禁漫天堂

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Skidmore College

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10th Anniversary

Kenneth A. Freirich

Business Plan Competition

 

FINAL PRESENTATIONS and announcements of awards
FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 2020, 2 p.m.

 

see the 2020 winners

 

禁漫天堂 the Competition

Created with the intent of fostering entrepreneurship and creativity across all majors and disciplines at Skidmore, the Kenneth A. Freirich Business Plan Competition has grown into one of the preeminent competitions among liberal arts colleges nationally. More than 350 students and 225 businesses have entered the competition, which Ken Freirich 鈥90 established in 2010 to encourage students to follow their passions with a transformational entrepreneurial experience.

The 2019-20 competition will award cash prizes and business services valued at $57,500 to the Skidmore students, or teams of students, who write the best business plans and convince the judges they have a viable business.

Awarded in the final round on April 17, the prizes will be $20,000 for first place, $10,000 for second, $5,000 for third, $2,500 for fourth, and $1,000 for teams in fifth through ninth place. An additional $15,000 in business services will be awarded to the three top teams.

Freirich himself was a student entrepreneur while at Skidmore; as a sophomore, his first business was publishing a magazine for college students that was distributed on 35 college campuses in three states. Today he is CEO of Health Monitor Network, a thriving entrepreneurial company that has grown fivefold over the past 11 years.

鈥淭here鈥檚 nothing more rewarding than watching these amazingly talented and creative Skidmore students take on the biggest challenges of their lives and succeed,鈥 he says. 鈥淲hen you challenge yourself beyond your comfort level, that鈥檚 when you really grow and learn. When you start to succeed and hit a home run, that鈥檚 when you see that the possibilities are endless.鈥

 

SPECIAL THANKS

To the generous donors who are underwriting the prizes:

Ken Freirich, Rich Wartel and Dan Allen.

 

program

Welcome and Introductions

Roy J. Rotheim

Professor of Economics and Coordinator of the Competition

Philip A. Glotzbach

President, Skidmore College

Kenneth A. Freirich 鈥90

CEO, Health Monitor Network

 

business plan presentations

 
2 p.m.

Greetings from:

- Roy J. Rotheim
- President Philip A. Glotzbach
- Kenneth A. Freirich '90

2:20 p.m. TROT (Abigail Kaplan '20)
2:40 p.m. Coven (Maya Ling '20 and Emily Egan '20)
3 p.m. Edutrer (Naira Abdula '20)
3:20 p.m. Z's (Izaak Cohen '20)
3:40 p.m. Turf Ads (Colin Mahoney '21)
4-4:20 p.m. BREAK
4:20 p.m. Ingles para Todos (Cyntia Ismael '22)
4:40 p.m. Uman 4 Uman Salone (Haja Bah '21)
5 p.m. Natural Glow (Novilhelha Moleni '22 and Ha Linh Nguyen '22)
5:20 p.m. VoyceMe (Dylan Telano '23)
5:40-6 p.m. BREAK
6 p.m. Judges' Deliberations
7 p.m. Announcements of Winners of the Competition (Ken Freirich '90)

 

Business Plan finalists

Coven

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Emily Egan '20, Maya Ling '21

Coven is a bakery that infuses its baked goods with herbs, flowers and spices for medicinal benefits and delicious flavor.

Edutrer

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Naira Abdula '20

Edutrer is an after-school program in Mozambique that teaches underprivileged children how to read, write and count using interactive technologies and fan activities.

Ingl锚s para todos

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Cyntia Ismael 鈥22

Ingl锚s para todos is a nonprofit that aims to provide resources that help adolescents and young adults speak and write fluently in English so they are in a better position to find jobs, internships, scholarships and other growth opportunities and are better equipped to achieve their dreams.

Natural Glow

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Novilhelha Moleni 鈥22, Ha Linh Nguyen 鈥22

Natural Glow is a hair and beauty brand that utilizes African herbs and organic oils to make affordable products that contain few chemicals. Natural Glow currently has a shea moisturizer and an herbal oil scalp treatment.

TROT

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Abigail Kaplan 鈥20

TROT, or Technology for Riders Optimizing Training, provides an application and sensors that give real-time feedback to riders and trainers on how they can improve their riding and their relationship with their horse. TROT aims to set new standards in the equestrian industry.

Turf Ads

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Colin Mahoney 鈥21

Turf Ads connects public high schools and small businesses in a mutually beneficial relationship by advertising around the fence of the high school鈥檚 turf field. Turf Ads will produce, design and install the ads while the business just writes the check and the high school just cashes the check.

Uman 4 Uman Salone

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Haja Bah 鈥21

Uman 4 Uman Salone is a nonprofit that produces reusable, accessible and sustainable sanitary pads for young women in Sierra Leone.

Voyce.me

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Dylan Telano 鈥23

VoyceMe operates a two-sided online marketplace that connects the millions of unpublished writers with passionate readers who previously had no means of accessing this work. The platform is committed to democratizing access to these stories, providing discoverability to amateur authors and offering writers an opportunity to achieve renown and direct interaction with audiences and monetize their work.

窜鈥檚

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Izaak Cohen 鈥20

窜鈥檚 Life is an accessories brand that focuses on enhancing the cannabis experience.

 

Peer Mentors:

Kyra Foley
Kyra Vail Foley is a senior from Simsbury, Connecticut, with a management and business major and a studio art minor. Kyra is president of the Snow Sports Club and works with the Career Development Center. Last summer, Kyra guided trips for Overland Summers in Colorado. Following graduation, she plans to return to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to pursue outdoor adventures while working with Teton Adaptive Sports.
Jay Gamboa
Jay Gamboa is a senior from Portland, Oregon, with a management and business major and a Spanish minor. Jay has spent his time on campus working as a peer academic coach for the Management and Business Department and as an assistant strength and conditioning coach in the weight room. Jay is a team captain on Skidmore鈥檚 baseball team. 
Jennifer Monderer
Jennifer Monderer is a senior from Boston, Massachusetts, majoring in art and minoring in management and business. Her areas of concentration complement each other well, as the art and business worlds are often intertwined. Last summer, Jennifer worked as a graphic designer at Neoscape, a creative agency in Boston. On campus, she has worked in the Art Department office.
Edward Roach
Edward (Ted) Roach, a senior from Buffalo, New York, is a management and business major with a minor in Honors Forum. For the past two summers, Ted has worked for two startup companies. In the summer of 2018, Ted worked as a sales and marketing analyst for a popular social media company based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, called 鈥淭aringa!鈥 Last summer, Ted worked as a sales, marketing and graphic design intern for a beverage company based out of Buffalo called MyCity Brew. Ted is the captain of the Skidmore men鈥檚 soccer team and a member of the Skidmore Investment club. Following graduation, Ted will return to Buffalo to work for M&T Bank.  


Judges:

David Cynamon

David Cynamon P鈥22

David Cynamon is founder and executive chairman of K2 Pure Solutions, which manufactures water purification and disinfection products using safe, environmentally sustainable technology. K2 Pure Solutions helps provide an answer to eliminating the need to transport chlorine for water purification and disinfection, as well as other industries. In 1995, David acquired controlling interest in a single household cleaners plant called KIK Corporation and turned it into North America鈥檚 largest manufacturer of retailer and national brand consumer products in the household, personal care and over-the-counter drug categories. In 2001, David was recognized as one of Canada鈥檚 Top 40 under 40 by The Globe and Mail鈥檚 Report on Business Magazine, and in 2002, he was awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Canadian manufacturing sector. From 2003 to 2010, David was also co-owner of the Canadian Football League鈥檚 Toronto Argonauts, winning the Grey Cup Championship in 2004 and receiving the 2005 Magna Sport Executives of the Year Award. David has been honored by the B鈥檔ai Brith Foundation with its annual Award of Merit. Prime Minister Stephen Harper awarded David the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal, a commemorative medal created to mark the 60th anniversary of the accession to the thrones of Queen Elizabeth II. David currently sits on the boards of the Gerry & Nancy Pencer Brain Trust at Princess Margaret Hospital and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, and he is co-chairman of the Sinai Health Foundation Board of Directors.

Darren Herman 

Darren Herman 鈥04

Darren Herman is currently a partner at Bain Capital in Boston and focuses on all things marketing, advertising, e-commerce and digital for the portfolio of investments, deal diligence and sourcing new investment opportunities. Prior to joining Bain Capital, he was based in Silicon Valley on the senior leadership team of Mozilla, makers of the Firefox web browser used by over 500 million, where he drove revenue diversification through the creation of new technologies and services including the internet's first privacy-respecting content recommendation engine. Darren joined Mozilla after spending close to a decade on Madison Avenue with the MDC Partners group of companies. He was responsible for all digital and media across the portfolio and started two successful businesses for MDC: Varick Media Management and kbs+ Ventures. Varick Media Management was a highly awarded programmatic trading company and kbs+ Ventures was a marketing and advertising technology investment arm of the holding company. Darren graced the pages of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Fast Company and other periodicals for his innovative and highly successful work within MDC Partners. Prior to joining the MDC Partners family, he was a venture-backed entrepreneur within the advertising and video game space.

Dana Naberezny 

Dana Naberezny 鈥95

Dana Naberezny is the vice president of the Jewelry Design and Innovation Workshop at Tiffany & Co. A lifelong creator of jewelry, she received her first jewelry patent at age 12. Dana started her career at Tiffany & Co. in 1995 and, during an 11-year tenure, held various leadership positions in product development, supply management and product engineering. Dana left Tiffany & Co. in 2006 and stayed in the jewelry and watch industry, leading the product development divisions at David Yurman and Movado. In these roles, she oversaw functions of research and development, engineering, CAD, prototyping, project management and sourcing.  From 2014 to 2016, Dana served as an independent management consultant working on large-scale business transformation initiatives in the fashion and accessories industry. Leveraging her work on innovation speed and measurement from design to market, Dana re-joined Tiffany in 2016 and led the creation and launch of the Tiffany Jewelry Design and Innovation Workshop, which opened its doors in April 2018. This innovation center mixes craftsmanship with advanced technologies and allows designers, jewelers and engineers to collaborate side-by-side to bring Tiffany & Co. designs to life. Dana graduated from Skidmore with a Bachelor of Science degree in metal arts management, which was a self-determined major.

Katie Peper 

Kathryn (Katie) Peper, M.D. 鈥78

Katie Peper is a fellow of the American College of Physicians with a long and distinguished career in academic medicine with the Yale School of Medicine, Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City and Morristown (New Jersey) Medical Center. She now has a private practice that follows a philosophy of healing centered on the patient. Board-certified in internal medicine in 1987, Katie attended New York Medical College. Both of her daughters have entered the startup world. Lauren Platt is CEO and founder of Vensette, an on-demand beauty service that brings luxury hair and makeup artists to clients鈥 doors. Ashley Platt founded Luxholdups, a custom Lucite and brass home furnishings company with workshops in Brooklyn and a showroom in Manhattan. Katie graduated from Skidmore with dual degrees in biology and psychology.

Molly Dyson Schwery 

Molly Dyson-Schwery 鈥04

Molly Dyson-Schwery is a licensed social worker and life coach, philanthropist, commercial and residential real estate developer and entrepreneur. Molly serves as an executive and an active board member for Dyson Kissner-Moran, a private investment corporation, and acts as a director of the Dyson Foundation, a nonprofit philanthropic organization that has supported myriad community organizations and social causes for decades in New York鈥檚 mid-Hudson Valley region. With an emphasis on supporting human services, education and health care, the Dyson Foundation seeks to improve the quality of life in the region, strengthen resources available to economically disadvantaged individuals and families and to strengthen the nonprofit sector. In Molly鈥檚 free time, she enjoys traveling and volunteering. Molly resides in New York with her husband, Benjamin, and son, Samuel.

Dexter Senft 

Dexter Senft

Dexter Senft spent 42 years in investment banking, having managed research, economics, product development and electronic trading in the fixed income businesses of Credit Suisse, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley. He retired from Morgan Stanley in 2015. At both Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley, Dexter oversaw strategic equity and other investments of approximately $1 billion. In this capacity, he has served on over a dozen different boards. Several of these startups have grown into multi-billion-dollar public companies. His early career was spent in quantitative finance. In recognition of his contributions to the development of mortgage-backed securities and fixed income derivatives, he was inducted into the Fixed Income Analyst Society鈥檚 Hall of Fame in 2004. Dexter is a graduate of Rice University with undergraduate degrees in mathematics and economics. He is a private pilot, crossword puzzle constructor and a bridge Life Master.

Rich Wartel 

Rich Wartel 鈥91

Rich Wartel is CEO and founder of Two Labs Pharma Services. With more than 175 product launches in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, Two Labs has a national reputation for product launch, life-cycle management, market intelligence, market access and pricing strategy. Rich oversees the private equity-backed company that completed two acquisitions in 2018 and currently employs over 120 people in the U.S. and Europe. His ultimate life goal is to continue to help people and to make individual lives better. Rich and his wife are dedicated to improving the lives of others through charitable endeavors and have created the Two Labs Foundation, providing financial support to a variety of nonprofit organizations.In addition, Rich sits on the board of Run the Race Center in Columbus, Ohio, an after-school 鈥渉ome away from home" resource center for almost 400 inner-city kids. At a grand level, Two Labs enables him to help a broad group of patients access pharma products more easily through his work with pharma manufacturers. In the instances in which his eagerness to give exceeds the time he has to research causes or physically volunteer, he amplifies his effect on the community by empowering his employees to get involved. For this reason, he has created a perpetual culture of 鈥減ay it forward鈥 by giving every Two Labs employee $1,500 annually to support any charity they choose, or even starting new charities when they feel the need is there. Rich has a Bachelor of Science degree in business from Skidmore College and a master鈥檚 degree in accounting from George Mason University.

Cezi Zak 

Ceci Zak 鈥87

Following her passion of 鈥渂eing the change she wishes to see in the world,鈥 Ceci is the COO of Gateway Proven Strategies, a world-class cannabis consulting firm in Denver, Colorado. Ceci is also a key member of the Genusetics executive team, which is spearheading an initiative to bring forth an easy-to-use, economical way of diagnosing early-stage Alzheimer鈥檚 disease, creating a new medical paradigm for a horrific disease. Previously, she was the COO of health care at DAS-Omnicom, managing profit and loss for the group鈥檚 42 worldwide operating units, and held various senior executive roles at Sanofi, a top-five global pharmaceutical company, including general manager, business unit head and joint venture executive for the allergy, osteoporosis and hypertension franchises, as well as vice president of commercial capabilities. Prior to Sanofi, Ceci held a wide variety of sales, research and marketing roles at Roche Pharmaceuticals, and she was an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School for three years. Passionate about giving back to her community, Ceci spearheaded the development of OurBrainBank, the first nonprofit focused on turning glioblastoma from terminal to treatable. She is also chairman emeritus of the Healthcare Businesswomen鈥檚 Association, a global nonprofit dedicated to furthering the advancement of women in health care worldwide. Ceci also teaches skiing at Beaver Creek during the winter months.

Linda Toohey 

Linda Toohey

SKIDMORE TRUSTEE CHAIR EMERITA

Linda Toohey served for more than 50 years as an executive with the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce, retiring in 2012. Prior to joining the chamber, Toohey was president and publisher of The Saratogian, a Gannett-owned newspaper. She is the immediate past chair of the Skidmore College Board of Trustees, a position she held for four years. She served as a member of the board for 15 years. She currently serves on the boards of Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the Charles R. Wood Foundation and the Saratoga Foundation and Wellspring (domestic violence and rape crisis services).

Ken Freirich '90

Kenneth A. Freirich 鈥90

Chief Executive Officer, Health Monitor Network

As a seasoned entrepreneur and executive, Ken has successfully started, built, operated and grown a variety of world-class organizations. For the past 15 years, he has helped transform Health Monitor Network into becoming the leading patient-engagement company in the U.S. The company has grown tenfold since he joined the organization and the employee base has quadrupled over the past four years. The company has continued to be the leader in print patient education in physician offices around the U.S. and has now become a digital leader in exam rooms. In May 2019, Ken led the organization through a transaction that brought a significant investment to the company, led by WestView Capital Partners, to support and propel its dynamic growth.

Prior to joining Health Monitor Network, he was CEO of TransLocal Health Corporation. Previously, he was president of InteliHealth, initially a joint venture between Aetna U.S. Healthcare and Johns Hopkins, a leading consumer and professional health information, technology and commerce provider. He was also the founder and publisher of The Collegian Magazine while a student at Skidmore.

He attended Skidmore College and completed an Executive MBA certificate program at Columbia University Graduate School of Business, through the Thomson Information Publishing Management Development program.

Ken plays drums in a rock-and-roll band called MedROCK, sat in with The Who last fall and is an active international philanthropist. He continues to be inspired by all of the students in the business plan competition.