The 2019 Regis Innovation Challenge Finals
By: Kamil Wojciak, Staff Writer
Here at Regis University, students and staff were able to promote their businesses and business ideas, and had the opportunity to receive cash prizes to help their businesses become successful. Hosted by the Innovation Center and the Anderson College of Business, the 2019 Regis Innovation Challenge Finals took place in the Mountain View Room of Claver Hall on April 12th, 7:00 PM to around 9:35 PM. This final competition had nine finalists pitching their business ideas for the prizes of $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000, to help start their business. In the words of Dr. Ken Sagendorf, the director of the Innovation Center, this competition is meant to help “solve our world’s problems, and make it better.”
These nine competitors all presented at the event, in this chronological order:
MyHomeFix: an augmented-reality and educational app with the purpose of helping to do home repairs, using tutorials and step-by-step guides.
Invictus Project: a mental health procedure focused on traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, depression, and more; the Invictus Project also brings a more scientific approach to mental treatment with hormone replacement, ketamine infusion, high oxygen hyperbaric therapy, and more.
Instream Water: a highly convenient and affordable water refill station, helping remove plastic waste by removing the need of plastic water bottles.
Brand$tanding: a card game where you pitch business ideas, also serving the purpose of educating people.
Rock-n-Rides: a transportation service that goes to the Red Rocks Amphitheatre from the Denver area and vice-versa.
The Nest: an empowering spiritual movement by the use of workshops and retreats.
A To Z Logic: a service specializing in enterprise cyber security, intended for mid-size companies to households.
PinQuest Golf: a golf training app meant to improve the short game, while being fun and competitive.
CampCrate: a service that allows people to rent a box of camping equipment, and receive planning details for specific trips/adventures.
For the competition, each team had five minutes to pitch their business idea to the audience and judges. Immediately after pitching their ideas, the judges had five minutes to ask questions on the business idea. Even though the judges contributed to most of the competitors’ scores (80% of the final score), the audience was actually able to vote on the competitors themselves (20% of the final score). For the audience to vote, all they had to do was go onto a specific website, and enter the percent of favorability of each presenter; also, the total percent of favorability had to equal 100%.
With all the voting and scoring provided by the judges and audience, they were able to announce the competitors that will receive the cash prizes. The three competitors announced were MyHomeFix, Invictus, and CampCrate. All three competitors on the stage waited to hear what prize they were going to get. Then, they announced the prizes to each of the competitors. The competitor that received the $1,000 prize was Invictus, the competitor that received the $5,000 prize was MyHomeFix, and last but not least, CampCrate received the $10,000 prize.
While the competitors and some audience members may have seen the event as serious, it was highly educational and entertaining to see the innovative concepts displayed on that stage that night. If you have missed this event, I highly recommend you go to the final event of the 2020 Innovation Challenge on April 17th, 2020!
Anderson College of Business Hosts Purnima Voria, Founder & CEO of National US India Chamber of Commerce
Photo Source: Katie Clark
By: Marley Weaver-Gabel, Editor in Chief
On February 5, Purnima Voria of the National U.S. India Chamber of Commerce (NUICC) joined Regis students and faculty as the guest speaker of the executive speaker series hosted by Anderson College of Business. Students, professors and faculty members gathered in the Mountain View Room for snacks, networking and conversation.
Associate Professor Luka Powanga kicked the night off and introduced the guest speaker, commenting, “It is all about networking, so make sure you don’t leave here without getting her business card.”
Purnima Voria is currently the Founder and CEO of the National U.S. India Chamber of Commerce and she has served on several advisory councils, including Governor Owens’s and Mayor Hickenlooper’s Asian Advisory council. Voria is also known for her motivational speaking, international business expertise and advocacy for small and medium-sized corporations.
In 2005, Voria founded the NUICC with the goal of deepening trade relations between India and the US. Voria works with thousands of businesses, advising, supporting, and guiding them through negotiations and logistics of bilateral trade between the two countries.
“India is going to lead the world in the 21st century,” Voria shares, explaining the focus of NUICC: promotion of global businesses to cross barriers and borders. “It is vital for Colorado to embrace global change and create opportunities for businesses by going to India,” she goes on to say, indicating her hope for Colorado under the administration of Governor Jared Polis.
“Who you know is very important,” she said. A large part of successful business partnerships in India comes down to networks and relationship building. In fact, relationships are a critical component of a business’ success around the globe, so the work that Voria does largely revolves around using her networks to connect U.S. businesses to Indian businesses.
“You make whatever you want out of your life,” Voria reflects in her closing. She moved to the United States in 1977 under a marriage visa and has since raised three children as a single mother. She started her own businesses, including NUICC, along the way. She embodies the spirit of hope and hard work and implores the audience “to be persistent and go after your dreams.”
The Anderson College of Business hosts several executive speaker nights throughout the year on a wide range of topics for students to attend and network. For more information regarding upcoming speakers, contact Jasmine Ralat, the Administrative Assistant in the college of business at jralat@regis.edu or follow Regis Anderson Business on Facebook.
For Schneider, following her passions led to realizing her dreams
Dr. Abigail Schneider of the Anderson College of Business at Regis University //Frances Meng-Frecker-Frecker
By: Paul Hunter, Practicum Writer
Growing up, Abby Schneider didn’t have cable television. She grew up playing in the woods of a small town in New Hampshire. Despite this, her dream was to be like Warren Miller, a well-known filmmaker of ski movies. She wanted to follow in his footsteps.
Schneider graduated from Colgate University in Hamilton Village, N.Y. – a town smaller than her own – and with no clear vision for her future, referred back to her childhood fantasy.
“I’m going to be Warren Miller when I grow up,” she said.
While applying for jobs in Beverly Hills, Calif., a former professor recommended she apply for a position with ABC News in New York City. The job was a long-shot and Schneider didn’t expect a call back, but sure enough, she got the job and not too long after, the small-town girl who grew up running in the woods of New Hampshire picked up everything and moved to the big city.
Her memories of New York City are highlighted with extremes. She remembers using an unopened Crockpot box as a desk and a bucket from the Dollar Store as a chair. At this desk, she would transcribe episodes of ABC’s famous show, “What Would You Do?” She worked on the show doing casting, location scouting, scenario development, waiver signature collecting, and transcribing episodes.
She’d go to bed late, then wake up as early as 3 a.m. to make it to the next shooting location. She commonly worked 90-hour weeks.
“It was a really exploitative system,” Schneider said. “It was a really crazy time.”
Living expenses were high and her salary low, so Schneider worked side jobs tutoring for the SAT and walking dogs.
Her mother, Sandy Schneider recalled this chapter as a developmental one.
“ABC helped her become a professor, too, because she realized she didn’t like working in television as much as she thought she would,” she said.
After some time, Schneider realized that a job in television wasn’t for her.
An email arrived in her inbox from a former academic adviser at Colgate: It was a call for a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder. Remembering her passion for psychology, her college major, Schneider promptly did some research on the position.
A new section of psychology called “Judgment and Decision-making” was being added to marketing departments at universities across the nation. In her sparse spare time, Schneider began applying for research assistant positions. Shortly after starting the search, she found a position at Columbia University with faculty member Gita Johar doing survey development, data collection, and data analysis. She quickly left ABC behind and began working on experiments at Columbia University in New York City.
While she worked as a research assistant, Schneider attended lectures and talks about new research in the field. She slowly recognized that she found every talk enticing. This ultimately inspired her to apply for graduate school.
When application decisions came back, Schneider was left with a tough choice: Attend the University of Colorado Boulder or Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Evaluating these programs represented a dilemma: Would she follow her heart by moving to Colorado, a place she’d always wanted to live, or pursue an education at a top-rated, prestigious university?
Schneider ultimately chose to attend CU to pursue her master’s degree. She recalls this decision as a turning point in her life; prior to this moment, she was concerned with the status of academic institutions and perfecting her academic identity, which she attributes to how she was raised.
Schneider recalled her parents showing her, through emphasis and action, the power
of intrinsic motivation.
“I could have gotten a lot of money, but my parents wanted to maintain that it was something I should be intrinsically interested in,” Schneider said.
She had friends with parents who gave them money for each A on their report card, but
Schneider remembers her parents solely showing pride for her accomplishments.
“This is definitely a decision I think about frequently, still. I wouldn’t do things differently because that decision got me to where I am today and I wouldn’t trade this for anything,” she said.
In Boulder, Schneider studied consumer choice and taught undergraduate courses, such as “Marketing Research.” She soon discovered her “true passion for teaching.”
In an interview, her father, Mike Schneider, observed that Schneider comes from a long line of teachers. Her great-grandmother was a teacher, he himself was a teacher, and Schneider was raised among teachers. Her father also remembered what he thinks was the first time she showed interest in consumer behavior and marketing.
“She was crawling around and there must have been a checkbook laying around somewhere … she crawled around with it and I think that this was her first interest in money and marketing.”
Schneider’s mother recalled her daughter had good teachers, who were good role models, and that Schneider had been interested in psychology from a young age.
For Schneider, teaching in this field almost seemed a destiny.
An aspect of her time at CU that Schneider recalls fondly was the Watson program, which was focused on social responsibility. Schneider first crossed paths with Bead for Life at a Watson seminar, which completely changed her life and the course of her career.
“It was the answer I was looking to in terms of how we can use business for good. It was the first time I felt like the path that I had chosen was aligned with my values and who I was and something deeper than just ‘marketing stuff,” Schneider said. “It was at this moment that I decided that I was going to do something with Bead for Life someday.”
After Schneider graduated with a Ph.D., she applied to 95 universities, seeking a teaching position.
“Out of the 95 schools that I applied to, there was only one that stood out … and it was Regis,” she said.
Schneider always pictured herself at a liberal arts school, but never thought she’d be a business professor. When Regis came along, it opened up that door for her and she appreciated how the Anderson College of Business’ curriculum incorporated Jesuit values and applied a social justice lens.
When application decisions came back this time around, making a decision to follow
her passion was a bit easier. Now a professor of marketing at Regis’ business school, Schneider teaches classes that ask questions not only about marketing, but about the social impact of marketing on the global business environment.
Last semester, Schneider even took a group of students to Uganda, in east-central Africa, to study social entrepreneurship, visiting a Bead for Life program as a part of her Marketing for Social Change course. As she’d promised herself years ago, she was living out another of her dreams.
Second Annual Innovation Center Challenge
By: Natalia Zreliak, Co-Editor-In-Chief
The Anderson College of Business gets students, faculty, and staff excited for the 2nd annual Innovation Challenge.
Bailey Gent, Student Director of Innovation Center, and Paul Hunter, CEO of Repurpose and winner of last year’s challenge //Frances Meng-Frecker
By: Natalia Zreliak, Co-Editor-In-Chief
Yesterday the Anderson College of Business held its launch party for the 2018 Innovation Challenge. The event was in the Innovation Center on the third floor of Clarke Hall from 5:00pm-7:00p, allowing community members to come and learn more about the challenge and celebrate the launch. In attendance were also some of the returning mentors from last year’s challenge, ranging from professors to alumni along with a member of last year’s winning team, Paul Hunter from Repurpose, to offer advice to those interested in these year’s challenge.
The Innovation Center was created in 2016 with the mission to “innovate business education by bringing together students, faculty, alumni, and the community to design solutions for the curriculum and the world” according to their website. The Innovation center really wants to stress that anyone can participate in the challenge, you do not have to have a business background. The top three teams will receive $10,000, $5,000, and $1,000 along with a co-working space in the Innovation Center and the ability to utilize the Alumni Matrix. This year they will also be offering a prize to anyone who has a brand new idea but is in the beginning stages of developing it.
Each team must have at least one student but the Innovation Challenge is open to all students, faculty and staff. The challenge itself is to build an innovative business that is desirable, feasible, and viable. Questions that will be asked of the ideas include: Does the world need it? Can it be done with the tools the groups have and are asking for? Lastly, will people actually pay for it? The teams will be judged on these three criteria along with their presentation.
“This is a business competition, we use the pitches as a metric to evaluate but the reality is this is about you starting and running a business that becomes a part of the community. This is where the stewardship mission comes into play” said Ken Sagendorf, Ph.D., a professor in the College of Business and Economics at Regis. Eighty percent of the judging is done by the panel of judges selected from areas all across the business sector and 20% of the judging is done by those in attendance of the final pitches.
“I am excited about the innovation challenge to see the process for the different teams and the ways that they develop over the year of mentoring, learning, and growing. I’m really just excited for them to take something and build on their education in a way that will be really feasible and tangible going forward after graduation,” said Bailey Gent, a Senior at Regis and this years Student Co-Director for the Innovation Challenge.
Important dates coming up:
Monday, November 12: Open House in the Innovation Incubator from 5:00-7:00 pm
Monday, November 26: Open House in the Innovation Incubator from 5:00-7:00 pm
Monday, December 10 through Wednesday, December 12: Semi-Final Pitches, 15 minute slots between 6:00-8:00pm.
To learn more about the Innovation challenge you can contact them on their website and join their mailing list or follow them on Twitter and Instagram @RegisInnovation or on Facebook as RegisInnovation. Or email them at innovation@regis.edu or contact the co-directors Bailey Gent at bgent@regis.edu and Zach Pearson at zpearson@regis.edu.
TAGS: Regis, Regis University, Anderson College of Business, Innovation Center, Innovation Challenge, 2018 Innovation Challenge, Alumni Matrix, Ken Sagendorf, College of Business and Economics, Bailey Gent, Jesuit, Business, Natalia Zreliak