as well as top placement in numerous other campus events
  • Was the winner of the Syracuse University Hunter Brooks Watson Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award

The search committee included: Todd Moss, Department Chair, EEE, Whitman; John Torrens, Deputy Chair, EEE, Whitman and Faculty Entrepreneur in Residence at the LaunchPad; Don Carr, Director of the VPA MFA program, School of Design, and Faculty Entrepreneur in Residence at the LaunchPad; Ben Ford, LaunchPad Student, 2021 – 2022 Rubin Family Innovation Mentor, iSchool and Whitman student; Kayla Simon, Engineering and Computer Science alum, former LaunchPad student employee, founder of In-Spire, now an innovation engineer with Relativity Space; and Julia Haber, Newhouse alum, former LaunchPad student, founder of Vision E-club at Syracuse, founder of WAYV and Home from College

The LaunchPad Program Manager supports the mission of the Blackstone LaunchPad, which is part of SU Libraries.  The LaunchPad is Syracuse University’s innovation hub, connecting the entire University’s resource-rich ecosystem with a global network that provides support for aspiring entrepreneurs, inventors and creators.

The position encompasses communications, outreach, events planning and management, as well as other strategic initiatives.  A highly collaborative role, the program manager works with LaunchPad staff and academic units across campus to deliver effective programs that support the student experience and Syracuse University’s Academic Strategic Plan to create an innovation ecosystem across the institution that prepares participants to be trailblazers in an entrepreneurial world.

Apply for ‘Cuse Tank

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Excitement is building for ‘Cuse Tank, a $20,000 student startup competition hosted by the LaunchPad during Family Weekend on Friday afternoon, October 8.  A distinguished panel of visiting judges who are top investors and entrepreneurs will award cash prizes to best ideas by student startups.  Have you applied?  Use our simple online application, now open through October 1.

The competition will be held in Bird Library on Friday, October 8, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.  ‘Cuse Tank is a “Shark Tank” style pitch competition open to all SU students across all academic majors who are creating innovative new products, services and technologies in exciting industry sectors. Prize funding helps take the most promising ideas through next steps from concept to commercialization. How successful is ‘Cuse Tank? In the past five years, Syracuse University LaunchPad students have gone on to raise almost $55 million in competition follow-up funding to start and scale their business ventures. In fact, a 2017 LaunchPad alum scored a $1 million deal from the Sharks this past season. Others have gone on to become leading innovators at companies like Virgin Galactic and more.

The LaunchPad team can help get you ready to compete.  Sign up for mentoring and pitch practices by e-mailing us:  https://launchpad.syr.edu/

Justin Monaco ’21 and G’22 brings invention to dental health

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Dentistry isn’t usually thought of as an entrepreneurial venture. Many fail to recognize the drive, recognition, communication, and service required to build your own private dental practice from the ground up. Justin Monaco ’21, now getting his master’s degree in biotechnology, is demonstrating how entrepreneurship and oral health can go hand in hand. 

“Ever since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to be a dentist,” says Monaco who grew his love for dentistry from personal experience. He says, “When I was a kid, my brother and I used to suck on lemons which would cause cavities.”  Then things changed as he got older and started experiencing the real practice of dentistry.  “I found a passion for it.”

Through shadowing dentists in his hometown of Somers, New York as well as volunteer practices in the Syracuse area, he learned the many facets of entrepreneurship within dentistry. He says, “I’ve been entrepreneurially minded since I was in third grade, so I started realizing how the two fields are tied together.” He continues, “As a dentist you’re constantly thinking of business issues like what is the most convenient and cost-effective way to make a mold.”

After obtaining his undergraduate biology degree this past spring in at Syracuse University,  Monaco was looking for something to do as he worked as a dental assistant in Syracuse. He joined the Invent@SU summer program, which helps transform undergraduate students into inventors as they design, prototype and pitch original devices. 

Monaco and his team of Anh Dao, who is an industrial design major, and Bianca Andrada, who is an engineering major, created a product that they believe will revolutionize how we view oral health. He says, “I was super fortunate to have a strong team around me and we were able to combine our strengths to create a great product.”

That product is Glisten, an all-in-one device that allows you to monitor your oral health from home. The product is a handheld device with an oral strip attached that allows the user to get a 3D x-ray image of their teeth, streamline treatment, participate in an online teleservice with their dentist and so much more.

Monaco was inspired by the startling statistics of Americans who seem to disregard their oral health or are just financially unable to maintain it. He says, “3.6 billion people suffer from oral disease per year, and this is mostly due to inaccessibility of dental care.  We need a more convenient way to check someone’s oral health to see when they have to visit the dentist.” 

Monaco and his team won best understanding of STEM as well as an honorable mention in the final pitch at Invent@SU.

Team Glisten looks to ride this momentum working with the Blackstone LaunchPad as they refine their product and business development roadmpa, and compete for seed funding this academic year.  Their goal is to get this product into the hands of people who need it.

They are currently looking for someone to work to help develop a marketing and branding strategy. If you are interested, reach out to jsmonaco@syr.edu.


Story by Jack Lyons ‘22, LaunchPad Global Fellow; photos and graphics supplied

Madison Worden ’21 is making the world more inclusive, one design at a time

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Madison Worden ‘21 grew up on a farm in Binghamton and was in and out of the hospital a lot during her childhood. She found solace in making art. The fact that she could make something that was an extension of herself but was not attached to her life in anyway was cathartic. Her parents say that she has always been creative and see things in a way that other people don’t.

However, Worden was not only interested in arts. Being interested in both arts and design, as well as engineering and research, studying Industrial Design in the School of Design, at the College of Visual and Performing Arts was a natural choice for Worden. Industrial design was a line between design and engineering. A field where she could learn about a lot of different topics and focus on how products are made. Worden says that most designers design without knowing much about how things work.

“I am really interested in knowing how things work and feel like it helps me design better”, says Worden.

When Worden was a 3rd and 4th year student at SU, she was a research assistant working with  Dr. Louise Manfredi. The experience taught her how to merge design and engineering.

Over time, she became interested in researching how different technologies – both hardware and software — can be more accessible to people with disabilities.

“At this point, every industry needs to be looking at how their products will either help or hinder people with disabilities,” says Worden. “Most people will be disabled temporarily or permanently some time in their life. Keeping that in mind, will help companies innovate further.”

Accessible design has always been something Worden was interested in. Being very involved with the disability community throughout her whole life, Worden sees how inaccessible the world is to a lot of disabled people. This makes her passionate about accessible designs.

During her first year at Syracuse University, Worden was part of the Invent@SU. She designed a writing aid for people with limited hand function. She learnt that designers need to really recognize whether their inventions are actually helping or handicapping people with disabilities.

How can designers improve people’s lives instead of fixing them? Accessible design isn’t designing things for people with disabilities to adapt to a world built for able bodied people, but is designing for a better quality of life for people with disabilities.

Worden loves designing with that user experience in mind.

“At the end of the day, products are generally forgettable, but experience is memorable.”

Currently, Worden is working on an inclusive card game that can bring people together. The card will have a braille version, and colors and branding will work with vision impairments and more.

There has been a surge of popularity of card games, but Worden thinks there hasn’t been one that have been focusing on accessibility. Card games bring people together generally, not if they aren’t inclusive.

Many neurodiverse people have a problem with creating or maintaining friendships. A lot of non-disabled people also have the problem. This card game aims to help with this. Worden is in the stage of testing and developing a card game and hopes to launch by next year.

Winning the Intelligence ++ competition for the inclusive dating app MeetCute with her partner Natalie Lui, Worden said the experience opened her eyes into the startup world.

“We were designing a fully accessible dating app. We faced some difficulties like raising funds. We were trying to do something that we were not necessarily equipped for yet. We decided we needed to revisit our skills and our original concept, so we let our idea evolve into something that focus on accessibility and bringing people together in a fun and innovative way – the card game.”

The competition introduced her to the Blackstone LaunchPad, located in the Bird Library. Worden says that the LaunchPad definitely gave her confidence to pursue her passions and her only regret is that she didn’t join sooner.

When Worden isn’t busy designing and starting a business, she is busy baking, cooking, working out, motorbikes and watching the Formula 1 races. She hopes to get her very own motorcycle on day – maybe even the 1942 Harley Davidson Knucklehead.         

Story by Todd B. Rubin Diversity and Inclusion Scholar Natalie Lui ‘22; photo supplied

Come to a pop-up with Kelsey Davis this Tuesday at the LaunchPad

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We’re thrilled that Kelsey Davis is visiting from Los Angeles and hosting a casual Coffee & Tea Pop-Up in the LaunchPad on Tuesday, September 21 from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. Join us in Bird Library for refreshments and to have an energized casual conversation with Kelsey, a dynamic LaunchPad, Whitman, Newhouse and Techstars LA founder who was recently named to Forbes 30 Under 30.  CLLCTVE is the portfolio platform connecting creators to their next opportunity. Its community-driven technology enables freelancers to build their own world online without creating any code, any website, or any resume – showcasing their creative capabilities and engaging with brands all in one place. With a community of thousands of creators, CLLCTVE has the ability to match brands and creators for opportunities based on brands’ needs and creators’ interests and experience.

Connect with Kelsey, Founder + Chief Executive Officer: WWW.CLLCTVE.COM

How to raise a billion dollars? Ask Burt Podbere on October 8 at the LaunchPad.

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Want to learn about financing — from scrappy startup, to more than a billion in equity and debt financing, to an IPO? The LaunchPad is thrilled to host an expert on navigating the capital continuum on Friday, October 8 at noon. Join us for an informal pizza lunch in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons (Room 114, just adjacent to the LaunchPad in bird Library) with Burt Podbere, Chief Financial Officer for CrowdStrike. Since joining the company, Podbere has been instrumental in establishing the company’s long-term financial management strategy and developing the company’s global expansion strategy.  Since joining CrowdStrike in 2015, he has helped secure approximately $1 billion in equity financing through several funding rounds, including the company’s 2019 IPO, and approximately $1.5 billion in secured and unsecured debt.

CrowdStrike is a leading cybersecurity company protecting customers from all cyber threats by leveraging its Security Cloud to stop breaches. From its inception in 2011, driven by George Kurtz’s vision, CrowdStrike was created as a different kind of cybersecurity company. Cloud-native, CrowdStrike immediately brought a threat perspective, effectiveness, scalability, and flexibility never seen before in the industry – seamlessly aligning people, technology, and processes. The CrowdStrike Falcon platform has revolutionized enterprise security for the cloud era. Its single lightweight-agent architecture leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and offers real-time protection and visibility across the enterprise, preventing attacks on endpoints and workloads on or off the network.

Before joining CrowdStrike, Podbere has worked in Canada, Europe, and the U.S., garnering extensive knowledge of domestic and international finance, SaaS businesses, and international operations.  He was previously, CFO, OpenDNS, Inc. and CFO, Net Optics, Inc.  He is a graduate of McGill University.

Podbere will also be joining us October 8 as a distinguished judge for ‘Cuse Tank as part of Family Weekend.

This session is a must for any startup who wants to learn the art and science of scaling and financing growth.

Learn how AI is powering innovation at a LaunchPad Startup Social with Karina Campos on October 1

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Want to learn more about user-driven design research and how AI is shaping product innovation? Join us for a Startup Social in the LaunchPad on Friday, October 1 at 3 p.m. with Karina Campos, Advisory Design Lead, IBM Z AI. Karina joined IBM in January 2018. She graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in Industrial and Interaction Design and a minor in Psychology. Before joining IBM she was a Be Original Americas Design Fellow in New York City and was a contributing editor for Interior & Sources Magazine. She was researcher on Tailored Fit Pricing, which launched Enterprise Containers. Following that launch, Karina led the IBM Z AI design team, applying her human-centered design philosophies to understand users’ current experience with AI technology. In her new role as IBM Z Design Research Strategist, Karina will work to create a unified experience for Hardware and z/OS, including best practices and new innovative approaches, driving cross-team collaboration to maximize design research impact across the company’s entire portfolio. It’s also a great chance to learn how startup skills can shape a career as an innovator within a large corporation.

The event is open to all. It will be a casual conversation and pizza will be served. Come share a slice of innovation with an innovation strategist with a history of working in the design and information technology services industry who is certified in enterprise design thinking and virtual collaboration, and is now helping pioneer the future through AI.

Join us for a LaunchPad Startup Social 9/24 with Jeff Fuchsberg L’10

Join us Friday, September 24 at 3 p.m. for our next Startup Social in the LaunchPad with Jeff Fuchsberg L’10 , Vice President of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at CenterState CEO, the regional engine for business leadership and economic development.  The in-person conversation over pizza will include info on The Tech Garden incubator in Downtown Syracuse, a NYS-designated Innovation Hot Spot, and home to many of our area’s leading support programs for entrepreneurs, including GENIUS NY, the CleanTech Center, and Grants for Growth.  Jeff manages the Tech Garden and its signature funding programs for startups in the greater Syracuse region. He is very interested particularly interested in connecting Syracuse University student startups with the regional innovation ecosystem.

Jeff got his start at the SU Innovation Law Center and a CASE center law school intern working for Blue Highway, a spinout of Welch Allyn located on campus at CASE, worked his way to intellectual property manager, then was recruited to the founding team of a medtech incubator on the border in El Paso, TX, before returning to Central New York to serve as Director of GENIUS NY. 

He is looking forward to sharing his experiences as a student interested in innovation and entrepreneurship, programs available through the Tech Garden, and some learning acquired along his journey.   

The event is open to all. For more information: LaunchPad@syr.edu

Sam Sanders launches some big ideas

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The most powerful tool for success lies in the idea machine that is our minds. Unfortunately, our minds can also be our greatest obstacle to success. To unlock that potential, Sam Sanders, author of Your Next Big Idea, joined the Blackstone LaunchPad on September 17 for an Idea Jam to kick off a series of weekly Startup Socials. Behind the glass doors of the LaunchPad, the event featured mingling over slices of afternoon pizza with old friends, long-time LaunchPad members, and new faces as they shared excitement and connected over ideas.

Sanders, Syracuse alum and successful entrepreneur many times over, spoke on his specialty: crafting ingenious ideas to solve problems, societal or every day, large or small. Sanders, whose recently published book guides readers through exercises on how to overcome barriers in thinking and dream up ideas to do anything from start your own business to make your every-day workflow more efficient, hoped to give back to the LaunchPad entrepreneurship community in helping our own entrepreneurs and problem solvers ideate effectively.

Sanders opened the event with a hands-on mind game. As he passed around pieces of paper and pencils, the room was filled with brainstorming and scheming chatter. The two mind games, simple math exercises, proved to be nearly impossible to solve. The problem? One of the largest barriers in our thought processes: stigmas. These can vary from social stigmas, where certain actions are deemed conventionally appropriate, to habitual stigmas, where we might unconsciously perform behaviors though they are irrational, simply because they’re habits.

Sanders then offered three key strategies to overcome the challenge of stigmas in mental patterns. The first, Blank Paper, involves starting from ground zero and challenging all assumptions surrounding the problem. In the second, Wild Imagination, one thinks of the absolute craziest solution to a problem, and then works their way backwards to a feasible answer. The last that Sanders offered is called the Alien Invasion Strategy, where one assumes they have no knowledge of human conventions or common behaviors, in the hopes to find a solution outside the box of traditional answers.

To test these stigmas and theories, Sanders encouraged the crowd of students gathered to apply these to their own ideas. Those in the room actively working on a business he asked to focus on a particular problem in their current business and use one of the problem-solving tactics to brainstorm solutions. The others in the room he grouped and asked to identify life passions and potential barriers and solutions surrounding pursuing those passions.  Participants began overflowing with ideas on topics from how to erase barriers to travel to how to publish the works of disabled authors.

After the Startup Social hour drew its close, participants left with sharpened senses of their own mind’s blind spots and energized by tactics to solve challenging problems. 

The LaunchPad’s Startup Socials are hosted to create a weekly space for our community to actively share ideas and grow from the advice of seasoned entrepreneurs, and we are so thankful to Sam Sanders for leaving the LaunchPad community smarter and invigorated to solve their problems. The LaunchPad is excited to welcome all in the Syracuse community to join us Fridays at 3pm to share in upcoming spaces of creativity and innovation.

Story by Claire Howard ’23, LaunchPad Global Fellow; photos by LaunchPad Rubin Family Innovation Mentor Kelly Davis ‘23