“This is bold, raw, and a little bit audacious…but I kind of love it.” That isn’t a thought I ever imagined that looking over a PowerPoint pitch deck could possibly invoke in my mind. Yet, that was my exact reaction when I first found out about Moody Magazine, the lovingly curated, playfully risqué brainchild of founders Jennie Bull ’24 and Emma Lueders ’24.

Jennie, a dual major in marketing and retail management at the Whitman School of Management, and Emma, a fashion design major at the College of Visual and Performing Arts with a minor in information technology design from the I-School, first showed up on the Blackstone LaunchPad radar for the LaunchPad x Deloitte Digital Innovation Sprint which took place earlier in September. At this event, student teams were tasked with creating a proof-of-concept to address a digital challenge in the world of enterprise. With the help of their new friends Margil Gandhi ’23 and Ruzan Pithawala ’22, Jennie and Emma brought their infectious combined energy to the stage to pitch their passion project for the first time. Here’s what it’s all about:

Moody Magazine—or just “Moody,” as Jennie and Emma affectionately call it for short—is a self-education and self-love publication that was born from the founders’ frustration with the lack of transparency surrounding topics of sex-positivity and self-love. The two have recognized that there are few safe spaces to connect and guide people through these traditionally taboo topics, which is why they’re so passionate about initiating the conversations around them. With aims to develop a fully-fledged online platform in the future, the publication currently boasts a team of writers, public relations specialists, photographers, graphic designers, stylists, and web developers that sits at about a hundred people strong worldwide. Moody’s first issue released last April, with the next slated to be released in early December. It’s possible that you may have already seen this first issue—featuring Jennie’s shiny, cherry red stiletto boots—in circulation around campus.

The Moody team ended up securing first prize at the Deloitte Digital Innovation Sprint, walking away with a $500 award and the opportunity for further mentoring from a Deloitte PPMD. This created a ripple effect within the LaunchPad, mostly because the nature of Jennie and Emma’s venture is somewhat taboo in-and-of itself, and not in negative connotation either. We simply haven’t seen anything else quite like it come through the LaunchPad doors before, so it was only natural that peer entrepreneurs hearing about it for the first time were curious to know more.

I learned more about Moody while I was combing through the pitch decks of the winning teams to write a brief article on the results of the event, and their slides intrigued me enough to reach out.

I was able to meet with Jennie and Emma in person to learn more about their story. I must say, it was well worth the wait. Before I share the genesis of Moody though, I want to focus the spotlight directly on the founders themselves for a moment, because they are two of the most interesting, carefree personalities that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting at Syracuse University.

If I were only allowed to choose one word to characterize them both, that word would be armorless. Utterly, astonishingly armorless. I couldn’t tell you the last time I was greeted with an open embrace from two people I’d only just met for the first time, and as we walked down Marshall Street looking for a spot in the sun to sit down and enjoy our coffee, the way they spoke with each other was cheerfully chaotic and without pause. It was like listening to a brain that could literally think out loud, buzzing with electrical energy; Jennie as the left hemisphere, Emma as the right, finishing each other’s sentences. Then, once we settled down at an open café-style table just outside of J-Michael Shoes, the two of them periodically greeted passersby on the sidewalk, complimenting their outfits and striking up brief but friendly conversations with them.

Based on this, it was apparent to me almost immediately that Jennie and Emma are unabashedly comfortable in their own skin, and in such a way that can bring forth a similar confidence in even the shyest of people they meet. More than that, the bond the two of them share is incredibly deep. Jennie, originally a Chicago native, and Emma, hailing from Wayne, Pennsylvania, first met as sisters of Kappa Kappa Gamma, and then became attached at the hip due to their shared interest in fashion. In fact, they both currently work as fashion stylists for Zipped Magazine, the premier fashion and trends publication at Syracuse University, where they learned a great deal about the photoshoot direction skills they now employ for making Moody Magazine.

“The idea for Moody first came up when we were driving home from the thrift store,” Jennie told me. “We were making some stops on our way back from a Zipped shoot that day when we passed by an Adult World and started talking about sex stuff on the ride home.”

Then, Emma added, “These are conversations we feel comfortable having with each other and with our friends in KKG, and I know that other people have likely had these conversations with their friends too. In that moment, I think it really dawned on me and Jennie: why are these conversations that all of us have spoken about at one point or another not discussed more openly?”

Prior to this seed being planted, Jennie had ideas about creating a magazine on topics of sex-positivity to shed a non-judgmental light on the sexual experiences of young adults, while Emma had considered starting a magazine to help young adults understand the importance of self-love, having struggled with such issues herself in the past. “We kind of just looked at each other right then and there and said, do you want to make a magazine together? And that’s how it all started.”

Emma continued to describe to me the process that went into choosing the name of their new publication. “We wanted to pick something that sounded right for what we were going for; a name that could be both playful and a little bit naughty, but also not too raunchy. Originally, we were thinking ‘Sassy,’ or even ‘Spicy,’ but as soon as Jennie said ‘Moody,’ we knew that was the one. I remember the first words that came out of my mouth were, ‘Are you in the mood?’ That became our tagline from that day forward. We totally fell in love with it.”

But Jennie and Emma also knew that publishing their own magazine wasn’t a task they could feasibly tackle by themselves. So, they started to spread the word about their vision for Moody by creating an Instagram page and posting flyers in their sorority house and around campus. These flyers led to an application link via Google Forms which interested parties could fill out.

“At first, we were kind of just giggling about this idea of ours,” Jennie said. “We didn’t know if it would be something that people would even resonate with, but then once people heard, we got like eighty volunteer applicants in the span of a week. It totally floored me and Emma. It was just that sudden feeling of, ‘Whoa, so I guess this is actually happening now, huh?’”

Overall, the founders and team have been pleased with the work they’ve put into their publication, as well as humbled by the reception to their first issue. “It warms my heart whenever we have people send us little messages talking about how much they love Moody and what it’s been able to do for them personally,” Emma gushed. “Because the thing Jennie and I really want skeptics to understand about us is that we aren’t making an adult magazine. It might seem that way on the surface, but if those people were to pick up a copy and read it, then they’ll quickly realize that there’s way more to it than that. Moody has become an outlet for people to share their experiences on difficult topics that they might be scared to talk about otherwise, like sexual abuse, drug abuse, toxic relationships, self-expression, self-love, and so much more.”

“It also makes me happy to see that the guys are talking about Moody too,” Jennie interjected. “Especially when you consider that men are traditionally pressured to stay guarded about these kinds of things. But since we published our first issue, I’ve been out to frat houses and had guys approach me like, ‘Yo! You’re Jennie Bull from Moody Magazine.’ Some of them have told me that because of the context we’ve created, they’ve been able to have more open conversations with their other male friends and improve the intimacy and satisfaction in their romantic relationships.”

“And that’s really what it’s all about,” Emma concluded. “Through what we’re doing with Moody, we want to motivate the people who read it to start these same conversations in their own circles if they aren’t having them already. No one should have to feel ashamed to talk with others about difficult experiences they’ve been through, or to feel afraid to speak up about their personal boundaries and preferences with their romantic partners. We hope that Moody can provide an open floor and an emotional release for our readers in the same way it has for me, Jennie, and the rest of our team.”

Story by Jack Rose ’24, Blackstone LaunchPad Global Media Fellow; photo supplied  

“I have always been drawn to creative problems, yet I have always solved those problems in technical ways. I am very left-brained. But people need to know being left-brained can be just as creative as being right-brained. In fact, if you are forced to pick the perspective of just one side, you lose the overlap between them. That is where all the good things happen.” This is a personal philosophy explained of Domenic Gallo ‘24, a sophomore in the industrial design program at Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts.

This semester, Domenic has enjoyed the opportunity of putting his creative problem-solving skills to the test in an inclusive design class offered through the Intelligence ++ program. The elective—available to both undergraduates and graduates—challenges students to ideate and build solutions for challenges unique to individuals with intellectual disabilities.

In a DES400 class, Domenic has been working alongside fellow VPA sophomore, Bella Young ’24, and his new friend Chase Coleman, a student from Syracuse University’s InclusiveU program. “Chase has a form of autism that makes it difficult for him to communicate verbally,” he told me. “Typically, individuals who struggle with this use a type of app called an AAC—which stands for augmentative and alternative communication—so that they can talk with people. It is basically a grid of images on a touch screen or keyboard with text editor used by people who have non-verbal autism to speak. You string together sentences using the images on screen and then the software speaks it for you.”

“But the problem is that most of these systems are antiquated and outdated in terms of current technology,” Domenic continued. “Most of them use ClipArt images and interfacing that can feel infantilizing or even demeaning for someone like Chase to use. The other issue is that for someone like me who usually communicates verbally, I have the liberty of being able to use words in a way that expresses my personality. But Chase’s interface on the other hand, it is not tailored to his personality or how he speaks. If he wanted to tell a joke for example or use humorous connotation, that is something he cannot really do right now.”

So, what should be done about this communications roadblock? Domenic gave me the rundown of his solution, maintaining his cool, calculated demeanor as he spoke. “What we want to do is modernize ACC, and we are trying to do this in two ways. One is by implementing AI technology to create better predictive text pathways that feel more natural to use. The hope is that it would be able to match whatever speech style Chase wants to use and suggest things he might want to say next. The other thing we have been thinking about is creating more dynamic layouts. The AAC grid is very structured right now, basically just a grid of squares. We are seeing if laying it out in different formats would allow for better personalization.”

Another aspect of Domenic’s product development process is exploring the idea of creating a brand new, keyboard-like interface by utilizing his CAD and 3D printing expertise. “When you are using an AAC on an iPad, you are pressing the touch screen for haptic feedback. You must go through the different categories to select the words you want to use. This works for some people, but what I want to test out is if it might be more beneficial for the disability community to have a dedicated physical interface. I am thinking that it might be less ‘busy’ than navigating a tablet.”

Domenic said that he had taken inspiration from DJ soundboards for his initial design. When asked how large he wanted the product to be, he unfolded his arms and estimated the rough dimensions with his hands. “Probably like a foot-long square; 8 x 8 with 64 buttons total. I want it to be something that is portable enough to fit in a backpack. I designed the physical model using CAD software, and now I am working on an app that can interface directly with the buttons. The idea is to have them light up with different options based on which word is being chosen. So, if Chase presses the word ‘I’ on the grid for example, a group of most-likely words or phrases with their associated colors and images will pop up for him to select next. In time, the goal is to have it adapt to his most frequent choices and preferred style of speaking. Think of it like iMessage recommendations, but on an actual keyboard.”

His proposal, “Reimagining AAC,” supervised by Professor Donald Carr, just received a SOURCE Fellowship of up to $5000 to continue research on the project.

Domenic describes what he is enjoyed most about his industrial design program thus far. “What’s great about the major is we do a ton of different things,” he says.” We cast a wide net.” Prior to the inclusive design class, Domenic worked on a couple of different projects, including one with the Smart Visions Systems (SVS) Laboratory at Syracuse University, where he organized brand language and a concept for an occupancy detection software. He was brought on towards the end of the project to help develop an HVAC system which utilized cameras and AI technology to determine how many people were occupying a given space. Based on how many occupants there were, the system would then adjust the temperature of the room accordingly to conserve energy costs. Domenic also held a summer internship at a 3D printing laboratory where he made a print farm and learned about cloud-based rapid prototyping. “I built 3D printers from scratch,” he said. “I didn’t know much about electrical engineering before then, so half the fun was learning how to wire without blowing myself up.”

Perhaps Domenic would have been exposed to it earlier had he chosen to go into mechanical engineering like he had initially intended as a high schooler, but he found that it did not offer the level of creativity he was looking for. “The other thing that I love about industrial design is that some of my classmates are artistic, while others are not as much. But there is an entire spectrum of industrial design projects, and you get to choose where you want to land on it. Especially with this thing I am working on now, I get to talk with expert users and people with disabilities who can tell me directly if what I am doing is working for them. We are designing with them, not just for them, and that feels fulfilling to me. I cannot wait to see how it turns out.”

Story by Jack Rose ’24, Global Media Fellow

“Do you want to try some pita?” Those were among the first words Tyrin said to me when I first met him in the LaunchPad last week. In his hands, he held a Tupperware container with two different varieties sliced into triangle-shaped pieces. One was a bread typical to something you might find at your local grocery store; white, fluffy, and wonderfully baked in Tyrin’s own apartment kitchen. But the other was unlike anything I’d seen before. It had the same fluffiness, texture, and consistency, but it was an interesting shade of greenish-gray and had a slightly nutty flavor. Both were delicious.

The catch? One of those pita breads was baked using dried cricket powder.

“Ew! Dried up bugs? In my bread? No thank you!” That is what the average consumer might think when their imagination runs wild on the idea of putting crickets into their bread, but Tyrin is determined to normalize the consumption of insect-based food as a regular form of protein supplementation with his food venture, Fauna.

“It’s the idea of the crunchiness that might be putting people off,” he said. “Eating something like a cockroach seems disgusting because you think about it being squishy on the inside, but when you are eating insect protein that’s mixed into your normal food as powder, it’s easier to take baby steps. That is what I’m hoping for with Fauna. I do not want to turn anybody off right from the start.”

Tyrin graduated from Syracuse University in 2020 with his B.S. in computer science and has been working in the LaunchPad for the past three months, brainstorming different ideas. At the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey, he was more interested in the green technology industry; thinking of ways to use technology to improve the current state of our global climate crisis. But as time went on, he began to consider ways that we could reduce the current level of emissions rather than enabling them to stay at their current level. He had also been studying up on the long-term health benefits of vegetarian and vegan diets through books and documentaries for some time, and movies like Bladerunner 2049 portrayed the usage of insect farms as efficient method of meeting the protein needs of the population. That is where the seed for his venture was planted.

The funny thing is that Tyrin claims to be a picky eater, and you would hardly expect for someone like that to be experimenting with insect-based protein in the first place. “I don’t enjoy seafood or pork, and not for religious reasons,” he divulged. “I hardly eat beef either. It is bad for the environment, so I’ve been consciously choosing not to eat it. We are in a place where we need to slow down the global climate crisis. In a lot of ways, it is already past the point of no return. There is a lot of droughts happening, and coastal regions will be flooding in the next few years at this rate. Holding cattle as livestock contributes to that problem, but if the demand for beef is high then the farms will reason to keep supplying.”

Tyrin’s thinking is that by making the push to popularize insect protein in the market as a tasty alternative, it might create an extra incentive for the demand of beef to decrease. “Insect farms are probably going to be a thing of the future. Bugs seem to be abundant. They are even in places you do not want them to be,” he joked. “About 60-70% of their bodies are made of protein. That means for every ten grams of cricket powder, you are getting about seven grams of protein. Insects are also easy to farm and transport because of their size.”

Even so, the insect populations are decreasing as well. “Have you heard of the bug splatter test?” Tyrin asked. “It is when you drive on a highway, and you see the number of bugs that end up on your windshield. That bug splatter is becoming less and less because the ecosystems are being destroyed. I personally do not like insects that much, but it’s still important that we preserve them.” The hope is that insect farming and a higher demand for insect protein in the future could also help slow or reverse the decline in the population numbers.

Later in our conversation, I asked Tyrin why he chose to focus specifically on making a bread product using insect protein. “Protein bars are already popular,” he said. “And I thought about doing pancakes at first or even crepes as well, but the crepes especially are delicate to make. People have found ways to sell the powder on its own as a supplement too. The only issue there is that it is quite expensive, and the nutty flavor is also strong, so a lot of effort would go into diluting or substituting that.”

With bread however, this was not nearly as much of an issue for Tyrin. Throughout the month of August, he spent many hours learning and perfecting the recipe for his pita. He does not own a stand mixer currently, so he had to knead it the old-fashioned way. “I kept going until I was able to get something that was at least edible, and I thought hey, at least we’re getting somewhere with this,” he remarked.

The recipe for his bread has a minimal amount of insect powder. It is just enough to get that extra bit of protein in without ruining the structure of the bread, making the flavor too potent, or making the color too dark. Tyrin is wary that the darker green the bread gets, the less likely people may be to try it if they see it on a shelf. “If you make it tasty above all else, people will be willing to try it,” he said. “But if it is too dark, not so much. That is why I put the plain pita side by side. If I can show people that they are not too different from each other in a taste test, then maybe those people will go and tell their friends as well.”

Currently, Tyrin makes pita out of his apartment and sources his insect protein from Amazon. He will be looking for wholesalers in the future, as well as a test kitchen to experiment with different production methods. Right now, he needs to keep his oven on for at least an hour before he can even begin the baking process, which can be expensive for the power bill. Not to mention that he shares his apartment with another roommate, and contention for that space can lead to some friction when baking pita all the time.

Crickets have been in human diets for centuries, and they are consumed in most countries of the world, though most commonly in Southeast Asia and Mexico. I was curious if a diet including insects was a custom in Middle Eastern heritage as well, but Tyrin said that was not the case. He told me that he had not tried eating them until recently. However, most of his youth was spent in New York City where he did experience a melting pot of cultural cuisines. When I asked for his thoughts on the matter, he said this: “Traditions are supposed to evolve. There is this one place in Chelsea Market for example where they put Japanese food into taco shells, and it’s delicious. The whole point of the culinary world is fusion. You want to keep mixing food to try and find new things to enjoy.”

Right now, Tyrin is pushing to get the legal documentation and processing for Fauna completed by October and has plans to get his cricket pita on the shelves for customers to enjoy sometime in December.

Story by Jack Rose ’24, Global Media Fellow