In the final round of Trinity’s ninth annual Louis H. Stumberg Competition, Ashleigh Reese, sophomore anthropology and biology double-major, and Sofia Ortiz, senior political science major and entrepreneurship minor, emerged as the winners. Since spring 2023, four student startup companies have been competing against one another to earn the investment from a panel of judges and jumpstart their unique entrepreneurial ideas. On Oct. 20, the student entrepreneurs competed in front of a judge panel, pitching their startup and answering questions in hopes to win their investment.
After completing the first round, the Stumberg Seed Round, and earning $5,000, finalists remained on campus for the 10-week summer Trinity Accelerator Program where they took business classes, gained networking opportunities and received business mentorship from Sarah Janosik, Trinity’s entrepreneur-in-residence, former Stumberg winners and successful business leaders.
Each of the four finalists — Well and Worthy, BFit, The Beast Collection and GlassBrain — offer unique ideas. Well and Worthy is a personalized wellness app aiming to help women find the best nutrition and workout programs based on menstrual cycle syncing. Reese and Ortiz created the app to provide women the opportunity to reach their energy and fitness goals and elevate their personal well-being.
“Before Stumberg, I’d never imagined myself as an entrepreneur nor as someone who would ever get involved with something like this,” Reese said.
In a similar vein, Mollee Priddy, senior psychology major, Marcos Morales, junior business major, and WooJin Han, sophomore computer science major, teamed up to create BFit, which allows users to invest in their health through the assistance of AI, with workouts and diets crafted specially for the individual user.
Inspired by her own experiences of women’s healthcare, Reese wants to challenge what is considered “normal” within a medical setting and how patients are treated due to lack of facts, abundance of misinformation and “general apathy toward issues that predominantly affects womens’ health and wellness.”
Along the same lines of health and fitness, The Beast Collection is an athletic apparel company built upon the pillars of motivation and living a healthy and successful lifestyle. James Ogunrin, senior business administration major with a marketing concentration, wants his startup to be a collection of inspiring fitness wear.
“I wanted to be my own business owner and felt like I had a vision and wanted to execute it,” Ogunrin said. “Being an athlete provides me some avenues to approach this, so I started to think about it more.
Athleisure wear is a growing industry and so is lifestyle fitness. With all that, I wanted to create a brand that encapsulated all of that.”
Finally, GlassBrain, developed by Cade Harger, junior computer science major, is an educational application created to help teach users how to develop computer code, merges computer literature and visuals in order to understand the behind-the-scenes of neural networks. Users are given access to explanations as to how the building blocks of computer programs work and the tools to experiment with their own designs.
“I hope to have GlassBrain be kind of a go-to entry point for people who are trying to learn AI concepts. I hope that it has a reputation of being something that’s very visual and intuitive and takes the stress out of the learning process,” Harger said.
Many of the entrepreneurs entered the competition without prior knowledge of how to develop a startup. The Accelerator Program gave the entrepreneurs an insight into the business world, a realm they have not necessarily explored before.
“I have no business experience. Hearing the business side of things and how to manage that really made me feel like I have a much better understanding of the bigger picture,” Harger said. “I feel confident that I could run the business side of things.”
Startups are gateways for individuals to promote their beliefs, especially when it centers around social justice issues. Reese originally was unsure about joining Stumberg, but was ultimately happy that she decided to compete as she left with an investment for her and Ortiz’s startup.
“I think that anyone who is passionate about something and wants to change the world can get involved [in Stumberg],” Reese said. “We are all at a point in our lives where we have the freedom and opportunity to experience such a wide range of things, and we should all push ourselves to do something exciting while we have this time to explore.”
