FreshU Founder Kate Beckman joins the LaunchPad as Global Media Fellow

Photo of Kate Beckman

S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications alum (’17) and current Newhouse graduate student Kate Beckman is joining the Blackstone Launchpad as a Global Media Fellow for summer 2017.

As founder and CEO of Fresh U, a national online publication for college freshmen that also connects companies with Gen Z, Beckman brings considerable experience to herrole as Global Media Fellow.

Launched in June 2015, Fresh U has grown to a team of 300 contributing writers from 150 campuses, and currently partners with Seventeen and Teen Vogue.  In addition to running Fresh U, she is a freelance writer for Cosmopolitan.

Beckman has also pitched in a number of business competitions, including in the finals of the ACC InVenture Prize competition at Georgia Tech.

She is an accomplished public speaker on content development and marketing trends related to Gen Z. She represented Syracuse University Student Startup Madness 2016 at SXSW, and participated in a national panel at a pre-SXSW 2017 panel on Generation Z.  She was also a speaker at Global Entrepreneurship Week 2016 at Syracuse University, and is on the team planning campus initiatives for Global Entrepreneurship Week 2017

As Global Media Fellow, Beckman will assist the LaunchPad in innovation and entrepreneurship event planning, student startup consulting, and social media strategy.  “As a company founder who uses the LaunchPad to work on my own start-up, I am so excited to have the opportunity to assist other students with their ventures and plan events to further strengthen Syracuse’s entrepreneurship presence.”

As someone well connected to Syracuse University’s innovation ecosystem, she has worked closely with campus resource providers such as the Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship.  Her entrepreneurial skill set, expertise in startup strategy, and content development and social media savvy, will make her a valuable addition to the LaunchPad team.