Join CenterState CEO’s Generation Next and OneGroup on May 7 at 6:30 p.m. for a special crowdcast streaming event featuring leaders from across the Syracuse community celebrating the essential workers and businesses keeping Syracuse safe and strong. Enjoy performances from Symphoria and Syracuse Stage, meet business owners working to keep Syracuse running, enjoy a tribute to the region’s 2020 graduates, messages of thanks from the community, and so much more.  The event is hosted by Dr. Juhanna Rogers, director of community engagement and empowerment, CenterState CEO, and produced by Black Cub Productions and Kelsey Davis of CLLCTVE, both LaunchPad alumni ventures.  Generation Next is a new CenterState CEO initiative that fosters diversity and leadership in young professionals and works to attract and connect talented professionals to job openings in Central New York.  Register here.

SparkCharge, makers of the only portable ultra-fast, modular electric vehicle (EV) chargers in the world, this week announced the closing of $3.3 million in seed round financing led by PJC with participation from Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, PEAK6 Strategic Capital, M&T Bank, and Tale Venture Partners, in addition to other investors. This brings SparkCharge’s total funding to $5 million since its launch in 2017. The investment will be used to help the company scale manufacturing, meet rapidly growing sales demand, and aggressively expand development.

SparkCharge’s goal is to make electric vehicle (EV) ownership as easy as possible by removing obstacles to EV adoption such as “range anxiety,” lack of infrastructure, and access to convenient charging. SparkCharge works with roadside assistance companies, insurance firms, delivery companies, hotels, auto manufacturers to make ultra-fast EV charging available at any location.

Joshua Aviv, a Syracuse University alumnus who is SparkCharge’s founder CEO explains, “We focus on listening to our customers and the EV market to create a product that will effectively remove the barriers to electric vehicle ownership. Our product opens the door for Utilities, Cities, Roadside Assistance and On-Demand Service companies to provide range to EVs faster and more effectively, regardless of location.”

“We are very excited to invest in such a remarkable company” stated Zaid Ashai, Venture Partner at PJC. “EV sales growth is far outpacing the infrastructure growth needed to support such a thriving market. This dynamic puts SparkCharge’s innovative portable ultra-fast chargers in a position to partner with new and existing businesses to cure range anxiety.”

David Hall, Managing Partner at Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund said, “SparkCharge’s portable charger is removing one of the most inconvenient aspects to owning an electric vehicle—the inability to charge electric vehicles at a moment’s notice. We’re proud to back Joshua and the entire SparkCharge team as they work to facilitate ownership of electric vehicles and in tandem, make our world more sustainable.”

Rachel Saunders, a Principal at PEAK6 Strategic Capital shares, “We’re excited to participate in the seed round for SparkCharge. We recognize the unmet need for EVs and have been impressed by what the team has accomplished to address that opportunity. We are proud to support their vision for the future. This is another example of our focus on investing in companies that leverage innovation, technology, operational excellence, and purposeful design to transform the world into what it ought to be.”

When asked why to invest in SparkCharge, Ed Jean-Louis, Partner at Tale Venture Partners replied, “What really got us excited about SparkCharge was the team and how invested they were in addressing the lack of EV charging infrastructure with a novel and innovative approach. The SparkCharge team will not only help service the existing EV market but the company’s differentiated distribution method will also enable people to access fast-charging anytime, anywhere. We think this will help remove barriers for EV adoption and eliminate range anxiety for EV owners.”

SparkCharge’s pioneering new technology allows anyone to deliver range to an electric vehicle owner anytime, anywhere. It opens the door for electric vehicle owners to have their cars charged in a way that was not possible in the past by removing the limitations on when, where, and how an electric vehicle gets charged.

SparkCharge’s portable chargers are modular and scalable, easily stacking on top of each other, like Lego blocks, to increase the range delivered.  They are compact and lightweight, and can fit easily in the trunk  of any car and carried by hand with ease. They deliver ultrafast charging, capable of charging at a rate of 1 mile every 60 seconds.

“We are in the beginning stages of transforming the EV world, and the relationships we have built with the world’s leading EV manufacturers will help continue that change,” says Aviv. “These relationships ensure that all EV owners can benefit from our product by eliminating range anxiety and making EV ownership greener and more convenient.”

SparkCharge’s product is 100% electric and is charged using traditional 110- or 220-volt household outlets, thereby eliminating the air pollution that would result from gas-powered EV chargers.

“We have seen a glimpse of what is possible with the adoption of electric vehicles. With much of the world practicing social distancing and working from home there has been a dramatic drop in cars on the road. New York decreased air pollution by 50%, China has seen a 25% drop in emissions, and nitrogen dioxide emissions throughout Europe are fading away. We need to get people back to work and still retain these environmental improvements. EV ownership has the potential to change the world and for the first time we can actually see it.” says Aviv.

Spark Charge literally got its his start through the Blackstone LaunchPad powered by Techstars network where Aviv developed the company while still a Syracuse student.  After he won the grand prize at the first LaunchPad Techstars Demo Day sponsored by the Blackstone Charitable Foundation, he graduated from the program to a Techstars accelerator, which was an incredible opportunity.  In Boston, he made meaningful connections with investors such as PJC, who led both initial and recent seed rounds.  From there he scaled operations out of Greentown Labs in Boston, the world’s largest cleantech incubator, and in residency at 43North in Buffalo, after winning a $1 million grand prize in that that competition.

Now, with R&D and operations in Boston and manufacturing in Buffalo, he continues to embody the Techstars #GiveFirst ethos.  He remains an active mentor of the Syracuse LaunchPad campus program, and regularly visits the LaunchPad to meet and mentor students. 

He recently won Syracuse University’s Generation Orange young alumni award for his continued engagement in the campus innovation ecosystem. He is a great model for other LaunchPad alumni.

About SparkCharge

SparkCharge is creating a more efficient and connected world of transportation with its portable, ultrafast and modular electric vehicle charger. Because the chargers are compact, they can be delivered to an electric vehicle owner on-demand. This creates a mobile charging infrastructure that allows EV owners to have their cars charged anytime and anywhere. To learn more, visit www.sparkcharge.io

Shhh … you’re we’re not telling you all the secrets, but Julia Haber ’18 (Newhouse) and founder of WAYV has something special coming your way when she launches Home From College this week. College students, amid the current global pandemic, have been uprooted from their campuses and familiar routines, and are facing uncertain life and career challenges in unprecedented times.  A new digital platform, Home From College, is a career-advancing online community, providing content, experiences and community, coming at a time when students are craving inspiration and human connection. Follow on Instagram @ homefromcollege_ and sign up to become part of the community here.

The Home From College platform is designed for students, with students, resulting in an optimum curated experience. The brand promotes networking and experiental learning outside of a traditional academic environment, featuring dynamic thought leaders, industry experts, and innovators. The content is presented in an entertaining format that synthesizes storytelling with solid advice that is highly relatable.

In addition to this positive interactive experience, users will be given the opportunity to brand sponsored career-building projects and mentorships with these leaders and innovators. 

You can only unlock access by joining the community. Sign up here.

As LaunchPad students approach graduation and the first summer during/following the COVID-19 crisis and following economic downturn, their attention and concerns have increasingly turned to lost and more challenging job and internship prospects. In an effort to both distribute financial assistance and to encourage continued work on some of the most promising LaunchPad startups in a remote setting, The Blackstone LaunchPad powered by Techstars network will host a unique, new opportunity for a LaunchPad Summer Startup Fellowship. The Summer Startup Fellowship program is funded by the Blackstone Charitable Foundation and administered through Techstars.  It is open to all students in the network.

Applications open April 27, 2020 on line here with an application deadline of May 18, 2020.  The virtual program will run June 8 through July 27, 2020.  Accepted applicants will be notified by the first week of June.

In this eight-week Fellowship, participants will be awarded $5,000 in grant funding to support their time working on advancing their startup companies. The Fellowship is largely self-driven, but will include weekly reporting requirements, a number of webinars to support the program, and a final report. The Fellowship is open to all current students and recent graduates in the LaunchPad Network, and will accept 50 participants.

Selection Criteria: Applicants will be judged based on the quality of their 30 second video pitch, articulation of realistic goals and milestones, quality and detail of the proposal narrative, description of next steps following the Fellowship, and need statement. Special consideration will also be given to ensure selected companies represent the diversity of the LaunchPad Network.

Fellowship Grant: $5,000 will be awarded to fellowship participants to support financial needs during the program period. It should be noted that grants are issued after proper paperwork is received by the Blackstone Charitable Foundation. Grant processing often takes a number of weeks, so participants should plan accordingly.

Fellowship Structure: As with a typical Fellowship, this initiative is largely self-directed and independent of a strict curriculum. Because of this, it is critical that applicants have demonstrated the ability to work independently with little guidance or structure. The Fellowship will include a number of programmatic elements:

• Program kickoff call
• Two “Founder Story Fireside Chats” with Techstars founders
• Program wrap-up call, introduction to Techstars pipeline manager
• Weekly reporting and final report
• Access to Techstars mentor request form for ad-hoc assistance

Fellowship Requirements: All participants must clearly define goals and objectives for the Fellowship and also:

• Track progress towards these goals on weekly basis using a progress tracking spreadsheet and submit the progress tracker at the end of the program
• Participate in program kickoff / conclusion calls
• Complete a final report and survey detailing their work in the Fellowship, results and next steps.
• Work with Campus Ambassadors to review their final report

Campus Connections: LaunchPad campus directors will actively participate with teams accepted into the Fellowship in their programs in the following areas:

• Review weekly progress trackers and ensure progress
• Facilitate introductions to Campus ambassadors / mentors as needed to support progress
• Ensure student participation and final reporting
• Help students with planning for next steps
• Connect students to pipeline opportunities

Applicants must:

• Be a current student (undergraduate level, graduate-level) or a recent graduate (2019 or 2020) and active participant in LaunchPad programming on campus
• Have an existing startup company
• Be self-motivated and driven to complete work independently and with minimal oversight
• Have well-defined goals and milestones to be completed within the eight-week period of the fellowship
• Be past the idea-stage and already have a pitch deck, executive summary, a logo, a website, LinkedIn account, Twitter account, and ideally, a prototype
• Have traction such as early sales, MOUs, funding raised, customer interest, etc.
• Have demonstrated leadership in both executing the business and galvanizing support
• Have experience working with mentors, integrating feedback into their venture, and show coachability

It is strong advised that you reach out to the LaunchPad at Syracuse University to discuss this opportunity before applying on line. Contact us by at LaunchPad@syr.edu

Justin Diaz ’23, College of Engineering and Computer Science, and founder of EcoBamboo Living, was selected one of the top six teams in the Hult Prize Toronto global regionals by a review committee led by Hult Prize CEO Ahmad Ashkar.  The annual competition is considered the Nobel Prize of impact entrepreneurship, attracting more than 300,000 students from universities around the world.  More than 5,000 students compete in regional summits, held in major international cities on every geographic region of the world.  Teams compete in a big bold challenge meant to inspire and enable the world’s brightest college minds to solve its greatest problems.  This year’s challenge was climate change and sustainability.

Because of COVID-19, regional summits moved to virtual competitions this year.  Diaz created a compelling submission that was extremely heartfelt.  Beyond addressing the components of a typical competition – the problem, solution, target market, business model, path to market, and strategic partners – he infused the presentation with humanity based on his own experience.  “As a young boy, my mom and I weren’t able to afford adequate housing, leaving us hopeless for a while.  This is why it has become my aspiration to give everyone a place to call home.” 

EcoBamboo Living is an innovative construction company that designs and builds building affordable, beautiful and sustainable buildings for the residential and commercial sector.  Using bamboo rather than conventional timber offers many advantages.  It is as strong as steel or concrete, can be grown and harvested faster and more sustainably than hardwoods, is more affordable, and tackles deforestation and climate change through creating a positive carbon footprint.  Bamboo is a building material used in southeast Asia with proven results, including withstanding earthquakes and hurricanes, but there no is bamboo design and construction company in the United States. 

He is already working with Syracuse-based advisors architect Pete King of King + King Architects and commercial real estate developer Steve Case on plans for his first bamboo “tiny home” as a demonstration project.  From there, he plans to develop a line of affordable modular homes constructed with bamboo timber.

Diaz is only a freshman, but has already won top prizes in campus competitions, working with the Blackstone LaunchPad powered by Techstars at SU Libraries.  He is also preparing to compete as a finalist in the energy and environment category of the New York Business Plan Competition on May 1.  He recently won the Hunter Brooks Watson Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award, funded by the Hunter Brooks Watson Memorial Fund, which was coordinated by the LaunchPad.

“Being part of the Hult Prize and being selected as one of the top six teams at the Toronto regional competition, shows me the potential this idea has moving through my next three years in college,” says Diaz.  “I feel blessed to be in the position to showcase not just my business, but my university, and the LaunchPad in the Hult Prize.  I enjoyed the virtual presentation because it allowed me to be more creative and inspirational.  Participating in a live competition can be challenging, but a video gave me time to prepare, and the opportunity to share in a more personal way my vision and mission.”

Diaz recognized his team members, Syracuse University students Virkin Jimenez and Serena Winter, along with his mentors and advisors.  “The LaunchPad family believed in me from the start, when I first walked in the doors as an incoming freshman, even before school started. They embraced me and invited me to be part of Startup Weekend last fall where I came up with this idea and developed an entire new circle of friends who shared my entrepreneurial passion.  Then, they continued to guide me in the right direction.  Without the LaunchPad, I wouldn’t be where I am.  The culture there gave me the energy, motivation and inspiration to keep challenging myself, supported by guidance from that community.”

The Regional Summits provide students from around the world an opportunity to showcase their innovative ideas, learn from their peers and be inspired by a generation of young people who are committed to changing the world through business.  The winner of each regional summit receives an invitation to attend the 2020 Hult Prize Global Accelerator and to compete for the $1 million Hult grand prize.

The teams selected as the Toronto top six included:

• Syracuse University – EcoBamboo Living
• Faculty Polydisciplinary Of Khouribga – SmartGarden
• Jordan University of Science and Technology – Amtea
• University of Maryland – Hydraze
• Rutgers Business School – SeaWe
• Tec de Monterrey, Zona CDMX-Centro-Sur – LIMU

The Hult Prize is celebrating its first decade. As a Hult International Business School MBA student, Ashkar founded a company 2009 to give his then peers around the world a platform to have sustainable, profitable impact with a focus on the creation of a new kind of business which was dubbed, “the impact enterprise.”  Later, working with Bertil Hult, the Hult Prize Foundation was born, which is the considered the world’s most acclaimed social entrepreneurship program.

PAANI, LLC. invites you to join their crowdfunding effort to produce masks for the prevention of COVID-19 in the United States and in India. To help, visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/paani–covid19-masks

“We understand that there is currently a shortage of personal protective equipment across the globe and want to be a part of helping the many communities in need,” says co-founder Nikita Chatterjee ’20 (Maxwell). 

PAANI is a global health company that focuses on providing access to clean water in low-income communities starting in India. It started as a project that won first prize in the Invent@SU program and then continued its product and business development working the LaunchPad.

“We have engineered a filtration system into the traditional sari cloth and are refining the traditional water practices that exist in India,” says Chatterjee. “Although we are focused on providing access to clean water, in an uncertain time like now, we must ask ourselves questions. What does washing hands mean for people with no access to clean water? How do we stay safe in an environment where resources are not readily available?”

She continues, “We also have to consider the millions of people who are currently out of work during this time. Urban unemployment rates rose to 30.9%, bringing the overall unemployment rate to 23.4% in India. Common household jobs for women have been removed, and families are struggling. We want to support these women, so a portion of donations will go towards supporting the salary of women in India.”

“We have recently partnered with a local NGO in Mumbai, India with over 20,000 women working together to provide safe and environmental friendly, reusable face masks using traditional cotton material,” said PAANI co-founder Brianna Howard ‘20 (Falk). “With your donation, you can help us support the salaries of women who are currently working to create these masks.”

“We are asking that you please donate what you can to buy materials for the cloth masks to be made,” added Chatterjee. “We are aiming to raise $7,500 to produce thousands of masks. An air filter will also be included to filter out viruses and bacteria. It is an important time for us to come together and help communities survive this pandemic.”

Donations to PAANI’s crowdfunding campaign will help in the production of masks which will be donated to local organization in the Tri-State Area and India, and also help support the salaries of women in India.

Learn more about PAANI initiatives at www.paanisolutions.com or @paanisolutions on Instagram. 

A Syracuse University group of students created one of top solutions at Techstars Startup Weekend Remote USA. The event, April 24-26, was an online, high-energy experience with 1,000 participants working over 54 hours to develop solutions that directly tackle COVID-19 related challenges.

Their solution, Global CoPower, was selected a top ten team in the east division, moving on to compete as a finalist in the national competition.  The team was comprised of Matt Shumer ’22 (Whitman), Sam Hollander ’22 (Whitman and Newhouse), David Adler ’22 (VPA), Miles Feldstein ’23 (Whitman), Clarie Howard ’23 (Maxwell) and Brian Kam ’16 (Maxwell). The team are members of the Blackstone LaunchPad powered by Techstars at SU Libraries, and are all also founders of their own startups.

The team addressed a challenge by scientists to harness massive distributed computing power to process vast information, using extraction and analysis in the race to tackle COVID-19.  Getting there faster can help researchers more rapidly design therapeutics to beat the disease in what is the biggest research moonshot of our time.  Global CoPower is a simple app integration that enables the addition of code to other apps, allowing users to donate unused cell phone capacity to initiatives such as Folding@Home which is leading this effort.

Over the course of the Startup Weekend, scientists and researchers, inventors and investors, entrepreneurs and educators, health and human service experts, and technologists worked virtually across time zones and geographies in distributed teams. They tackled challenges such as supporting front line health workers, contact tracing, accelerating diagnosis, helping vulnerable populations, addressing food supply and delivery, digitizing tools to connect and inform communities, addressing mental health and challenges of isolation, and re-energizing businesses and local economies. 

Techstars mentors and facilitators joined in, working in real time over 54 straight hours through digital platforms such as Discord, a voice, video, and text chat app, and video conferencing tools like Zoom. Teams formed to engage in design thinking, user discovery and rapid iteration to develop MVP products, services or technologies, and then pitch their solutions. Projects could be fundable startup businesses, community-based initiatives or open-source solutions.  The goal was to unleash the entrepreneurial skills and mindsets of the world’s best innovators to “unite to fight” COVID-19.  

The Syracuse team started with exhaustive research on challenges associated with COVID-19.  Using a “divide and conquer” approach, they explored problems facing communities, seniors, vulnerable families, businesses, and the health care and research community.  They looked for meaningful gaps they could address while conducting scores of interviews with subject matter experts and potential users.  They combed through research reports and quickly realized the magnitude of this as a “wicked” problem.” 

By discarding approaches that were too big or complicated to accomplish over a weekend, they pivoted with resilience and determination. At the 30-hour point, just as they were hitting exhaustion from the process, their eureka solution, Global CoPower, emerged. From there, they stayed up all night executing their idea, and creating a compelling pitch which led them to the finals.

The experience was memorable for the Syracuse student team.

“Our team literally didn’t sleep” said Shumer. “We were driven. We went from many ideas to customer discovery, iteration, and complete pivots.  When we arrived at the ultimate solution, we raced against an impossible timeclock to execute it.  We were able to accomplish so much because we had diversified skill sets that allowed each of us to run full speed independently, while working within a team framework.  Early on, we decided we wanted to do something that would create a meaningful impact.  That’s what kept us motivated and focused.”

After discarding nearly two dozen potential approaches, the team came back to an idea that Shumer had when he first walked into the LaunchPad.  “Day one, when I arrived, I was fascinated with two technologies. One was virtual reality, which led to the creation of my venture Visos, a VR tool in the healthcare space.  The second was distributed computing.”

After 30 hours of inventing from scratch, the team realized that breakthroughs can also come from improving upon existing ideas.  They had been following Folding@Home, a distributed computing project to accelerate therapeutics for diseases like Alzheimers and Huntington’s.  They saw the project was beginning to address COVID-19 with protein folding, which studies how viral proteins reproduce and suppress our immune systems.  They knew it could help accelerate the development of targeted therapeutics. 

Folding@Home is currently based at Washington University in St. Louis and led by Dr. Greg Bowman.  The Syracuse team knew that Folding@Home’s progress is dependent on the simulations run on volunteers’ personal computers, in the race to create one of the world’s fastest computing systems.  They also realized there wasn’t enough volunteer desktop power to get to a COVID-19 solution faster. Shumer hypothesized that power could be leveraged on mobile devices and the team created an app to unleash unused capacity on user phones around the world.  That led to the name, Global CoPower, reflecting a cooperative approach to co-powering a COVID-19 solution.  

The business model, like other distributed computing projects, is a social impact venture in which companies, brands and individuals can easily participate. Students around the world could be recruited, using gamification, corporate and brand partnerships for mutual global gain.  The goal was not monetization.  It was getting to a scientific breakthrough faster.

“In the end, we realized we could easily code a solution that would make a huge impact,” said Shumer.

“It was an incredible experience that honed our ability to think on our feet as a team,” said Hollander. “In a classroom setting, you work with people in a project team that is mostly drawn from your own discipline.  It was amazing to work with people who come from different interdisciplinary perspectives, working across campus and around the country, to explore, iterate and rapidly create a solution.  It was really exhilarating.”

Schumer and Hollander participated in Techstars LaunchPad Startup Weekend in LA last spring and helped organize the first Syracuse University Techstars LaunchPad Startup Weekend in September 2019.  They led the Global CoPower pitches for two rounds of Startup Weekend Remote USA.

Other team members also played instrumental roles and came away with profound experiences.

Howard gleaned a great deal about both the challenge and the creative energy that comes with problem solving.  “This experience gave me a unique perspective on how the world is coming together to solve this problem.  We saw how hard we were working, and through our discovery process, we learned how hard the world is working on so many fronts.  This made me very hopeful for the future.  It was amazing how much we could accomplish is a short period of time.  We made so many pivots as we explored various facets of the problem, we became constant idea machines for the entire weekend.  That made it even more exciting.”

Feldstein said, “The weekend was really eye-opening, and taught me how innovation can be accelerated when great minds come together.”

Adler participated from Brazil, where he lives.  “I’ve always been in love with the startup way of working.  One of my dreams has always been to work hard on something that could change the world.  But honestly, I never seemed to find people as passionate as me.  This weekend that changed.  It was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life.”

Serving as facilitator was Brian Kam ’16 founder of Thrive Projects and an original LaunchPad student when it opened in SU Libraries four years ago.  The LaunchPad called him back into service to work with the freshmen and sophomores engaged in the challenge.  He is a veteran entrepreneur who has devoted his life to public service, serving as a combat Marine in the Iraq War, and now in the trenches fighting COVID-19 as a frontline health care worker.

“The weekend was fast and furious,” said Kam. “I was amazed at how much the tech landscape has transformed the entrepreneurial space.  Things that took us weeks just a few years ago can now be done in minutes using AI, machine learning, and other tools that weren’t mainstream then. I was blown away by how smart this next generation of entrepreneurs are. I truly enjoyed working with this team.  They were laser focused, as they kept ideating and iterating.” 

Kam’s medical research and experience working with COVID-19 patients was indispensable throughout the weekend, helping them balance tech solutions with human needs.

Working with the team through the weekend was LaunchPad executive director Linda Hartsock, who was selected by Techstars to be a mentor for the U.S.A. event.  “When Syracuse innovators put their hearts and heads to work on a problem, their hard work, intellect and ingenuity always rises to the top.  We couldn’t be prouder of them.”

Brian Kam, ‘16, a Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs graduate, is a veteran entrepreneur who has devoted his life to public service.  From working on the frontline in the United States Marines Corps, where he enlisted after high school, to his work now in the trenches fighting COVID-19, he is the first to step in when there is a crisis.

Profoundly affected by seeing 9/11 unfolding on television when he was younger, he felt compelled to serve. He joined the Marine Corps delayed entry program at age 16, enlisted at 18, and served in the Iraq War and post-Katrina New Orleans. After completing his US Marine Corps service in 2007, Kam studied Arabic languages at the University of Jordan and competed an intensive language program training with the Middlebury Language School.  He enrolled at SU in 2012 and double majored in International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies, where during his senior year he participated in Maxwell in Washington.

While in DC, Kam optimized a connection he made at his senior year internship and traveled to Nepal where he volunteered after the destructive earthquake there in 2015.  The Gorkha earthquake, which happened in seconds, killing 9,000 people, injuring 21,000, and leaving 3.5 million homeless. Kam saw vivid images of people suffering and dying, which moved him to action.

Coming back to campus, he used that experience to put his passion for service to work, combined with his sense of adventure through entrepreneurship.  Working with the Blackstone LaunchPad powered by Techstars at SU Libraries, he founded a nonprofit called Thrive Projects Inc. with fellow students Ryan Brinkerhoff, ’16 (Maxwell) and Joshua Moon ’16 (Arts and Sciences).  Thrive worked with communities, high schools and colleges in Nepal on sustainable development through hyper-localized vocational training programs and community-based projects for those in need.  In 2017, the team won first place in the impact entrepreneurship sector of the New York Business Plan Competition, and also went on to the regional finals of the prestigious Hult Prize, considered the Nobel Prize for student social impact ventures.  (www.thethriveproject.org).

This year the team is focusing on professional development to broaden their skill sets. Moon is in the MCAT process and Brinkerhoff is in law school.  Kam is finishing his Bachelor of Science in Nursing at the University of Rochester. The past year and a half have led him to working on his capstone, and his final assignment.  This has led him to fight a very different frontline than his years in the Marines.

Kam recalls that the Marine Corps “gave him the mentality to do things he does now by helping to define his character.”

Starting this month, Kam has been working at the Monroe County Health Department in Rochester, New York testing people for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), engaging in contact tracing, education and follow up with sick patients. Simply put, Kam now back at the frontline as a medical worker for COVID-19.

Although Kam started to volunteer with the Health Department this month, he has been following the infectious pandemic since early January. As a full-time nursing student, he still made time to personally educate himself about the contact and spread of COVID-19.

He believes it is important to continuously fuel your passion and also to plan, to be prepared to succeed. “Victory loves preparation,” he says.

When Kam is not working at the Health Department, he also conducts product validation for Apiary Medical. Kam’s Marine Corps mentor asked Kam to translate some Chinese documents which led to a full-time job as the Sourcing Manager for the company. There could not be a more appropriate time to work for an American company that dispatches personal protective equipment (PPE). As Kam got more involved with Apiary, he was able to perfectly connect the work of the international medical supply chain with what he was seeing on the frontlines at the Health Department. That job inspires him to learn more about the equipment he and frontline workers use to stay safe.

He intrinsically believes that, “It is not enough to use this equipment. I want to understand the technical components of the PPE that is needed.” For example, because he has to understand the equipment to present it to government officials for registration numbers and for authenticity purposes.  He now knows the different filtration capacities and testing components of different protective masks and how different environments require different filtration capacities.

Brian remains actively engaged with the Syracuse University LaunchPad as a mentor and advisor.  He still works closely with the LaunchPad and has actively re-engaged around the COVID-19 challenge.  This past weekend, April 24 to 26, he was the facilitative lead for a team of Syracuse University students who participated in the Techstars COVID-19 Online Startup Weekend:  Unite to Fight COVID-19.  Over a period of more than 55 hours the team rapidly assessed problems, explored solutions, conducted rapid research and discovery, and developed a MVP to pitch to judges.  More than 1,000 inventors and innovators came together from around the globe to be part of the challenge.  Kam lent his perspectives as a frontline health professional, as well as a disaster relief responder. The intensity of research and discovery that went into the process of creating a solution was extremely impressive, with Kam spearheading the discussions about needs in unprecedented times.

It is abundantly clear that Kam is living the University’s motto, “Suos Cultores Scientia Coronat,” — Knowledge Crowns Those Who Seek Her.

He genuinely believes that the more resources are invested in preparation — for example, studying or reaching out to past mentors — the more things will fall into place. Since leaving Syracuse University, Kam’s preparation has helped him create victories because he continues to pursue knowledge and help others.  He brings a warrior’s heart to that mission, each day.

Story by Blackstone LaunchPad Global Media Fellow Emma Tyler Rothman Photo supplied