deming

The Cards are Stacking for Luke Wachtel

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 11:30:00 +0000

The Cards are Stacking for Luke Wachtel Colton Sontrop Thu, 10/08/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

When Luke Wachtel applied to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, he wrote his supplemental essay about the Deming Center and his hope of one day building a climate venture.

At the time, it was just something he thought would be cool. He had no idea he would actually end up building one.

Now, a few months into his freshman year, the San Diego native is the founder of Orion Fire Technologies Inc., a startup working to stop wildfires before they spread. He's also part of the upcoming Spark �鶹��Ѱ��Founders cohort, one of the Deming programs he wrote about in that essay.

"I wrote my college app on Spark �鶹��Ѱ��and Deming and how I wanted to go into climate ventures. I thought that would be cool, but I actually had no idea. It's kind of crazy how all the cards are stacking now."

Those cards started stacking long before he got to Boulder.

A Venture Rooted in Personal Experiences

Orion Fire wants to fight wildfires in their first minutes, before they have a chance to grow. It pairs AI fire detection with autonomous aircraft, all coordinated by software that humans oversee.

"Every wildfire starts small. But the resources aren't there in time, and time is money with wildfire fighting.”

For Wachtel, the problem is personal. When his family was spending time in Maui, around Lahaina in 2023, he watched a wildfire destroy the historic town in a matter of minutes, and since moving to Boulder, he's seen how the Marshall Fire still hangs over the area. He believes fires like these will only get worse as weather becomes more extreme.

However, he's quick to point out that he isn't knocking anyone already on the front lines, as his venture acts as a tool and a resource for those already out there.

"Our firefighters are great. I want to put that out there. “I think that they're just extremely under-equipped with what they actually need."

The moment that stuck with him most came before college.

Wachtel went to a small high school with a graduating class of 25, and twice a year the entire school traveled together.

On a senior-year trip to Bahía de los Ángeles, a remote town of about 100 people in Baja California, his class spent time doing community service. There, they helped a man whose house had burned down. Talking with him showed Wachtel how much a fire can take from someone who already has very little.

"I feel like I have a duty to that guy, through entrepreneurship, to make a change. To be able to develop a technology that's able to stop this for good."

Still, he doesn't see fire itself as the enemy.

“Fires at the end of the day are a natural pattern. They reset the environment. They are supposed to burn, But when you have humans encroaching on these wild areas, that's not good."

A Visionary

Wachtel has a deep entrepreneurial and startup background, with Orion Fire already being his third venture.

He started a photography business in San Diego in eighth grade and grew it to four employees before moving to Boulder. Later, he launched an e-commerce brand called Rendezvous Supply Co. It never took off and he eventually shut it down, but he says he learned a lot from it.

For a long time though, he pictured himself on a different path.

"I wanted to be an engineer at Apple and design the products. I kind of realized I don't really like the math aspect of it. I like being the visionary."

That instinct shaped Orion Fire from the start. Wachtel first had the idea in May, and by July he was taking it seriously. He cold-called former Apple employees and landed meetings with engineers to figure out how to actually build it.

Those conversations changed his thinking. He had started out focused on the aircraft, but he came to see that the real value was in software that could predict fires and send resources where they're needed.

“Hardware is one aspect, and all this stuff already exists. It's all about integration.”

Today, his software pulls from public data like satellite feeds and fire cameras across California and Colorado. Wachtel describes it as a "hive mind" that connects the outposts where the aircraft are stored. AI handles the planning, and people make sure it's doing the job right.

He plans to sell to insurance companies and utilities. Negotiating with clients that size is exactly where he's hoping Spark �鶹��Ѱ��can help.

A Spark to his Future

Wachtel hasn't been to his first Spark �鶹��Ѱ��meeting yet, but he already knows what he wants out of it.

The first thing is community. Building a company can feel like a one-man show, and the program offers a network of founders who are willing to trade help and connections.

The second is mentorship, especially as he prepares to work with much larger companies.

“I'm going to be dealing with utilities and guys with serious money. You need to figure out how to price your thing fairly, where they're still winning, but you're also winning too."

For Wachtel, the risk that comes with starting a company is part of the deal. What matters is why you take it on.

"Entrepreneurship is the power for change. You're not just doing it for the money. You're doing it for the outcome to change the world and make the world just a little bit better.”

He wrote about that idea before he ever got to Boulder. Now he's building it.

Before he ever set foot in Boulder, Luke Wachtel wrote his college essay about Spark �鶹��Ѱ��and building a climate venture. A few months into his freshman year, he's doing both. Read how a family connection to Lahaina and a trip to Baja led him to start a company fighting wildfires before they spread. It's already his third company, and he's hoping Spark �鶹��Ѱ��Founders can help him take it to the next level.

Traditional

White

A Brief Dive into EESA with Merideth Baker

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 11:30:00 +0000

A Brief Dive into EESA with Merideth Baker Colton Sontrop Thu, 10/01/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

For as long as she can remember, Merideth Baker has always wanted to go to Cape Town. She doesn’t know why, nobody around her knows why, but the burning desire has always been prevalent.

“For some reason, I’ve always wanted to go to Cape Town. I don’t know what stemmed it. Nobody knows. My parents have told me I’ve talked about it since I was in middle school.”

Originally from Frederick, Maryland, and a transfer from Belmont University, Baker was drawn to �鶹��Ѱ��through its beautiful campus and good environment. Leeds also made the decision easier for her, where she currently studies strategy and entrepreneurship.

When she came across a summer program headed to South Africa, the timing made sense. She already planned to spend a full semester in Europe this upcoming spring, and a summer trip meant she could still check Cape Town off her list.

So initially, the program and curriculum itself was more of an afterthought.

"Honestly, I didn't know anything about [EESA]. I just knew that it was going to Cape Town, and that's what initially sparked my interest."

But the more she learned, the more it clicked. EESA (Entrepreneurship and Empowerment in South Africa) was built around working with real entrepreneurs, the same thing she had been studying in class. By the end of the summer, the trip she signed up for on a hunch had turned into what she calls a life-changing experience.

The Road to Cape Town

Long before Cape Town, Baker was already exercising an entrepreneurial mindset, through a simple business of her own.

At 12, she started a dog walking business in her neighborhood. It grew from there, and she kept walking and sitting dogs for neighbors the whole time she lived at home. She still has clients who book her when she’s back in Maryland.

Entrepreneurship runs in the family. Her mom owns a business, and Baker credits her parents' support as part of what drew her to the major. She hasn't settled on what she wants to build yet. One path she's considering is joining a startup, learning from the inside, and maybe starting her own venture down the road.

Her other training ground was the soccer field. Baker grew up playing and served as team captain for a year, though leading her peers didn't come naturally at first.

"Initially, I didn't really know how to lead people, especially my peers. I thought that was really hard. Over time, I kind of took more of an advocating, leading role and just learned how to lead people, but also listen to them as you're doing it."

Soccer taught her how to lead. Entrepreneurship taught her to adjust when plans change. These lessons followed her to Cape Town.

A Program With a Purpose

EESA pairs university students with entrepreneurs in Cape Town's townships, the city's more impoverished areas. Many of those business owners are running their companies without the systems they need to stay afloat.

Students work in small teams to change that. Baker's team had four American students, two from �鶹��Ѱ��and two from Notre Dame, plus three students from UWC, the campus where the cohort stayed. Each team is assigned two entrepreneurs and spends the program building better systems for them, with the hope that the businesses can eventually grow.

For Baker’s team, the highlight was a mobile car wash and detailing business, very early on in the business’ life cycle. The owner was mostly detailing cars and sometimes accepting whatever customers pay.

While the program mainly revolved around the curriculum, they took advantage of whatever free time they had, where they rented an Airbnb in Camps Bay. Baker and a group from the cohort woke up early to go shark cage diving in freezing water, something she had no interest in doing until it turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip.

But back at work, it was time to dig deep into the car wash business.

It Has to Work

The team spent the first two weeks learning his business from the inside. They met with him to go through his financials, then built a SEE (Supporting Emerging Enterprises) model mapping out his business and the car wash market around it.

"You fall in love with your entrepreneur while you're there… He was so fun because we got to go into every single part of his business."

What they found was a business losing money on every car wash. Because he was driving around himself, gas became a huge expense, along with all his materials. Keeping track of any of it was nearly impossible. He had two part-time employees he paid in cash whenever money came in, and his only records were in a small notebook he sometimes wrote in.

The second half of the program was about putting changes in place. The team set him up with a financial system that tracked his spending and kept his business money separate. They also designed flyers and business cards so he had something to hand out.

Sales took more work. Most of his customers lived in the townships and couldn't pay a price that covered his costs. So the team walked him through making sales calls to larger businesses, where he could wash several vehicles in one trip, and to customers willing to pay more than he had been charging.

Each team member took the lead on one piece. Baker took pricing, building a structure that would keep him from losing money on each job, with an added travel fee for longer drives.

It was a different kind of pressure than a class project.

"Within school, you can justify why something works, but there, it has to work because somebody will actually be paying that price and it has to cover his costs. So it was definitely a little more intense."

And it paid off. His happiness and gratitude brought the team to tears. He wanted the help, and he was eager to learn from every piece of it.

The Road Ahead

The work didn't end when the program did.

Baker’s team still has a group chat with the owner. In a recent message, he shared that he had signed a six-month contract with a business to wash two of its vans every week, at a rate even higher than the price Baker’s team set.

That contract alone brings in more than he was ever making before, and that’s before he takes on any other clients.

"It was really exciting to hear that it's working out for him and he has something at least somewhat stable to keep him going for now."

This is what EESA is for. It’s an opportunity for students to visit a beautiful, oftentimes unfamiliar place, while learning about its culture and helping the community. In this case, it helps communities through spreading entrepreneurial knowledge.

She signed up for EESA knowing almost nothing about it besides where it was going. Now she hopes other students give it a look.

"Honestly, everybody should at least look into [EESA]. I didn't even know what I was getting into before. Now I look back at my pictures and it makes me so happy I got to have that experience, and make an impact on other people's lives"

Merideth Baker had talked about going to Cape Town since middle school, so when she found a summer program headed there, she signed up before she really knew what it was. Through EESA, the junior helped a township car wash owner who was losing money on every wash build a pricing structure that finally covered his costs. Read how a class project turned into real stakes, and a six-month contract, halfway across the world.

Traditional

White

Mikki Naranjo, In Her Father’s Name

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 11:30:00 +0000

Mikki Naranjo, In Her Father’s Name Colton Sontrop Thu, 09/24/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

Eugene Naranjo painted under the name Shadow Wind. A longtime executive officer for the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, he was also an artist whose stained glass portrait of Chief Buckskin Charley sits in the Colorado State Capitol.

Today, the name Shadow Wind hangs over a small ranch in La Plata County, where Eugene’s daughter, Mikki Naranjo, runs a horse boarding business.

“[Shadow Wind] really takes care of the horses personally. Our horses do not become another number. They become family when they’re here at our facility”

But the name is only part of the family story. Her love for horses stemmed from her grandparent’s ranch, and her drive to keep learning came from her mother, who earned a masters in teaching. Shadow Wind is where all of these pieces came together.

Getting there took time. Naranjo spent years in tribal finance and set aside an earlier business idea along the way. The Rural Colorado Workshop Series helped her find her way back to the entrepreneurial goals she'd set long before.

Specialization is Key

Shadow Wind gives horse owners a place to keep their animals when they don’t have the land to do so themselves. Boarders pay for daily feeding and care, and they can ride in the indoor and outdoor arenas while they’re there.

The business started from a mix of desire and chance. When Naranjo and her husband drove by the property, with arenas and paddocks already in place, they remembered how they had wanted a ranch of their own. So they purchased it, which quickly became a return to how she grew up, where she spent most of her time on her grandparents’ ranch with a Shetland pony.

The previous property owner had also been boarding horses, and still had two clients who needed somewhere to go. When she was asked to take them in, she instantly jumped at the chance.

"I thought about it, and I said, yeah, let me try it."

Immediately, she leaned on her accounting background to handle the setup, registering the business with the state and applying for a federal tax ID. From there, she researched competitor pricing to help set their own. All in all, the goal for her first year was to come out with a profit, and she did just that, capitalizing on their low-cost business model, and high expertise and care. The physical work is a family effort, with her husband and two sons handling all the daily operations.

She credits her family for the business's success, specifically her husband, Gary Methvin, and sons Jerid and Seth, along with her son Kai, daughter Alexandria and son-in-law Kyle, who help when needed. The day-to-day operations would not be carried out without them.

What sets Shadow Wind above the other facilities, aren’t the fancy amenities, but the sheer attention and care each horse gets.

"I really love taking care of horses because they have a soul. They can't tell us when they're hungry. They can't tell us, 'Help me,' or 'I'm not feeling good.' It's just something I've really come to love, being able to take care of God's creatures."

A Sign, and a Turning Point

The Rural Colorado Workshop Series, instructed by Eric Bruno and Executive Director of the Deming Center Erick Mueller, brings entrepreneurial training to rural Colorado communities, specifically in collaboration with the Southern Ute Indian Tribe.

Naranjo had her eye on it for years. Her first business idea was a coffee shop she planned with her sister. They made it as far as a proposal and market research before setting it aside after her mother's passing. Naranjo returned to the tribe’s finance department, and a busy career kept the workshop out of reach.

When the series came back around after she semi-retired, she didn't hesitate. She walked in with a clear goal. As a former grants manager, she already knew how to search for funding online. What she wanted was to learn what was available closer to home.

The two-day workshop walked participants through starting a business and keeping it growing once it's up and running. The sessions also pushed participants to think creatively. In one exercise, each group was handed an orange and asked to build a business around it. Naranjo had the name ready. Her last name traces back to "naranja," the word for orange.

The bigger takeaway was momentum. The workshop connected Naranjo with local resources like Region 9 and gave her the push to start using them.

"It just helped me get motivated, put a little fire under me to start utilizing the different resources in the area.”

An Empowering Future

Naranjo doesn't plan to turn Shadow Wind into a large operation, but she isn't sitting on her heels either.

Her husband is preparing to attend farrier school to learn hoof care, which will give the ranch another service to offer boarders. The ranch is also about to get busier. Naranjo is adopting five rescue horses from the U.S. Forest Service, and one of her boarders is returning with two horses of her own.

More horses mean more upgrades. The paddocks need work, and a new barn tops her list. Rather than keep funding the business herself, Naranjo plans to pursue grants to make it happen.

Beyond all the planning, the operations, and the goals, the drive has always remained the same for her.

"You gotta always love what you're doing... or else you're not going to be wanting to do it. Entrepreneurship to me is powerful. It's having your own destiny, to do what you want to do. It's exciting to be your own boss."

Shadow Wind began as her father's name. Now, it's where Naranjo is shaping her own.

Shadow Wind was the name Eugene Naranjo painted under, and today it hangs over a La Plata County horse ranch run by his daughter, Mikki. After years in tribal finance, Mikki Naranjo found her way back to entrepreneurship through the Deming Center's Rural Colorado Workshop Series, and turned a chance drive past a property into a boarding business where every horse is treated like family. Read how she's building on her father's name to shape her own.

Traditional

White

How Ore Porat Turned a Broken System into a Business

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 11:30:00 +0000

How Ore Porat Turned a Broken System into a Business Colton Sontrop Thu, 09/17/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

Originally from Los Angeles, Ore Porat got to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder with a company already running. As a first-year student in the College of Engineering, he was drawn to Boulder through its beauty, and endless resources to help him grow. Above all, however, was something more specific than that.

“It feels like a small school within a bigger university. I have that community in engineering, but I can also explore clubs and resources across CU, including Leeds and the Deming Center.”

His instinct to build something specific and useful, then utilizing his network and resources, is exactly how he ended up running a company before he ever set foot on campus.

A School Requirement Turned Startup

Beyop is a community service tracking system. Porat originally built it due to a school-wide community service requirement, which fixed his high school's clunky, outdated version. He started it as a first-year project, and it turned into a business by the time he was a senior.

Porat taught himself to code starting in elementary school from scratch with his dad's guidance. It took him about four or five months, starting in November of his first year and finishing that February. Once it was done, his whole high school started using it.

He continued building and expanding upon it throughout high school, and by his second semester of senior year, his assistant principal pulled him aside. What he had built for the school, she told him, was good enough to sell to other schools that were dealing with the same problem. So over the summer before starting at CU, Porat and a friend turned the platform he built for his high school into an actual business, cold emailing schools across California with plans to expand into Colorado next.

A Deal Made in Elementary School

It's rare for someone to have the kind of technical experience Porat had at that age. While plenty of it was self-taught he also gives his dad credit for getting him there. In elementary school, his dad introduced him to W3Schools and made a deal out of it.

No screen time, unless it was spent learning to code.

Porat took the deal and ran. By high school, he was building websites for local businesses and hosting them on AWS, charging a flat rate instead of the recurring monthly fees that platforms like Wix and Weebly build their business on.

“I reached out to a lot of local businesses and eventually landed three clients over the course of high school.”

That pricing experience carried over to Beyop. Most of the company's competitors charge schools per student, anywhere from a dollar fifty to seven and a half dollars a head, with bigger schools getting a lower rate. Porat and his partner realized that Beyop’s setup on AWS doesn't get meaningfully more expensive as more students use it, so instead of copying that model, they built simple, flat pricing by school size. No initiation fees, no support fees, no fine print.

Turning Cold Outreach Into a Client List

Beyop is used today by Agoura High School and Malibu High School. Additionally, they recently closed a third with North High School in Torrance, California, and five more schools currently have demos booked for next semester.

Agoura's relationship has turned into something bigger than a typical client, too. The school doesn't use Beyop for community service hours at all. It runs its roughly 300-student sports medicine program through the platform instead, tracking internship hours with nearby physicians.

That relationship led to an invitation to speak at a conference hosted at Agoura in early November, in front of fifteen to twenty other schools. A second, much larger conference in Sacramento next April will put Beyop in front of over a hundred schools, though this one comes with a price tag the company is still trying to figure out how to cover.

Marketing has largely come down to relationships instead of ads, since a lot of the platforms Beyop would normally advertise on are banned in the classrooms it's trying to reach. So Porat and his partner, Cooper Rose at UC Berkeley, have leaned on cold outreach and their status as students to get in the door. This is something Porat has started applying at �鶹��Ѱ��too, whether it's reaching out to alumni on LinkedIn or getting to know professors outside his own department.

Problem Solving as a Mindset

Two weeks into his first semester, Porat is still sorting out which clubs and communities fit him at CU. In the meantime, he's found his way onto a few tennis courts and out to the golf course, and the space between the engineering building and Leeds has already become a regular stop in his schedule.

Although he may be a first-year student, he still has more entrepreneurial experience than most, paired with a fantastic mindset.

“To me, entrepreneurship starts with finding a problem and building a solution that someone finds valuable. Then it’s figuring out how to turn that value into a business.”

The mindset traces straight back to his dad, whose own business is built on the same logic in digital marketing, charging clients only for the leads he actually generates instead of for ad space nobody's guaranteed to see. Watching that model work growing up is part of why Porat sees entrepreneurship the way he does now, as something closer to problem solving than anything else.

He's only a few weeks into a four year runway at CU, but he's going to keep Beyop moving, while cold emailing schools and prepping for the November conference between classes.

It’s the same instinct that built the company now just as at home exploring everything else �鶹��Ѱ��has to offer.

Ore Porat built a community service tracking tool for his high school as a freshman project, and it's since grown into Beyop, a company now serving three schools with five more demos booked for next semester. He priced it to undercut competitors who charge per student, a lesson he picked up from watching his dad build a business the same way. Read how a platform he created for his school turned into a startup.

Traditional

White

As It Turned Out for Pannonica Maruna

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 11:30:00 +0000

As It Turned Out for Pannonica Maruna Colton Sontrop Thu, 09/10/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

When Pannonica Z Maruna arrived at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder as a freshman, she knew from the start that her experience would not be traditional. Having grown up attending creative schools, she was taught to ask questions, challenge the status quo.

Maruna approached college as an opportunity to explore her interests and create a path that felt true to her. As the first person in her immediate family to pursue a four-year degree, she entered �鶹��Ѱ��ready to take advantage of new experiences, even without knowing exactly where they might lead.

One of those experiences came through a Designing Your Leeds assignment that required her to interview a business professional. She enjoyed the conversation so much that, when she later told her dad about it, he suggested she continue interviewing people and turn the idea into a podcast.

"He said, 'Why don't you just record it, do it again, edit it, and make it a podcast?' And I said, 'I can't start a podcast. I'm just a freshman. That's crazy.' And then I went to sleep, and I woke up the next morning and thought, well, maybe I could just try it."

That moment became the beginning of her podcast, As It Turned Out, and a college experience shaped by her willingness to create opportunities rather than wait for them.

Building Her Own Path

Growing up in Portland, Maruna attended small, creative schools that encouraged her to question traditional approaches and explore new ideas. That environment helped shape both her mindset and her future ambitions.

She took on leadership roles early, founding her high school's Women in Business Club and serving as captain of her dance team. Those experiences influenced her interests in college, where she studies business management and leadership while pursuing a minor in dance.

When choosing a college, Maruna knew she wanted an education that extended beyond tests and lectures. She was looking for hands-on experiences that felt connected to real-world work.

Leeds stood out immediately because of its practical, collaborative approach to business education. Courses such as BASE became some of her favorites because of their focus on projects and presentations. Boulder also gave her opportunities to continue dancing with her minor, explore skiing, and build a community that supported both her personal and professional growth.

Turning Conversations Into Opportunities

As Maruna developed her podcast, her professional network and opportunities expanded alongside it. As It Turned Out features people whose careers demonstrate that success is rarely linear. Through each interview, Maruna explores the unexpected experiences that shape a person's path.

"There's not one way to do life. There's not one way to be successful. And success can look different to every single person, and the path to it especially does."

The guest list has grown far beyond that first conversation. Maruna has interviewed professors, military professionals, CEOs, entrepreneurs, and massage therapists, all connected by the idea that there is no single definition of success.

Guest outreach has become one of her favorite parts of the process. She researches �鶹��Ѱ��alumni and professionals on LinkedIn, identifies people whose stories align with the podcast's mission, and creates personalized outreach for each potential guest. She also asks guests whom she should speak with next, allowing each relationship to lead to new connections.

That strategy has produced a guest-booking rate of approximately 24 percent, an accomplishment Maruna is especially proud of because she has built the podcast's audience primarily through word of mouth and her own outreach.

Starting the podcast has also shown her how strongly its message resonates with students. She often hears from friends who worry that missing one internship or opportunity has permanently changed their futures. Through the podcast, she hopes to remind them that one setback does not determine an entire career.

Expanding the show's audience among �鶹��Ѱ��students is now one of her biggest goals.

Looking Beyond Graduation

Because Maruna is completing college in three years, graduation is approaching faster than it does for many students. Through her podcast, she has had the opportunity to learn directly from professionals across a wide range of careers and industries. One of the most valuable pieces of advice she has received is to build meaningful professional experience before pursuing a master's degree.

Maruna is currently exploring opportunities in technology and luxury sales. She is drawn to fast-paced, relationship-focused work and the opportunity to apply the communication and outreach skills she has developed through her podcast. She is also considering moving to a larger city after graduation, with New York and San Francisco among the possibilities.

She plans to keep the podcast going after graduation too. Although it is not currently monetized, the podcast has already created value through the relationships and community it has helped her build. Most importantly, it remains a project she created independently and continues to shape with purpose.

The podcast began with a single assignment and a simple decision to try something new. It has since become an important part of Maruna's college experience and professional identity.

But it all started not because someone told her to create it, but because she was willing to see where an unexpected idea could lead.

Pannonica Maruna didn't wait for permission to start something new. What began as a class assignment turned into As It Turned Out, a podcast built around the idea that there's no single path to success. Through conversations with professors, CEOs, and everyone in between, she's proving that nonlinear doesn't mean off track.

Traditional

White

New Faces, New Focus for Deming's 2026 Student Ambassadors

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 11:30:00 +0000

New Faces, New Focus for Deming's 2026 Student Ambassadors Colton Sontrop Thu, 09/03/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

Fourth-year and second-year students Chaya O’Grady and Linh Le are the new faces of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. With their heavy student involvement and enthusiastic personalities, they’re looking to help influence a brighter future for the center.

Between the two of them, they already bring experience to the table. O’Grady has been heavily involved with the entrepreneurship space in Boulder through a co-founding role with Get Seed Funding, an Innovation and Entrepreneurship initiative, and a marketing leadership position on a Techstars-backed accessibility startup.

Le has spent her time at Leeds getting just as immersed, pursuing a dual emphasis in finance and business analytics alongside a minor in writing and public engagement. She's stayed active on campus too, with her work in community council and on the university's Mock Trial team, where she's taken on cases as an attorney conducting direct and cross examinations. She's also served as a Journey Leader, guiding incoming first-year students through orientation and connecting them with campus resources.

Now, as ambassadors, they're bringing that mix of business and startup fluency back to a center that feels like a community.

Chaya O’Grady

O’Grady is heading into her final year with more than a full plate. Studying finance, business analytics, and entrepreneurship, it’s a course load that traces back years to her curly hair brand. That idea never turned into a company, but it gave her a first taste of building something from scratch, and it stuck.

Since then, she's built a real resume in the startup world. As VP of marketing for a startup building assistive technology for blind and low vision users, she helped the company make it to Techstars and the Consumer Electronics Show, where she pitched to Stevie Wonder. The team also placed second for the Coolest Thing in Colorado award along the way. She was also a founding member of Get Seed Funding, working alongside fellow students to help launch the program from the ground up.

O'Grady found her way to the Deming Center almost by accident, sitting in on a presentation from Erick Mueller, Executive Director of the Deming Center, during a DYL (Design Your Leeds) session and walking away determined to learn more. But what kept her coming back was the culture and her “give first” mentality.

"To be an entrepreneur is to be innovative, to try and solve a problem that nobody else has solved before. To try and give back to your community. Give first is so instrumental to being an entrepreneur. You just give because that's the right thing to do, and it always comes back around."

Linh Le

As a second-year student in Leeds, Le has already hit the ground running. She's studying finance with an eye toward adding a second emphasis in marketing or business analytics, plus a minor in writing and public engagement, all on a three-year plan. Originally from Aurora, she was born in Vietnam and has lived in Colorado since she was four, making her a first-generation immigrant.

Her introduction to entrepreneurship came from home. Her parents immigrated to the United States, built their own business, and her father later taught himself day trading. Le never ran a company herself, but growing up around that kind of self-direction shaped how she thinks about work and independence.

She found the Deming Center almost by chance, through a Spark application email that linked over to the Deming Ambassador one. What sold her was how the application was written. The Deming Center takes pride in fun and engaging applications, with questions like “If you had a million dollars, what would you do with it?” It stood out from every other listing she'd filled out, and it was enough to pull her in.

"Entrepreneurship is autonomy to take your life and your business and the things that you do and do what you want with it. It's not just about when you start a company or start anything, it comes from you, it's coming from your passions, your goals, and your experiences that craft it."

Charting Deming's Next Move

Both O'Grady and Le are walking into their roles with clear ideas of what they want to build, even if their focus points look different.

For O'Grady, the goal comes straight out of her own startup experience. Having worked alongside engineers throughout her time building assistive technology, she's seen firsthand how much stronger a startup gets when business minds and technical minds are in the same room early. This year, she wants to make those connections easier to find, linking entrepreneurship students with engineers across campus so ideas stop stalling out.

"What excites me the most is meeting all of the entrepreneurship community, all of the new entrepreneurs that are coming in going, what's going on here? That's really exciting for me, to help them, give them the resources, and help them build their company and their ideas and help them innovate."

Le's focus is more about the role she wants to play inside the community itself. She sees herself as a liaison of sorts, someone who helps other students find their footing in entrepreneurship the same way she's still finding her own. With an eye toward a marketing emphasis, she's also hoping to help the Deming Center gain more traction around campus, especially among students who, like her, didn't know it existed until someone pointed them toward it.

Building the Center's Next Chapter

O'Grady and Le are part of a growing list of students shaping what the Deming Center looks like this year. Together, they also capture something bigger about where the center is headed.

A senior with startup experience and a sophomore just beginning to find her footing both chose to spend their time here, not because they had to, but because the community pulled them in. One brings the lessons of pitching at CES and building a team from scratch. The other brings the curiosity of someone still figuring out what entrepreneurship even means to her, and the drive to chase that answer down.

If that's any indication, the center's next chapter is going to be built by students who show up not just to learn entrepreneurship, but to live inside it.

Meet the two new faces of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship this year. Chaya O'Grady and Linh Le bring wildly different backgrounds to the role, one a seasoned founder with a CES pitch under her belt, the other a first-generation immigrant just beginning to find her place in the entrepreneurial world. Read on to see what drew them to Deming and what they're hoping to build during their time as ambassadors.

Traditional

White

How Chris Randall Built a Career on Adaptability

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 11:30:00 +0000

How Chris Randall Built a Career on Adaptability Colton Sontrop Thu, 08/27/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

While he was an undergraduate at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, Chris Randall never set out to be a founder, nor be in business in general.

“I was studying Anthropology and I thought I was going to be like Indiana Jones. That didn’t happen.”

But he built a career in business anyway. Now, Randall is founder and chairman of SMI Aware, a digital intelligence company that has spent 15 years helping legal and corporate clients make sense of publicly available online information.

Randall never had a perfect plan, and little people do. What he had was a willingness to notice when something wasn’t working and change course before it became a bigger problem. That instinct carried him from a factory floor, to a founder and CEO.

Building the Instincts First

Randall came to �鶹��Ѱ��in 1996 from Pittsburgh, drawn in by the mountains and the college-town energy of Boulder in the late nineties. He calls it a special place to be, for the school itself, and everything around it.

Post under-grad, Randall began building a career in manufacturing, learning how things actually get built and fixed. His early career centered on continuous improvement and quality control, first through Six Sigma, where he achieved a black belt certification, then through the Toyota Production System and Alcoa Business System.

It was systems-driven, challenging work that was a world away from the fast, improvisational image most people have of startups in today's world. But that industry changed after the 2008 financial crisis that reshaped manufacturing overnight. Randall left Alcoa, and began independent consulting around Pittsburgh, where he started talking to people in the startup world.

As Randall moved deeper into entrepreneurship, he also recognized gaps in his formal business education. A two-week executive education program at the University of Pittsburgh eventually led him to Harvard Business School’s Program for Leadership Development.

It was a prime example of how opening one door can lead to many others, and the program, offered to working professionals already deep into their careers, gave him the necessary tools to launch his own business. It gave him a network of people he could call when something went wrong, and professors willing to dig into the specifics of a business he was actively building.

Wrong Market, Right Idea

SMI Aware was founded by Randall in 2011, where they focused on pre-employment background screening through social media and the web. The idea came at a time when social media was still young and questions around how online information should be used in employment screening were still evolving.

Randall and his co-founder largely bootstrapped the company, supplemented by seed funding and one angel investor. The two spent close to a year building the product before launch, and found footing quickly by generating cash within the first month.

However, the market itself was a problem due to the commoditization and price sensitivity of pre-employment screening. Randall and his team had built something real, just for the wrong customer.

But the realization wasn’t immediate, and it took until lawyers and corporate security professionals kept calling. They didn’t want to curate their own reports, rather, the finished product handed to them, contrary to what investors were looking for. For a while, SMI Aware tried to serve both worlds at once.

“We’ve got to ask the girl to the prom who wants to go with us.”

That’s how Randall describes the moment his team finally accepted where the business belonged. By 2016, the shift was complete. Randall's own analysts ran the platform now, and clients got a finished report instead of a login.

The pivot paid off, turning a low-margin commoditized product into a higher value service built on trust and accuracy. It also meant walking away from the customer they’d originally set out to serve, a decision that took years to fully commit to.

The Discipline Behind the Adaptability

While the pivot was taking place, Randall made the strategic decision to buy out the other partner and take over as CEO. Early partnerships rarely account for a pivot that changes the whole direction of a business, and Randall admits they got lucky navigating it without more friction than they did.

What carried the company through those early years was cash discipline. Randall didn't take a salary for the first several years, paying his small team before he paid himself. He didn’t know what cash flow meant, or what an accounts receivable was. All he knew was that if the cash wasn’t coming in, he couldn’t make payroll.

"I didn't need a business degree to figure that out. I'm looking at the bank account every day.”

That instinct shaped how the business grew. He never took on big outside money, so no one was pushing him for faster growth or bigger numbers. Eventually, they were able to pay back their seed funding from Innovation Works, and their angel investor. It grew slower than it might have with more cash behind it, but it grew in his way.

By the time the company had real cash saved up, that discipline had become second nature. Randall still checks a dashboard he built himself every day, the same habits from those early years, just with a nicer interface.

The Final Adjustment

At the end of 2023, Randall made one of the hardest calls of his career, stepping down from his CEO role into founder and chairman. He recognized that the skills required to build the company from scratch were not necessarily the same skills it would need for its next stage of growth. He also wanted to create more space for his family and other interests.

Letting go of control was harder than the decision itself, but it’s an underrated yet important trait of a founder. For thirteen years, every problem had come to Randall, but it was time to hand over the reins.

"Early on, when I found myself sometimes grabbing the steering wheel again, right from the passenger seat, that doesn't always help. Sometimes that creates more problems."

Randall had to learn to sit back and let someone else drive, even when that meant watching the new CEO, Josh Janow, make decisions differently than he would have. He still shows up when needed, still talks to Janow regularly as an active board member, but the instinct to control every outcome is one he had to unlearn deliberately.

That instinct, wanting to be the one steering, the one taking the risk, is the same one that built the company in the first place.

"It's about wanting the ball. You want the decisions to stop with you. You want to take the risk and you want to take control."

Today, Randall is focused on becoming a better chairman, strengthening SMI Aware’s governance and building a board that can support Janow and the management team as the company continues to grow.

Randall never planned to become a founder. He built a company anyway, pivoted it when the market demanded it, and eventually learned the hard lesson to hand the ball to someone else.

But learning from the hard lessons is how he built his adaptive career in the first place.

Chris Randall never planned to be a founder. A background in manufacturing and quality control led him into entrepreneurship almost by accident, and a business he built for one market ended up thriving in an entirely different one. Fifteen years later, his story is a lesson in staying adaptable and listening to what the market actually wants.

Traditional

White

How Hayden Forbes Keeps Moving Forward

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 11:30:00 +0000

How Hayden Forbes Keeps Moving Forward Colton Sontrop Thu, 08/20/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

Trying and failing forward is how Forbes describes entrepreneurship, but it’s also how he's approached nearly everything since sophomore year.

This past summer, Forbes interned at RSM, a large consulting and accounting firm. There, he found value and resources that come with working inside an established organization. It also clarified for him that he thrives most in environments with room to move.

“Startups are huge for my skillset. You end up doing a little bit of everything, which is different from the more focused role you'd have at a big company.”

From a young age, Forbes has been drawn to building things of his own, mowing lawns and reselling sports cards on eBay as a kid. That instinct followed him to CU, where it's only sharpened.

What makes Forbes interesting are the patterns beneath all of his startup projects. A willingness to keep starting over, to walk away from something that isn't working and try again anyway. That pattern has taken him through startup projects and one of CU's most ambitious climate programs, and it's still shaping what he builds next.

Learning by Building

Before any class taught him the fundamentals, Forbes learned entrepreneurship firsthand, through building a product with a friend from the ground up.

During his sophomore year, he met Elkan Bruha, a computer science student at CU, and together they built a small device that could sit above a business's doorway and track foot traffic in real time. They aimed it at bars, giving students a way to check how crowded a spot was before heading out.

By junior year, the device was live in more than 25 locations around Boulder. Investors took notice, but when Forbes and Elkan tested whether retail stores would actually pay for the tool long term, the demand wasn't there. They turned down the investment interest and Elkan has continued running CrowdCount as a passion project.

What stuck with Forbes wasn't the outcome, it was the process. Without any real structure to lean on, he learned firsthand how valuable a plan can be. More than anything, going through the full arc from idea to product proved invaluable.

“It was cool to see that you can actually build something from start to finish. Going from ideation to go-to-market strategy was awesome.”

That kind of hands-on immersion, he says, taught him more than anything else could. It's also what sent him looking for more structured ways to sharpen the instincts he'd already built on his own.

A Different Kind of Classroom

That structure arrived through Boulder Climate Ventures, a two-part program that pairs classroom rigor with real-world mentorship. Forbes joined in the fall, where graduate and undergraduate students sat in on a speaker series featuring experts across climate industries.

In the spring course, funded by Breakthrough Energy, students focused on implementing their knowledge through ideation and pitching. For Forbes, it was when he teamed up with a graduate student named Alex Kendall to build Herd Insurance, a concept for insuring entire neighborhoods against wildfire risk rather than individual homes.

“There was a lot of structure, which I think is helpful, especially early on when building your first or second company.”

The experience reinforced Forbes belief that entrepreneurship is a skill set you build in layers, first through trial and error, then through mentorship and structure that turns instinct into method.

An Underrated Ecosystem

Through all of his experiences, what Forbes is most grateful for is where they happened. Right here in Boulder.

“There's quite a startup community here, even though it's much smaller than other startup hubs. It's a cool spot. Especially for aerospace, and for climate tech. This might be the best place to do it.”

Despite everything Boulder has to offer, Forbes thinks most students don't realize it's there. He points to the sheer density of resources on campus, from the Deming Center's events to niche opportunities most students never hear about. One example is the Campus Founders Fund, a Denver-based group that writes checks directly to student founders.

For Forbes, the value came from chances to sit across from investors and founders who took his ideas seriously, long before he had anything close to a finished product. He urges others to show up. Go to the events, ask questions, take the meetings that may seem small at the time. Because while Boulder might not be Silicon Valley just yet, this smaller yet growing community gives students a better opportunity to be seen.

The Long Game

Forbes doesn't have a clean answer for what comes next. He's not entirely sure what he'll do after graduation, whether that's another startup, consulting, or something he hasn't found yet. What he does know is how he'll get there.

Trying and failing forward is how Forbes describes entrepreneurship, but it’s also how he's approached nearly everything since sophomore year. He could be mounting a counter above a bar door or turning a stack of secondhand books into notebooks, but none of it has to work perfectly. It just has to teach him something for the next attempt.

For Forbes, that's the real lesson underneath his startup projects, BCV, and everything he's built at CU. Entrepreneurship was never about getting it right the first time. It was about staying willing to try again.

Hayden Forbes has already built companies, walked away from them, and built again, all pre-graduation. Read about his journey through startups and Boulder Climate Ventures, and the mindset that keeps him trying even when things don't work out. Learn how failure became his greatest teacher, and that Boulder's startup scene deserves more attention than it gets.

Traditional

White

A New Era for Spark CU

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 11:30:00 +0000

A New Era for Spark CU Colton Sontrop Thu, 08/06/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

Year 2 of Spark CU is here, and with a brand new energy.

Spark �鶹��Ѱ��is an incubator that takes aspiring entrepreneurs and turns them into real time founders. Through weekly workshops and preparation for programs like New Venture Challenge, all six founders last year saw their business idea come to life.

That inaugural class was run by founding Managing Director Sam Benton, who's now handing off the reins. This time, however, it's to two managing directors, Rom Erez and Yigit Sarac.

Now the program is ready for more. With multiple directors at the helm, Spark �鶹��Ѱ��aims to expand its outreach while making its workshops and programming more thorough.

Meet the Team

Both Sarac and Erez bring deep experience in Leeds and CU's broader campus community, making them well suited to lead Spark �鶹��Ѱ��into its second year. They’re bringing their backgrounds and enthusiasm to elevate the incubator.

Yigit Sarac

Sarac studies finance, accounting, quantitative finance, Italian and economics at Leeds. Beyond his studies, he has served as a course assistant for multiple classes, works as a Peer2Peer mentor, and is a member of the �鶹��Ѱ��Investment Banking Club. He has tapped into his roots by becoming the Founder and current President of the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Turkish Student Association.

His ties to entrepreneurship lie within his family, where his grandfather started a machinery business that his mother's side of the family still runs. Sarac sees Spark �鶹��Ѱ��as a great "demo" for his future. Its project based nature is a variation of what he's used to in traditional finance and consulting tracks. He's looking forward to expanding the program's reach and setting the right atmosphere for the cohort's growth this year.

Rom Erez

Studying finance and data analytics in the Leeds School of Business and part of the Dean’s Leadership Fellows, Erez has the perfect blend of entrepreneurship, technical, and soft skills. Growing up in Silicon Valley, he put those skills to use by starting his own online business in high school, and has later experienced working in global venture backed technology companies, most recently at an AI startup in New York.

Erez is the current president of TAMID at Boulder, a global club which connects business students with the startup ecosystem, and is also a Peer2Peer mentor at Leeds. He's looking forward to building and supporting a tight-knit cohort where founders help each other while driving success in the New Venture Challenge.

New Era, New Perspectives

Beyond their resumes, Sarac and Erez share a clear vision for what makes an incubator work. Both are looking for founders who are genuinely committed, and who see this as a passion.

"Whether they're able to commit, I think even being able to say that is really important," said Sarac. "It's at least a short term promise that you hear during an interview, and it's one of the first indicators we get from applicants."

Although each founder will be focused on building their own business, they'll be doing it in an environment built on collaboration. The two MDs emphasize that the incubator will only be as successful as the founders' willingness to work with each other.

"I want them to have a very tight-knit community where they're able to rely on each other and get help from each other, and hopefully become friends," said Erez.

This semester, both MDs are focused on growing Spark CU's reach. Applications opened August 1, and the pair plan to promote the program through multiple tabling events at Leedsapalooza to bring in a wider applicant pool. Sarac and Erez are also launching LinkedIn and Instagram accounts for Spark CU, giving the program a social media presence it didn't have in its first year.

Beyond recruitment, Sarac and Erez want to build on what worked in Spark CU's first year while continuing to push founders into the New Venture Challenge. They want to see them advance through each round and walk away with real funding and mentorship.

Ultimately, the two see Spark �鶹��Ѱ��as a community they hope will outlast their own time as MDs. If they succeed, this year's founders will walk away with new entrepreneurial skills and a network built to carry them forward.

Building Something Lasting

As Spark CU heads into its second year, Sarac and Erez are stepping into their roles with a clear sense of what got them here in the first place. For both, entrepreneurship is something they've lived through their families and their own ventures long before they ever applied to lead the program.

"Entrepreneurship is having the drive," said Erez. "It takes a lot of drive, commitment and self-motivation. I think that's the most important trait for someone.”

Sarac echoed that sentiment, but pointed to what keeps someone going once the drive is there.

"Being able to see what you've created at the end is what keeps you going the whole way, even if it takes a very long time," said Sarac. "To know that you're leaving a legacy to something, to somewhere, is the most important thing to me.”

With applications now open and the first tabling events on the calendar, Sarac and Erez are ready to bring that same mindset to Spark CU's next class of founders, and to build something that lasts well beyond their own time as MDs.

Spark �鶹��Ѱ��is entering its second year with a new leadership duo. Meet Rom Erez and Yigit Sarac, the incubator's new Managing Directors. Their backgrounds and personalities along with their ties to entrepreneurship spark a bright future for the program. Read about their plans for growth, and to foster a tight-knit founder community.

Traditional

White

Luke Hatton Proves the Value of a Generalist Mindset

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 11:30:00 +0000

Luke Hatton Proves the Value of a Generalist Mindset Colton Sontrop Thu, 07/02/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

People pursue a higher education to specialize. You pick a lane, you earn the degree that proves it, and it becomes the thing you are.

Luke Hatton earned a degree like everyone else. His just refused to pick a lane. With a BSBA in finance and international business, paired with Latin American and Iberian studies, he covered as much ground as he could from the start.

It set the pattern. Hatton doesn’t specialize. He accumulates, and he lets whatever he's curious about pull him toward the next thing.

It was that instinct that initiated his pivot from finance, because he wanted to do more than analyze brands from the outside. He wanted in. So in 2019, he moved to Colorado with his sights set on the outdoor industry. He immediately took the first door that opened, which was a part-time job on the sales floor of a North Face store on Pearl Street.

However, moving up inside someone else's company was never quite the point. He wanted to build something of his own. The evening MBA program at The Leeds School of Business gave him the room to try, and when an entrepreneurship class asked him to pitch an idea, he already knew where to look.

The strongest ideas tend to start not with a gap in the market, but with a gap in your own life. That’s exactly where Hatton went.

Built for the Teen He Once Was

VUUR is a physician-formulated nutrition drink built for active teenagers. Hatton calls it a foundational fuel, which is closer to a meal rather than typical protein supplements. It sounds simple, until you realize almost no one was making it.

As a teenage athlete, sports were how he defined himself, and he could never quite stay fueled. He turned to whatever he could find, and none of it fit. The products were built for adults, sometimes for the elderly, and he ended up taking them mostly for the calories while the rest of the formula was meant for someone three times his age.

“There were products out there that were kind of what I was looking for, but they weren't designed for me. They were expensive. They had some of what I was looking for, but not all of it.”

It wasn't until years later, after working with a pediatric gastroenterologist, that he understood what had been going on. Adolescents carry nutritional needs unlike anyone else, especially athletes. Their bodies are growing fast, and for most of them it's the most active stretch of life they'll ever have.

That's why the formula was non-negotiable. In a category thick with misinformation, Hatton earned a sports nutrition certification to keep up with the science, then put medical doctors at the center of the work.

Each pouch carries 18 grams of protein and 220 calories, with the protein coming from real sources like nonfat milk, oat milk, and egg whites. That's not an isolate. That's a meal. He even chose to have VUUR regulated as a food rather than a supplement, so parents and teenagers could trust exactly what was in it. It was the harder path to take, but trust was the entire point. It is, in the end, the product he went looking for as a kid and never found.

Course Correction

For most of VUUR’s life, the idea was always solid. However, producing that idea proved to be much more difficult.

A few months before launch, Hatton had a purchase order in with a large manufacturer and a formula he thought was finished. Then he looked at the ingredient list as a whole and barely recognized it. The changes had come in quietly, one at a time.

"I woke up one day and looked at it and thought, wait, this has strayed pretty far from what we originally intended."

A supplier discontinued an ingredient here. The manufacturer pushed an in-house substitute there. Something got added to move the mix through the machinery faster. Each compromise was small enough to wave through on its own. Together they had pulled the product away from the thing he set out to make.

So he canceled the order. He went back to the doctors, kept the core of what worked, and reformulated until it met the standard he started with. Then he found a manufacturer in Denver willing to build the product his way rather than the way that was cheapest or easiest for them.

He only caught the drift because he understood the formula well enough to see it slipping. This is where the generalist pays off. Hatton didn't come from a nutrition background, but he made sure he understood his product better than anyone. So when it started to wander, he was the one who noticed.

He didn't do it alone, and he's quick to say so. Colorado’s support system of food talent, outdoor and fitness industries, and entrepreneurial ecosystem played dramatic roles in VUUR’s development. Across the street, the Deming Center and other campus entrepreneurial initiatives offered resources he admits he underused as a student. He came back to them once he was building for real, including the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic through Silicon Flatirons, which helped him handle the parts of a company that have nothing to do with the product itself.

Now the product is made, the logistics are ironed out, and after almost three years, VUUR is days from being something a person can actually buy.

The Only Lane He Needed

Hatton is about to find out what happens when the thing you spent three years building finally meets the people you built it for.

Throughout his career, he's never had a single emphasis. He kept expanding his knowledge, and all of it led him to his own company, where he has to understand every part of the business himself.

With the launch of VUUR, Hatton will be at the center of one of the top entrepreneurial ecosystems in the country. He’s got the knowledge, he’s got the resources, and now it’s time to execute.

When asked about what success looks like, revenue is not his first thought.

"Success for me — even if it's a small niche of customers — is that teenagers go out looking for a product and find VUUR and say, ‘wait, this is actually designed for me.’"

That’s the same sentence he spent his younger years wishing he could say. By solving an old problem with everything he'd taught himself along the way, he’s created something with the hopes of helping others.

People pursue higher education to specialize, but Hatton spent his career proving you don't have to. He never needed a single lane.

He just needed to keep building.

Most people build a career by specializing. Luke Hatton did the opposite, moving from finance to outdoor apparel to nutrition, collecting knowledge instead of narrowing it. Now he's launching VUUR , a physician-formulated drink built for the active teenager he once was. His story is a case for the generalist mindset, and proof that the best ideas often come from a gap in your own life.

Traditional

White

deming

The Cards are Stacking for Luke Wachtel

A Venture Rooted in Personal Experiences

A Visionary

A Spark to his Future

Related Articles

A Brief Dive into EESA with Merideth Baker

The Road to Cape Town

A Program With a Purpose

It Has to Work

The Road Ahead

Related Articles

Mikki Naranjo, In Her Father’s Name

Specialization is Key

A Sign, and a Turning Point

An Empowering Future

Related Articles

How Ore Porat Turned a Broken System into a Business

A School Requirement Turned Startup

A Deal Made in Elementary School

Turning Cold Outreach Into a Client List

Problem Solving as a Mindset

Related Articles

As It Turned Out for Pannonica Maruna

Building Her Own Path

Turning Conversations Into Opportunities

Looking Beyond Graduation

Related Articles

New Faces, New Focus for Deming's 2026 Student Ambassadors

Chaya O’Grady

Linh Le

Charting Deming's Next Move

Building the Center's Next Chapter

Related Articles

How Chris Randall Built a Career on Adaptability

Building the Instincts First

Wrong Market, Right Idea

The Discipline Behind the Adaptability

The Final Adjustment

Related Articles

How Hayden Forbes Keeps Moving Forward

Learning by Building

A Different Kind of Classroom

An Underrated Ecosystem

The Long Game

Related Articles

A New Era for Spark CU

Meet the Team

Yigit Sarac

Rom Erez

New Era, New Perspectives

Building Something Lasting

Related Articles

Luke Hatton Proves the Value of a Generalist Mindset

Built for the Teen He Once Was

Course Correction

The Only Lane He Needed

Related Articles