Raul leans his back against the wall of the building behind him. He kicks one foot over another, positioning a notebook on his lap and beginning to jot down ideas for his next script. As he observes each passerby that strolls past him, he can’t help but wonder what their lives are like.

Raul Hernandez Guardans, an acting major at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, is the founder of Sonder Films — a film production company based in Spain.

Sonder is defined as “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” To Raul, this means bringing to life the stories of typically mispresented or stereotyped individuals.

Before college, Raul realized he felt trapped in his hometown in Barcelona. He decided to drop everything to move to London with no financial assistance from his family. Through working odd jobs, his eyes opened to the fact that so many lifestyles are neglected in traditional film.

“Let’s tell the stories of those passerby’s,” he says.

Raul explains that in Spain, there is much less funding and resources for small artists, and therefore, significantly fewer independent films. As such, there is also less freedom to better portray people or lifestyles who have been stigmatized or ill-represented, such as sex workers or those with mental illnesses.

Raul appreciates all that makes people interesting, such as fashion and aesthetics, both of which allow for personal expression. He values the ability to express unique perspectives and appreciates diversity in thought.

Through directing his own films, Raul can achieve creative control over the story he is telling (as compared to acting, where he would be at the mercy of other visions).

To kickstart Sonder Films, Raul is working to produce his first 90-minute feature film: Azul de Niño. The film will tell a story of a married woman who discovers her husband is having an affair with a male prostitute and wants to meet the lover to get answers. However, her plans are interrupted when she gets a heart-stopping call from the hospital — her husband had a stroke and is lying unconscious. The wife and the lover — who fell in love with the husband — both rush to the hospital, and the remainder of the film highlights the dynamic of the two grappling with their situation as they both wait for the husband to recover in the ICU.

At the center of it all is Raul, who is helping in producing and directing the film, serving as an actor, and writing the entire script.

“I’m everything,” he says with a chuckle.

And on top of that, he is also the businessman behind the brand.

Raul has fought to raise 40,000 euros thus far from personal investors and is looking to business competition pitches — such as those led by Blackstone LaunchPad & Techstars — or crowdfunding to raise the remaining 15,000 euros he still needs.

In Spain, it is currently difficult to turn to the government or production companies for these funds, especially in light of COVID-19, which has crippled the economy and available funds for independent artists.

“Our whole team is working out of faith,” he says gratefully. He plans to reimburse the actors and collaborators of the film as soon as they have the remaining funds or turn a profit after the film’s release. 

Raul speaks to the importance of such a reliable team: “You need to have a team around you that you trust enough to delegate your vision and your business.”

He adds that although he’s working across many sectors of the production, this delegation is important.

“You can’t actually take everything on,” he notes. Raul also explains that a team grows stronger when granted artistic power.

In selecting his team, Raul looks for pragmatism, common vision and flexibility.

“You need to be able to adapt because this is such a fluid process,” he says. “And you need to have spunk too.”

Raul values his own development of this “spunk.” He states that entrepreneurship is born out of self-confidence — something he didn’t always have. When he was younger, he didn’t want this kind of responsibility, but over time, he grew to understand his own artistic vision and shut off negative inner voices. It was during his time in London that he felt empowered to regain a voice.

As an artist and filmmaker, Raul derives his ideas from other art and people that inspire him. He encourages others to engage in random interactions, whether that is on the subway or just waiting in line.

“You’ll find fascinating people everywhere,” he says. It is these fascinating people and the ideas they evoke that push him to contemplate the nature of different livelihoods.

“The arts are our channel to empathy, understanding and dialogue.” He hopes that Sonder Films will help reduce the division that stems from political biases and that his film will open peoples’ eyes to experiences unlike their own.

After graduating this upcoming spring, Raul is expecting that he will complete shooting over the summer.

Throughout the process, Raul has learned to pursue his passion earnestly: “Release the stakes and pressure,” he says. “Do what you do because you love it.”

To learn more about Sonder Films or contact Raul, reach out to raul@sonderfilms.es.

Story by Sasha Temerte ’23, LaunchPad Orange Ambassador; photo supplied

“People are hungry for more,” says Ryan Ondocin, peering over his computer. “And people will respond to this.” On his screen lies the beta design for Satellite, a unique social media platform that allows users to connect like never before.

Unlike most social media platforms, such as Instagram or Facebook, whose models are based on keeping users on the apps for prolonged periods of time by leveraging follower counts and addicting content, Satellite offers a different approach.

“We maximize quality of user engagement, not quantity,” Ryan says.

Satellite encourages users to create smaller circles of friends with which they can share weekly updates with writing and photos, similar to a newsletter. This limit forces people to engage in reflective introspection rather than blindly posting meaningless updates, thus allowing users to maintain their relationships in a more genuine way.

“We spend hours of screen time on social media each week. What if we can use that time in the most productive way possible?”

He emphasizes that Satellite also differs from apps like GroupMe, where conversations are moved by day-to-day news like sports, sometimes leaving disinterested members detached and out of the loop. He says that whereas group messaging functions like an open mic, Satellite will act as an emcee by passing the mic from person to person.

“Satellite harnesses the power of oration – friends are great storytellers.” And it is stories that build meaningful interactions.

He explains that at their most fundamental level, humans crave connection. Yet it seems that current social media only breeds division, between the rapid spread of misinformation and the lack of regulation of people’s data and privacy.

“I don’t care if you have 50,000 friends on Facebook. If you have 5 real friends, that’s what matters,” Ryan notes.

Ryan is studying for a Master’s in Applied Data Science at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. Until now, Ryan had been mainly interested in applications of data science and machine learning to medicine. He had previously worked with PlantVillage, a research lab recognized by Google AI that helps farmers diagnose plant diseases. He also currently works with WiTech which is collaborating with the Department of Defense to model and implement early detection strategies for COVID-19 — a position that will soon place him in Maui. 

Ryan’s tenacity and equanimity allow him to stick with a problem as he stumbles through the dark until uncovering a lightbulb moment — approaches he often employs in projects such as these.

He was introduced to Satellite by a friend of Nick Barba ‘20, the LaunchPad’s independent project manager and a long-time LaunchPad Global Fellow.  Barba is the team co-founder. For the first six months, Ryan adopted a devil’s advocate approach to balance out Nick’s optimism and flesh out the kinks in his plan.  This month, he led the team’s pitch at ‘Cuse Tank 2020, sponsored by the LaunchPad.

Over time, the project pushed him to reframe his perspective of social media, identifying all that is wrong and noticing his own susceptibility to the Pavlovian effect of social media. Now, he views this project as an opportunity to fine-tune his skills in a consulting or management position — something he hopes to pursue following graduation.

As Ryan reflects on the building of the Satellite team, he describes the importance of understanding team dynamics and bringing various entities together to achieve a goal. He also explains that a team can only build something worthwhile if the members are passionate about their projects.

“I want to be a competent leader,” he says. In doing so, Ryan stresses the importance of humility and brutal honesty with yourself. “If you don’t know the answer, you can’t be afraid to ask questions.”

This powerful dynamic makes their global team function like a well-oiled machine, even with interns spanning from the coast of California to the country of Ghana.

Ryan speaks to the empowerment of their team: “These interns are driving the rocket with us.”

In developing their product, the team needs to grapple with their growth and revenue model to avoid falling into the same pitfalls of hierarchy that other platforms have. Nevertheless, they are not concerned about competing with companies like Facebook.

“You measure success not by comparing yourself to others but to who you were yesterday.”

Hence, as they think to expand to subscription-based upgrades that offer classroom discussion boards or larger circles of friends, they ensure that they are keeping their original mission at the forefront of development.

“We are holding ourselves accountable. There is no discrepancy between our interests and our users’ interests.”

Looking forward, Ryan predicts that the world will enter a “design renaissance,” where social media platforms will have to revert their design to adhere to its original purpose as a tool, rather than an enabler that encourages people to create virtual facades.

“I want to create something much bigger than myself,” Ryan says. “The legacy I want to leave behind should be evident in what I document and create.”

He is uncertain what his future has in store for him, but he is confident in Satellite and in his own passion for whichever path he pursues.

“We’re fresh out of the water and nervous but young enough to make it happen.”

Visit Satellite’s website to sign up for the pre-release beta and read more about Ryan’s projects on his LinkedIn resume.

Story by Sasha Temerte ’23, LaunchPad Orange Ambassador; photo supplied

With a boxy headset strapped snugly around his head and a fierce focus in his gaze, Shawn Gaetano navigates the 20th floor of a building. Slowly, he inches his way to pick up a soccer ball on a ramp that resembles a diving board, extending out from a window. Below him are skyscrapers and bustling city traffic. Soon enough, he carefully scrambles back into the building, bringing the soccer ball to the dog inside.

Sounds unreal? That’s because it is.

Solace Vision was born out of a simple idea: using virtual reality to help people overcome phobias. Thus far, Shawn has been testing the concept by simulating the fear-of-heights environment described above. After consulting with medical professionals, Shawn designed his program to offer incremental exposure (e.g. a ramp on the 5th floor, 10th floor, 15th floor, etc.), which acclimates users into comfortably facing their fears.

Shawn is an Information Management and Technology major with a concentration in Web Design and Management at Syracuse University’s iSchool. An innovative thinker, Shawn’s goal is to use emerging tech for good.

“Emerging technology creates problems in and of itself. I want to make it problem-less,” he says.

Using Unreal Engine, which offers a free and friendly user interface, Shawn can develop VR environments with minimal coding. Although in an ideal world he would pursue a B2B business model by selling products of Solace Vision to medical professionals, he will instead offer his programs directly to consumers through accessible downloads online.

The summer of 2020, Shawn won $500 in Syracuse University’s SummerStart Accelerator hosted by Blackstone LaunchPad and Techstars, allowing him to take Solace Vision to the next level.

Currently, Shawn is seeking out doctors, therapists, and psychiatrists to recruit to his team. He hopes that Solace Vision can offer an opportunity for medical professionals to connect with patients real-time and guide them through the process of overcoming their phobias. He is also working with clinicians to ensure that his designs adhere to medical standards before developing his next environment.

Shawn has also recently recruited Alec O’Del, a partner he met through the LaunchPad’s SummerStart Accelerator, who is knowledgeable in business development to help scale Solace Vision. Shawn is looking to hire more developers skilled in VR development in the future as well.

“It is helpful to work with a team who knows a lot more than I do,” Shawn admits. He stresses that in building this team, it’s important that people’s values align with their purpose and that their focus is on the mission rather than making money.

Shawn has already beta tested Solace Vision on over 100 patients, receiving an overwhelming flood of positive feedback.

A moment that stands out to him is a user who was crawling along the floor to cross the virtual plank. On her way back, she stood and reached for a virtual wall to steady herself against. Because there was no real wall actually behind her, the woman fell over. It was a lighthearted, humorous moment that demonstrated how effectively immersive the environment truly was.

Despite the fantastic reactions, Shawn did also receive constructive criticism on minor alterations — like the positioning of the ball or the presence of a dog, which may also be a phobia — and he uses this feedback to continue making his product better.

Designs like this will revolutionize the intersection of medicine and technology. Whereas VR used to be focused on gaming, innovators are now exploring new uses like testing business products or treating PTSD.

That said, it is still difficult to make strides to promote alternative treatments when traditional medicine has centuries of established history.

“Therapy is an incredibly hard industry to break into,” Shawn explains.

But Shawn is not new to the trial and errors of entrepreneurial ventures. “Part of being an entrepreneur is taking failures and learning from them,” he says.

He hopes to build a business he can scale to deploy his VR treatments to as many people who need it.

Beyond Solace Vision, Shawn is the director of NEXIS, a student technology lab at Syracuse University. He strives to propel the lab forward to enact the strategic vision of building a network of NEXIS-like labs across colleges around the country.

When looking which students to bring into the lab for projects, Shawn says NEXIS does not even touch resumes. “We just look for people who are passionate about tech. It’s a blessing to work with so many innovative people.”

Shawn defines innovation as not only outside-the-box thinking but also applying new uses to existing ideas. He poses the question, “Someone’s already created the wheel… But how can you make it better?”

Coming from a background as a first-generation college student from a small high school, Shawn didn’t have access to the technology he does now. He uses this perspective to motivate and drive him forward to do what he never thought to be within his reach.

The best part of being an innovator, he notes, is that “you get these new ideas… and you can actually execute them.” This execution is what Shawn is doing now.

Although Shawn is graduating this semester with a job lined up in Cleveland, his goal is to transform Solace Vision into a business he can rely on and expand its applications to encompass more mental health treatments beyond phobias. After working his 9-5, Shawn will be on the clock at 5:01 to keep working at Solace Vision each night.

“Be relentless. If you have a crazy idea, just go for it. The worst that can happen is you fail and learn.”

Shawn concludes with a final point for us to ponder: “All it takes is one yes to completely change your life. If you give up, you won’t know what your idea could have become.”

To read more about Solace Vision, visit the company website and follow the company on LinkedIn. Shawn Gaetano is always updating his LinkedIn as well.

Story by Sasha Temerte ’23, LaunchPad Orange Ambassador; photo supplied

Chizoba Anyaoha sits on a beach in Sydney, Australia letting his eyes drift across the figures wandering by the shore. His observant eyes lock with those of a woman who seems to be traveling alone. For a moment, he feels that he has stumbled upon serendipity — an opportunity to connect with a solo traveler like him — before the woman turns and walks in the opposite direction.

In this moment, TravSolo was born.

“There has to be a better way,” Chizoba thought.

Featured on Forbes and a myriad of travel publications, TravSolo is an app for solo travelers that streamlines the process of creating an itinerary, allows fellow solo travelers to meet, establishes safety precautions, and provides travelers with an opportunity to share their stories.

Chizoba, who has spent his life traveling between New York City and West Africa, was always a man who paved his own path instead of allowing himself to be pushed from place to place at the will of others.

At Syracuse University, Chizoba pursued a major in psychology with a minor in economics through the College of Arts and Sciences in hopes of fine-tuning the skills necessary to develop a business that meets human needs.

“I’m a builder,” he says, in reference to his relentless drive to create.

When he spent a semester abroad in Florence and explored nearby cities and countries independently, he later admitted he had solo traveled without even realizing it. After falling in love with the adrenaline of seeing the world beyond what he knows, Chizoba continued to pursue the meaning of what it truly means to live. He also learned that humanity shares more commonalities than differences, and it is especially vital in an increasingly diverse and racially charged nation to engage in cultural immersion to expand our global perspective.

A calculated risk-taker, Chizoba explains that it is important to be “comfortable with being uncomfortable.” He describes solo travel as an addicting experience and an opportunity to tell a worthwhile story. The problem, however, is that such stories are diminished by those who could not experience them themselves. TravSolo aims to solve this by allowing travelers to share their story in real time.

He hopes that this will inspire others to think, “If he or she did it, maybe I can too.”

This format aims to remove the distraction of editing for social media as well, shifting the focus to be on the trip itself. The app’s structure is also why TravSolo makes it easier for travelers to piece together an itinerary, rather than spending hours researching what to do.

Along Chizoba’s journey to humanize technology to make it more accessible, he acknowledged that not everything will always go as planned and that there is no one way of doing something right.

“There is no such thing as a perfect product — there is always something to improve because people’s needs change. Cities change. Travel changes.”

Looking forward, Chizoba plans to soon offer a subscription service within his app that will allow unlimited creation of drag-and-drop itineraries or one-time fees for short-term itineraries. Beyond this, he intends to expand his app to adapt to situations like COVID-19 by introducing travel itineraries related to road trips, hiking, and camping. He will also offer better connectivity for travelers, more journaling features, and greater safety tools.

When developing his app, Chizoba built a team of mentors and team members. He stresses that “When you’re working alone, you move faster, but when you’re working with a team, you move better.”

In building his team, Chizoba looked for people whose vision aligns with his. “Passion is most important because skills can be learned,” he notes.

Chizoba explains that it is important for entrepreneurs to understand their ultimate vision and understand why they are pursuing it.

“Why you?” he asks in particular, challenging people to identify what drives them to innovate within their industry. “Whether your startup fails or succeeds is up to you because you’re the boss. You need to have the why. With it, you’ll never be able to cheat your passions.”

Chizoba found his “why,” and now, he hopes to continue to grow the business that makes him happy.

“Do what you love, and love what you do,” Chizoba says. “Live your life. Laugh when you can.”

Growing up, Chizoba didn’t have mentorship to chase the self-started lifestyle he desired. Now, he gives back by mentoring high school and college students in accelerator programs. He has been an active alumni member of Syracuse University’s Blackstone LaunchPad and Techstars and participated in the LaunchPad’s first SummerStartup Accelerator.  He also did a residency with the Antler accelerator program and was a startup mentor for the Diamond Challenge and CUNY startups. He especially hopes to provide opportunities for people of color to find a voice in the travel and tech industry.

“It’s very impactful to see someone like them who did it. It’s inspiring.”

As a result, he will even be serving as a judge for American Airline’s Black Enterprise BE Smart Hackathon for all 101 HBCU schools. 

Regardless of what background someone comes from, Chizoba urges people to enact their crazy ideas: “To be an entrepreneur, you need to be irrational enough to build something from thin air.” It is this determined, outside-the-box thinking that pushed him to persist despite mistakes.

Chizoba leaves us with a final, haunting food-for-thought: “Everyone dies twice — once, physically, and once, when people stop saying their name. What impact do you want to have on the world? What do you want to be remembered for?”

To follow Chizoba’s current and upcoming projects, connect with him on LinkedIn (make sure to include a note!) and feel free to follow TravSolo on Instagram.

Story by Sasha Temerte ’23, LaunchPad Orange Ambassador; photo supplied

Along a Vietnamese beach walks Claire Chevalier, stepping around piles of abandoned takeout boxes and water bottles. Knowing Styrofoam does not decompose at all — and the plastic won’t for many years to come — her mind pounds with distress.

In Cambodia, she runs her hand through the water, wondering why packaging pollution is still an issue. She thinks of the time she learned about a company that packages water in thin, edible, seaweed-based film that runners can just pop into their mouths during races. We already have the innovations to fix the problem, she realizes. Why don’t major companies use them?

Once, it is 6 a.m. By the shores of Lake Michigan, Claire sits in the sand, gazing at forgotten plastic straws and beer cans. She watches a man tying up the trash bags of bins scattered along the beach, and she asks if he would help her pick up the scattered trash still lying idle in the sand.

“90% of recycling goes to landfills anyway”, she notes. “So why do we spend so much time cleaning up if we can just prevent the problem first?”

This is precisely what Claire is aiming to tackle with Cuapa Monde Conservation (CMC).

Claire’s passion for environmental sustainability has always been core to who she is, having come from a family with similar values. While traveling through Southeast Asia, Claire was spurred to transform her passion into an action plan after encountering shocking amounts of plastic and Styrofoam waste.

In fact, this background of traveling has developed the outgoing, curious, and creative personality that defines Claire. Although her home base is in the suburbs of Chicago, Claire comes from a nomadic family: Her German mother was born in India and raised in the U.S. while her father is French. Claire studied abroad in Spain, visits France every summer, volunteered in Nicaragua, spent a gap year in Southeast Asia, and took another semester in Uruguay. In total, Claire has visited over 13 countries.

This global background taught Claire to be non-judgmental and approach everything with an open-minded attitude. She spent her childhood talking more with adults than peers, and through these more mature conversations, Claire learned a healthy argumentative spirit. Growing up, her parents also taught her to play devil’s advocate just to understand another side to every belief.

“Perspectives are multifaceted,” Claire says.

In Cambodia, when Claire’s program didn’t allow cell phones, she needed to communicate with people of a different background without knowing the language. This taught Claire that most problems are merely the result of miscommunication — an important realization in our increasing globalization.

Now, Claire is a freshman majoring in Marketing Management through the Martin J. Whitman School of Management with an intended double major in Environment, Sustainability, and Policy through Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences. She hopes that learning to sell an idea will enable her to enact her dream into reality — in this case, her dream for CMC.

Cuapa Monde Conservation will be a consulting firm that connects existing companies to innovative research labs that create sustainable, zero-waste packaging. “Cuapa” represents Jucuapa Occidental of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, the first place Claire was immersed in a culture other than her own. “Monde” then signifies “world” in French. As a result, CMC is named in honor of the global background that has deeply influenced the development of her business idea.

“We are an American consumer society — that’s never going to go away.” The question just becomes how we end the production of packaging waste. That’s where CMC comes in.

CMC will help major companies — think beer, chip, and soda producers — to realize that sustainable packaging will both benefit the environment and save the companies money. Claire notes that companies focus only on immediate sales gains without acknowledging that long-term, sustainable packaging would minimize their costs. She also expects that in the future, governments will implement more regulations to tax companies for plastic use, and CMC can help the companies project and prepare for these changes.

Claire’s long-term vision for CMC is name recognition. She hopes that someday, large-brand companies we see in grocery stores will have a label: “CMC Certified.” Each label could have a color-code to indicate whether the packaging will decompose in five years, three years, one year, or less. Perhaps “CMC Certified” will also become a token of value that inspires consumers to spend a few extra cents, just as labels like “Organic” or “Vegan” do.

In endeavors like this, it is crucial to have support, so Claire emphasizes the importance of creating meaningful relationships.

“You can’t do anything alone,” she says.

Claire has just started working closely with Syracuse University’s Blackstone LaunchPad and Techstars to build her business roadmap and build the connections she needs.

Claire also stresses that to be an entrepreneur means to be “someone who not only has an idea but makes it happen.” She urges others to follow through with their ideas and pursue the passions that drive them.

“Anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it.” This mindset is precisely the driving force for Claire’s pursuit of Cuapa Monde Conservation.

She states with certainty, “This should exist, and I want it to exist.”

And therefore, it will exist.

If you are interested in contacting Claire Chevalier, she can be reached at cmcheval@syr.edu.

Story by Sasha Temerte ’23, LaunchPad Orange Ambassador; photo supplied

On a little hamlet of Long Island, NY stands a man with a camera, peering into the screen as his actors bring their vision to life. When the film is finally screened, he holds his breath with the rest of the audience. Soon, a room of 250 people is stunned into a deafening silence — he could finally release his breath.

The film worked.

A mere year later, he clips the video camera between the boxy legs of his drone, steps back, and launches his device into the sky. Controller in hand, he watches the scene pan over a field of green before zooming closer into a home. His body floods with the calm of a familiar rhythm.

Lucas Tran Kosmynka ‘23 is a Syracuse University film major in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, however much of his talent developed long before stepping onto campus. Lucas has come a long way since he picked up his first home video camera as he has now transformed his love for videography into a consistent independent venture.

Driven to create, Lucas spent his high school years creating powerful PSA films. The topics he chose had two requirements: relevancy and strong personal connection. The PSAs Lucas films are often inspired by snippets of his own experiences, molded to take on a greater message.

One of the films Lucas directed that holds particular meaning to him is his film advocating for mental health and suicide awareness. In 2019, he also won a distracted driving video contest, earning him $5,000, a feature on ABC7 New York, and his first national ticket to fame. The heart-wrenching video was a rallying cry for safety and awareness — a common theme in many of Lucas’s PSA films, which he hopes frame topics in novel, eye-opening ways.

“I’m not trying to change people’s minds. I’m trying to educate — to make people listen without even realizing they’re listening.”

This tactic is especially evident in his brief PSA on wearing masks, showing a quick comparison between wearing a mask (voluntarily) or a respirator (involuntarily).

His PSAs often feature the same leading actor. Lucas emphasizes the importance of a creative partner from his relationship with Michael Fedele, a custodian that Lucas met in high school who happened to be a passionate actor and writer. Together, they worked on their creative visions for any given film.

“It’s important to have an honest second perspective to improve an idea,” Lucas says.

Since then, Lucas has applied his abilities into the creation of SandPoint — a marketing business that mainly serves local businesses and real estate listings on Long Island.

While he is normally timid in social settings, Lucas had no trouble putting himself out there and cold-emailing businesses to offer his media services. As he received responses, he focused on quality over quantity, offering additional content for his established clients rather than spreading himself thin. His client-focused approach proved effective as he dedicated himself to a mission of close connection by acting on feedback from the people he works with.

“I always start by asking what they want to achieve as opposed to what they want made.” This provides him with clarity and vision, but Lucas also notes that he learned the value of flexibility in adapting this vision to what the client wants to see.

Ultimately, Lucas’s goal with SandPoint is to provide a more modern, innovative take on marketing businesses and real estate. He differentiates between video and film, emphasizing that he approaches his marketing content with a more cinematic focus. Rather than a “cookie-cutter” approach, Lucas strives for originality.

When asked what it means to be an innovator, Lucas says, “It’s the ability to make something out of nothing or out of what’s given to you.”

In this process, Lucas strives to create that which is beneficial to his community and offers a step toward positive change. This past summer, Lucas sought to find opportunity in the face of a difficult situation — a global pandemic. This resulted in kickstarting a business delivering groceries to at-risk New York residents.

Still, Lucas considers himself to be more of a creative figure than a businessman. To Lucas, entrepreneurship is not about the technicalities of business but rather about sharing your creations with the world.

“Put your work out there,” he says. “Don’t keep it locked away in a folder.”

Looking forward, Lucas is currently working on his New York Real Estate License so that he can act as an agent that creates marketing content for his own listings.

Lucas is inspired to continue what he does because of the satisfaction that comes with people appreciating his work, whether it is on a commercial or personal level.

“We live life in video,” he says. And so, Lucas hopes to bring this same life to his videography.

His films can be found on his YouTube channel, and his marketing content for SandPoint is featured on his Instagram @sandpoint.ny.

Lucas leaves us with one final message to consider: “If you’re passionate enough and have the drive to do what you want to do, no one is stopping you except yourself.”

Story by Sasha Temerte ’23, LaunchPad Orange Ambassador; photo supplied

Somewhere, in a library, a woman lounges with a notebook and a pen. She is jotting down a list of business ideas, tucked into the forgotten crevices of her mind. Somewhere, on top of a mountain, a woman leans against stone, the same notebook in her hands. This time, she scribbles the last lines of a stanza, the poem’s rhythm building to a crescendo of syllables. Somewhere, across the world, a woman packs her bags for tomorrow’s flight. A few weeks into her travels, she befriends an elderly artist who tells her stories about culture and life.

This woman is Sasha Temerte, who seeks to understand humanity and the world around her.

Born in Uzbekistan with Russian, Greek, and Korean roots, Sasha has always engaged in a balancing act of culture fusion. This identity crisis was only ever furthered by her love of all subject fields.

Since high school and beyond, Sasha has thought herself to be a weaver of numbers and words as she struggled to reconcile her love for writing and STEM. She was president of multiple self-started clubs as she strived to enact her many interests into tangible organizations. After joining Syracuse University as a Coronat Scholar, Sasha began pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Economics at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, along with a Bachelor of Arts in Writing and Rhetoric at the College of Arts and Sciences.

Driven by wanderlust and curiosity about the world beyond her Pennsylvania home, Sasha spent her first semester abroad in Spain. Following this experience, she quickly picked up a Spanish minor. The hunger for travel and connection had become insatiable, taking her from merely hiking the American West to now ordering mint tea on the coast of Morocco. Dreaming of an international MBA, Sasha then took on a Strategic Management minor through the Martin J. Whitman School of Management to fill in the more technical gaps in her knowledge of business.

This scattered combination of passions often results in some raised eyebrows and questioning looks, but it allows Sasha to do what she loves most: explore. Whether she is exploring the gears of our economy, the numbers behind effective leadership, or the precise combination of words that will evoke a flood of emotions in readers, Sasha is happy to keep her schedule packed with learning.

Sasha is heavily involved on campus as well. She has worked as a Copy Editor and a Communications Manager for Globalists, a publication that focuses on stories of culture and identity, which closely collaborates with the LaunchPad. She is also now an inaugural Orange Ambassador for the Syracuse University Blackstone LaunchPad and Techstars, where she brings the stories of fellow innovators and entrepreneurs to light. Eleven 2020 – 2021 Orange Ambassador roles were generously funded through a personal gift from Todd R. Rubin ’04, School of Architecture.

In her free time, Sasha constantly initiates new writing projects. In 2018, Sasha published her poetry debut, Peace and Other Radical Ideas, which offers a riveting look into society to encourage social change. Last semester, Sasha kickstarted Between the Lines, a blog where she interviewed people on their innermost thoughts, life philosophies, and transformational moments to bring the story of raw human experience to life. She is currently working on a myriad of other poetry and prose works that she hopes to publish in the upcoming years.

Although writing is now her touchstone, this love of words began with ferocious reading habits. Sasha currently spends numerous hours reading books that she hopes will equip her to soon pursue larger-scale entrepreneurship and launch her own business.

That venture is yet to fully evolve, but somewhere, in a notebook, Sasha is already plotting her next big idea.  We are looking to help her bring it to life in the LaunchPad.

To contact Sasha or to learn more about her recent projects, check out her LinkedIn.