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Will fake social media followers derail the booming influencer marketing business?

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Celebrities, social media stars, and other online personalities have taken a hit to their credibility in recent months, as millions of their followers have been exposed as fake or bought. This has created a bigger problem for advertisers and consumers, who no longer can trust in high follower numbers as a measure of influence and credibility.

Now, a machine-learning algorithm developed by Northeastern graduates is giving marketers a way to keep their advertising real—and rebuild consumer trust.  Brands have always sought celebrity endorsements, but the mass adoption of social media has given rise to a new kind of endorser: the influencer, an online personality with a large number of followers.

“Influencers are a whole new kind of currency,” said Lyle Stevens, chief executive officer for Mavrck, an influencer marketing firm in Boston that he founded with two other Northeastern graduates, Sean Naegeli and Chris Wolfel.

The company’s influencer marketing platform is used today by P&G, PepsiCo, and other major consumer brands. Big brands such as these use influencers to push their products. Mavrck built a platform that allows brands to tap into their social networks and identify influencers who can then be inspired to share relevant content in their newsfeeds. Identifying whether influencers have an inflated number of followers is one of the many tools the platform provides.

When social media personalities who promote products bolster their numbers with fake followers, they create an illusion of popularity, and with it an illusion of their ability to influence consumers’ buying choices, putting the entire field of influencer marketing into question. At a time when consumers trust each other’s opinions more than they trust brands, Stevens sees this issue of credibility as “a lynchpin to unlocking the full potential of influencer marketing.”

Mavrck’s new fraud detection algorithm works by analyzing a statistically significant sample of an influencer’s followers, as well as accounts that ‘like’ or comment on that influencer’s posts. The algorithm gauges whether an account is being run by a real person or operated by a bot to create artificial followers, likes, and comments. This kind of analysis helps marketers automate the process of weeding out those accounts that are likely to have purchased followers or engagements.

“Influencers are a whole new kind of currency.”

Lyle Stevens chief executive officer for Mavrck

Until now, much of this work has been done manually, but the explosive growth of influencer marketing makes it virtually impossible to evaluate every potential influencer for having fake or purchased followers. Last year, according to Stevens, Instagram and Twitter saw more than 21 million posts featuring sponsored content—a number that continues to grow, with increasingly steep spikes in sponsorships during the holidays.

In its analysis of nearly 4,000 Instagram users with at least 5,000 followers each, Mavrck found that almost 10 percent had bought followers or engagements.

But just how big is the problem of influencer fraud? Last month, Twitter began removing millions of suspicious accounts from its users’ follower base, and in June Unilever’s chief marketing officer, Keith Weed, said the consumer goods giant would no longer work with influencers who purchased followers.

The Federal Trade Commission is watching, too. The consumer-protection agency last year issued stern warnings to social media influencers and brands for not making it obvious that the influencers were being paid to endorse products and services. While the commission has not specifically weighed in on the issue of fake followers, its guidelines do comment on fraudulent “liking” of products and services. “If ‘likes’ are from non-existent people or people who have no experience using the product or service, they are clearly deceptive, and both the purchaser and the seller of the fake ‘likes’ could face enforcement action,” according to the guidance published on the commission’s website.   

According to Mavrck and other industry observers, the influencer marketing fraud problem is only going to get worse without action—and fast. Forecasts say the $1 billion sector may blossom into a $5 billion to $10 billion industry by 2022.

From left to right: Sean Naegeli, Lyle Stevens, and Chris Wolfel. Photo courtesy of Mavrck.

Unfortunately, technology such as Mavrck’s fraud detection tool isn’t a panacea. Northeastern marketing professor Koen Pauwels, who studied the relationship between social media and consumer trust, said part of the problem is in the metrics advertisers use to measure success.

“There is evidence that the follower metric is not reliable, as some influencers cheat a lot more than others,” he said. “In reality, there is a strong need for the industry to self-check in order to keep its credibility.”

Like moths to a flame, fake followers will latch on to the biggest and most popular social media accounts naturally, with up to 10 percent of followers netting out as fake. This, according to Stevens, means the industry must be careful to not accuse every social media account with fake followers of fraud. He believes the industry needs some agreed-to standard in evaluating influencers’ authenticity—the equivalent of a credit score database. Lacking that, “It may have to be a third party like the FTC that has to step in.”

Still, the Mavrck founders consider the firm well-equipped to lead the industry’s dialogue about influencer marketing fraud. Roughly one-third of Mavrck’s 30 employees come from Northeastern, which company co-founder Wolfel said is not surprising.

“Northeastern breeds a different kind of person,” he said, describing the Mavrck team as “curious hustlers” who are highly driven by their curiosity. “It’s instilled in your behavior at Northeastern.” Wolfel serves as an advisor for IDEA, Northeastern’s student-led business incubator, which helped launch Mavrck four years ago with early funding.

“Northeastern taught us to look for people with different skills and perspectives,” added Naegeli, the company’s chief influencer officer, noting that diversity in perspectives is what allows the entrepreneurial team to challenge each other and grow.


What do cannabis and cryptocurrency have in common? Meet Helene.

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Helene Servillon is a connector of dots. Sometimes they link people or things or ideas. Sometimes they cross time to shed light on the past or give hints of the future.

Her gift often comes in handy at  Orthogonal, a holding company that invests in businesses that want to help people and the environment. Servillon, who is charged with developing partnerships between Orthogonal and potential clients, mentors and provides resources to these companies, including those in the cannabis, cryptocurrency, and health industries.

Servillon, who graduated from Northeastern in 2012 with a degree in communication studies, was already connecting dots in middle school. She was plotting a path to college, preferably far from her San Francisco home, and faced some big obstacles: Her immigrant mom was a single parent of four, and they didn’t have much money. But even in sixth grade, Servillon could make out the stepping stones ahead. The first was landing a spot on the school volleyball team, which could lead, she believed, to a scholarship at a great school such as Northeastern.

When things got in the way—Servillon was a petite girl in a sport that favors the tall and didn’t make the cut—she wasn’t deterred.

“I spent the whole summer going to the rec parks in my neighborhood practicing pickup with the local kids,” Servillon remembered. “And in seventh grade, I actually made the team.”

A few years later, she made the volleyball team at Northeastern and earned a partial scholarship her last two years on the squad—a rare coup for a 5-foot-1 defender. Her job was to pass the ball so the taller players could score—just another example of her role as a connector.

“When you’re at a big corporation, there are a lot more processes to make decisions. Whereas at a startup, you get to wear 10 different hats and that’s more fun and challenging to me.”

Helene Servillon Northeastern graduate

“She’s definitely a connector,” said Caitlin Tittl, one of Servillon’s former teammates. “She’s able to bring people together in a way that everyone feels comfortable.”

At Northeastern, Servillon snagged plum co-op jobs at Puma and Reebok, showing enough talent and drive to take over one boss’s duties. The experiences taught her that corporate life wasn’t for her.

“When you’re at a big corporation, there are a lot more processes to make decisions,” Servillon said. “Whereas at a startup, you get to wear 10 different hats and that’s more fun and challenging to me.”

She spent the next several years trying on hats at startups that sell electric bikes and speech analytics software.

Then Servillon started to become a more conscious consumer and wanted to be part of a community where growth was not just about money. Her search brought her to Orthogonal in 2017, and the fit seemed right. Still, there were doubts. Many of her peers were ensconced in solid, long-term jobs. Did she really want to jump to yet another startup?  

In the end, she took courage from Steve Jobs, who co-founded Apple. She recalled his advice from a 2015 commencement speech to follow your heart where it leads, trusting that the dots will eventually connect.

Helene Servillon. Photo courtesy of Helene Servillon.

At Orthogonal, she said, “I have really been able to pool all the different connections of things that I’ve learned, every experience, into what I’m doing today.”

One of her biggest challenges at Orthogonal, Servillon said, will be working with the cannabis startups in the group’s portfolio, which includes a company that provides quality testing and a medical marijuana delivery service. The industry is an evolving tangle of local, state, federal, and international regulations. But business is booming: Sales of legal cannabis are expected to quintuple in North America over the next decade to $47.3 billion. And these emerging companies offer people safer alternatives to opioids, she said.

“There’s a lot of stigma about cannabis that we have to be open to unlearning,” said Servillon, who is working to help the cannabis industry in the United States receive more positive media coverage. The industry, she said, has an opportunity to “educate consumers on plant-based and more natural medicines, providing more preventive healthcare versus reactive healthcare.”

Being on the leading edge of an emerging industry is, as her friend, Tittl, put it, “Helene’s vibe.”

“She just really loves the startup life,” said Tittl, “and it’s because she can come up with her own ideas and build something from the ground up.”

The right chemistry makes hard cider look easy

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The production floor of Downeast Cider House in East Boston is a study in contradictions. Rock music is barely audible above the thumping of carefully-calibrated air pumps that move juice from one tankard to another. Employees in Carhartt overalls and backwards baseball hats are making constant calculations of sugar- and acid levels in the slowly fermenting juice. A sophisticated centrifuge spins out excess yeast and sediment from what will become totally crushable hard cider.

Left: Angelina Choy, assistant cidermaker at Downeast Cider House, pours fresh-pressed apple juice for a taste test on the production floor. Right two: Choy adjusts the flow valve on a hose that carries apple juice from a tankard truck into holding tanks at the cider house. Photos by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Angelina Choy, an assistant cidermaker at Downeast and a Northeastern graduate who studied chemistry, fits right in.

“This is not what I expected to be doing when I was thinking about jobs in college,” Choy said, standing on her toes to pour fresh apple juice for a taste test from a 16,000-gallon holding tank that reached nearly to the ceiling of the warehouse.

“But, I love this. I love what I do,” she said.

Cidermaker Adam Threlkeld (left) and Choy (right) stir 300 pounds of chai tea spices into a "tea tank." The mixture, along with 400 pounds of pumpkin puree, will be added to cider to make 10,000 gallons of the company's seasonal pumpkin spice blend cider. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Molecules or music? Chemistry professor choose both.

The production floor, where Choy works is where tens of thousands of gallons of apple juice become Downeast’s craft hard cider every day. It’s loud. There are pumps running, hoses snaked along the ground, a pasteurizing machine that quickly heats up the juice to 175 degrees Fahrenheit and just as quickly cools it back down. There’s a canning operation, in which thousands of aluminum cans clank through a conveyor system where they’re filled with finished cider. And in the midst of all that, there’s Choy and her colleagues, doing science.

She has to know exactly how much yeast to add to the juice in order to start the fermentation process. In that process, yeast breaks down the sugar in apple juice and turns to ethyl alcohol, creating an alcoholic apple cider.

After cleaning out a pipe used to deliver fermented cider to a pasteurizing machine, Choy prepares parts to re-install the pipe. Photos by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Downeast has 15 tanks of juice in various stages of fermentation. Choy will help measure the density of sugar in the juice, as well as the acidity, to clock exactly when it’s become alcoholic enough to sell.

She was explaining all this, and explaining the company’s new “in-line mixing system” that saves cidermakers a step when they’re mixing in flavors such as pineapple or pumpkin, when her colleague, Chris Geany, poked his head around the corner.

“Angie, do you know if the media in the lab has cycloheximide in it?” he asked.

“It doesn’t,” she responded, not missing a beat.

“What’s funny is that I didn’t drink a drop of alcohol until I turned 21; I just wasn’t into it. And now I make alcohol for a living. What are the odds?” Choy said. Here, she stands among thousands of empty aluminum cans awaiting cider. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Geany was asking about a chemical compound that prohibits the growth of certain bacteria in the cider, because he was running quality control tests on the product in Downeast’s lab, Choy explained. She had been filling in in the lab for a few days while Geany was out, so he was just catching up on things.

The interaction struck the heart of what Choy loves so much about her job: It’s complex chemistry used to make something that you can kick back and enjoy.

Winemaker blends fruit, family traditions

“The people in the alcohol industry are just very chill, for lack of a better term,” she said.

When Choy started studying chemistry at Northeastern, she assumed she would become a doctor or a pharmacist.

“Not because I was particularly passionate about either but I just thought, ‘That’s what people who study chemistry do. That’s just what you do,’” she said.

In that vein, Choy worked at a pharmaceutical company for her first co-op. She hated it.

“The people were nice and everything, I just realized while I was there that I did not want to be in a lab for the rest of my life,” she said. “But the experience was still valuable, because I realized something I didn’t want.”

Choy installs a newly-clean valve to one of Downeast's 15 fermentation tanks. Photos by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Her second co-op, working in the quality control lab at a company that makes beauty products, was a little closer to what she wanted.

“I loved using my hands, working with the product,” she said. “I loved that it was so hands-on, and I could see the result of my work.”

Finally, in a move Goldilocks would appreciate, Choy’s third co-op did the trick. She worked in the testing lab at the Sam Adams brewery in Boston, and there, she found just the right fit.

“It just clicked. It felt like something I wanted to do with my life,” she said.

So, when she graduated in 2017, she went to Downeast. It’s not always glamourous work; Choy regularly scrambles up onto tankard trucks or cleans pipes and tanks and hoses on the production floor. But she loves the physicality of it, she said. In fact, one particularly dreary day in late September found her climbing aboard a scissor lift to pour six 50-pound bags of chai tea spices into a brew that already included 400 pounds of pumpkin puree and would ultimately become 10,000 gallons of Downeast’s pumpkin blend cider.  

“What’s funny is that I didn’t drink a drop of alcohol until I turned 21; I just wasn’t into it,” Choy said. “And now I make alcohol for a living. What are the odds?”

On the canning line, empty aluminum cans are blasted with air to remove any stray debris before they're filled with fresh Downeast cider. Photos by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

A cafe on wheels puts a whole new spin on Starbucks coffee

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Hundreds of students walked through Snell Quad on a Thursday afternoon in mid-September, a familiar scene at one of the most bustling locations on Northeastern’s Boston campus. Some attended a sustainability fair to buy energy-efficient lights or learn about bike safety. Others dashed off to class or to the Curry Student Center for lunch. Robert Phillips just wanted some coffee.

As Phillips walked across the quad toward the Starbucks located in the student center, he paused to investigate something unfamiliar: a bike equipped with a coffee station and green Starbucks umbrella. Moments later, he was ordering a Nitro Cold Brew from the mobile coffee shop, which was set up in the middle of the quad, rather than waiting in line at the indoor Starbucks.

“This just made my afternoon,” said Phillips, who is a doctoral student in civil engineering.

Northeastern Dining rolled out its new Starbucks bike this fall. The bike serves 16-ounce cups of Nitro Cold Brew coffee for $4.99. It holds nine gallons of Nitro Cold Brew (three 3-gallon kegs), which is infused with nitrogen as it pours out of the tap, giving the coffee a thick, foamy top.

Dining officials said the bike is usually out on campus three days a week in places such as Snell, Centennial, and Krentzman quads. The goal is to extend the campus’s Starbucks service beyond the storefront and provide another convenient place for students, faculty, and staff on-the-go to get their cups of nitro joe.

The campus coffee bike has Northeastern roots. It was built by Coaster Cycles, a company founded by 2005 graduate Ben Morris. Morris said Starbucks has already purchased 30 bikes this year for its various locations nationwide. One of them happened to be Northeastern.

The Starbucks bike was built by Coaster Cycles, a company founded by Northeastern graduate Ben Morris. Photo by Adam Glanzman/Northeastern University

Morris started Coaster Cycles in the fall of 2004, while he was a student at Northeastern. He had just returned to Boston from working a co-op job as a Navy technician in San Diego, where he saw a growing market for pedicabs in the city’s Gaslamp district.

Morris started the company first as a pedicab service in Boston, operating with five bikes. It has since evolved, and changed names, over the years. Coaster Cycles now manufactures and sells a range of three-wheeled, pedal-powered vehicles such as pedicabs, cargo bikes, billboard bikes, coffee bikes, and promotional bikes. It also has a media and marketing division that specializes in advertising on pedicabs, and it owns and operates pedicabs in cities such as Boston, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.

Coaster Cycles builds its bikes at a manufacturing facility in Missoula, Montana. The company has sold its vehicles in the United States and abroad, including in Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, and New Zealand. It has built a cargo bike for UPS, ice cream bikes for Kampgrounds of America, and custom promotional bikes for Converse, Corona, and Blue Moon.

Morris said Coaster Cycles, in response to the growth in bike-share programs, also builds bikes equipped with flatbeds that bike-share operators can use to pick up and tow away vehicles that need to be moved or repaired. The company also builds vehicles equipped with the tools necessary for mechanics to fix bikes out in the field, rather than having to haul them into the shop.

Morris said companies are increasingly looking for ways to use bikes and trikes to meet their business needs, whether it be to deliver goods or sell food and beverages. Coaster Cycles, he said, is now focused on raising more capital in order to expand its manufacturing capability.

He said the factors driving the increased demand include the massive growth of e-commerce in recent years as well as stricter emissions standards expected to take hold in the future, which have businesses rethinking how they move their products.

“We’re basically positioning ourselves to majors brands as the go-to source for commercial-grade bikes and trikes for business applications,” said Morris. “We recognize a large opportunity there, and we’re positioning ourselves to take advantage of that opportunity.”

Two Northeastern startups win MassChallenge awards

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Two startups founded by members of the Northeastern community received a total of $150,000 on Wednesday night from MassChallenge, a global business accelerator program for companies in the early stages of development.

Mobile Pixels, which designed a second screen that can be attached to a laptop to boost productivity, received a $100,000 award. Boston Materials, which produces strong carbon fiber composite materials that could be used to manufacture sports equipment, aircraft components, and other products to be lighter than ever but equally as durable, received a $50,000 award.

The founders of Boston Materials said that they will use the money to purchase equipment for testing the composite materials, which will cut down on the time it takes to develop the materials from months to weeks.

“Thus far we have been relying on outside resources for testing, which has long lead times and is expensive. Bringing material testing in-house will allow us to iterate at a much quicker rate and to reallocate funds to other crucial aspects of the business,” said Michael Segal, who co-founded Boston Materials with fellow Northeastern graduate Anvesh Gurijala and Northeastern professor Randall Erb.

Erb, who is an assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, developed a patented method for magnetically assembling particles that the entrepreneurs are now using to develop better composites.

Mobile Pixels and Boston Materials were two of 26 finalists in this year’s MassChallenge Boston program, which provides space, mentorship, and workshops to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses.

Boston Materials co-founders Michael Segal, left, and Anvesh Gurijala said that they will use the MassChallenge money to purchase equipment for testing their composite materials. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Segal said that the MassChallenge program taught him and his co-founders how to identify the markets in which their materials would best fit. “We incorporated a very strategic step-by-step approach to identifying, selecting, and verifying different markets and applications, providing us a more standardized tool for assessing where we should focus our efforts,” he said.

Northeastern graduate student Stephen Ng co-founded Mobile Pixels with Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Jack Yao and Shruti Banda to create DUO, a secondary screen for laptops that can be used to boost productivity while on-the-go.

Ng said he realized how helpful a second laptop screen would be while studying for a midterm exam in Snell Library. “I remember thinking if I had an additional monitor, with my class materials on one side and my notes on the other, I could study a lot better,” he said.

Northeastern alumna loves the adrenaline rush of being a Patriots cheerleader

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When she steps onto the field as a cheerleader for the New England Patriots, Kelsey Zimmerer must know 77 different routines, inside and out.

Whether she’s performing scheduled dances between quarters or spontaneous cheers on the sidelines at the instruction of her squad’s captain, Zimmerer has to be ready to execute the routine to perfection.

Zimmerer, who graduated from Northeastern in 2016, says her passion for dance comes in part from being a perfectionist.

“I love the fact that you can just keep working and working and working on one move, piece of technique, or routine until it’s perfected,” said Zimmerer, who was a member of Northeastern’s Dance Team for five years and is now in her second season as a Patriots cheerleader. “And once you’ve perfected it, it’s so satisfying.”

Zimmerer will be on the field in Foxborough, Massachusetts, cheering on the

Photo by Dwight Darian

Patriots and revving up the crowd on Sunday when New England faces the Los Angeles Chargers in the divisional round of the National Football League playoffs.

“I love performing,” she said. “Whether it’s on the basketball court at Northeastern or now at Gillette Stadium, it’s just such a rush of adrenaline performing in front of a crowd that I absolutely love.”

Zimmerer started dancing when she was 2, and though she competed in swimming, soccer, and cross-country throughout her childhood, dance was the one that stuck. She would also devour Glamour, Elle, Seventeen, and other fashion and lifestyle magazines as soon as they would arrive at her family’s house, because she was curious to discover which clothing styles people across the world were wearing that she likely wouldn’t see in her small hometown in Connecticut.

“I love performing. Whether it’s on the basketball court at Northeastern or now at Gillette Stadium, it’s just such a rush of adrenaline performing in front of a crowd that I absolutely love.”

Kelsey Zimmerer Patriots cheerleader

It’s no small wonder that dance and fashion remain integral parts of her life today.

By night and weekend, Zimmerer practices and performs as a cheerleader. By day, she is the marketing director at Blank Label, a Boston-based startup that designs custom clothing for men.

Zimmerer envisioned becoming a fashion journalist when she enrolled at Northeastern, but her courses, co-ops, and global studies in London and Paris opened her eyes to other professions in the fashion industry. For her third co-op, she landed a position in public relations at Blank Label, and that job led to her full-time employment at the company after graduation.

Kelsey Zimmerer is the marketing director at Blank Label, a Boston-based company that designs custom clothing for men. Photos by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

She said she applies the same dedication to executing her cheerleading routines as she does in helping grow her business. Blank Label in the past three years has expanded to Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, and Washington, D.C. She oversaw the redesign of the company’s homepage and led a web campaign featuring photographs and in-depth interviews with nine customers, among many other projects. She also selects and buys the fabrics for the company’s clothing.

 

Kelsey Zimmerer. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Having two jobs makes for a busy schedule. On Tuesdays and Thursdays during the NFL season, Zimmerer works a full day at Blank Label and then drives about 20 miles to Foxborough for cheerleading practice from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

She says there’s no place she’d rather be on a cold January afternoon in New England, like the one forecasted for Sunday with a high of 28 degrees, than cheering on the home team. “We’re great at home,” she said of the Patriots, who were undefeated at Gillette Stadium during the regular season, “so I think this weekend will go in our favor.”

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu.

Designing software and smartphone apps with an architect’s touch

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In the San Francisco office that houses their tech startup, four Northeastern graduates who studied architecture spend their days drawing up plans and contemplating functionality and aesthetics. But they’re not designing buildings, roads, or landscapes; they’re creating applications for smartphones, software, and blockchain platforms.

Chris Marciano, Ryan Matthew, Mark Munroe, and Matt Stoner have created a  website for Projects for Good, an organization whose clients tackle complex humanitarian projects; they have designed the software for a competitive sales portal for employees of a smart home company; and they are developing an interactive mobile app to help native Chinese speakers learn English.

Their company, Neuron, specializes in improving how users interact with digital products and services. Most companies in this business rely on the work of  graphic designers and web developers, says Marciano. But he and his co-founders draw from a shared background in architecture education that they received at Northeastern.

They contend that knowing how to design physical spaces is the secret behind their success in the digital realm and that this knowledge has helped them create a company that stands out from competitors.

“Northeastern prepared us with strong fundamentals in design thinking, both in the classroom and while on co-op,” says Marciano, who graduated from Northeastern in 2014 with a master’s degree in architecture. “We now apply this background in architecture to the design of digital products and services.”

“Northeastern prepared us with strong fundamentals in design thinking, both in the classroom and while on co-op.”

Chris Marciano co-founder and senior UX designer, Neuron

The team, which also includes co-founder Soudy Khan, creates a blueprint for each project to show Neuron’s clients how products will be used before they get coded.

Munroe likens the process of creating a digital product to designing an apartment building.

“Architecture allows us to think about user experience design in a very different way,” says Munroe, who graduated from Northeastern in 2014 with a master’s degree in architecture. “When scaled, these pieces form the basic framework for creating the more complex overall experience of the building. It’s a similar logic and thought process behind great product design. The best digital experiences are consistent, coherent, and provide context and clues throughout.”

The road the entrepreneurs took from Boston to Silicon Valley wasn’t a straight shot. After graduating from Northeastern, Marciano, Matthew, Munroe, and Stoner worked for traditional architecture firms on the East Coast before founding Neuron in Seattle in 2016.

But they met at Northeastern, developed a close friendship, and honed their ability to work together by collaborating on their senior thesis project in 2013, which snagged the $1,000 grand prize at Northeastern’s Research, Innovation, and Scholarship Expo, an annual event that showcases the best in student and faculty projects.

“Coming out of Northeastern’s architecture school, we’re all very creative and design oriented and really thrive off of solving challenging problems,” says Stoner, who graduated from Northeastern in 2013 with his bachelor’s degree in architecture. “I think that transitioning from the problem of architecture to the problem of user experience and design for technology was a natural one for us. It presented a new challenge in a new industry that satisfied our curiosities with technology and the cross-pollination of the physical world and the digital world and how we could implement that.”

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu.

Northeastern University graduate Ben Preston co-founded Gearflow, an online marketplace to buy, sell, and research construction equipment such as bulldozers and forklifts

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Northeastern graduate Ben Preston is working to reinvent the marketplace for construction equipment by taking it to the internet.

He co-founded Gearflow, the first online marketplace for buying, selling, researching, and repairing construction equipment and parts.

“This platform is for every tier of the supply chain,” says Preston, who graduated from Northeastern in 2014. Photo courtesy of Ben Preston.

“This platform is for every tier of the supply chain,” says Preston, who graduated from Northeastern in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. “Our goal is to unify the community within construction and bring the industry into the information age.”

A bulldozer can cost up to $200,000, but Preston says it was difficult to explore the ins and outs of such a costly piece of equipment online until Gearflow launched last year. Now his online marketplace makes it easier to buy, sell, and learn more about  dump trucks, diesel generators, concrete saws, and more.

Preston and his business partner Luke Powers hope to completely transform the market for construction equipment. “We want to build a better community in this market,” says Preston. “Gearflow helps smaller sellers compete with giant brands, and gives everyone better access to manufacturing.”

Preston says he caught the entrepreneurial bug after helping students launch startups in IDEA, Northeastern’s student-led business accelerator.

“I worked with IDEA like it was a startup of my own,” says Preston. “My job was to help people get a better value out of the experience.”

Now a few of his former colleagues in IDEA are helping Preston take Gearflow to the next level. They have introduced him to potential investors—or invested in the online marketplace themselves.

“After my time at Northeastern I always wanted to be on the founding team of a startup,” says Preston. “It’s great to be a part of that now.”

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu.


From jobless and sharing a carton of McNuggets to the Forbes ‘30 Under 30’ list

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In many ways, it was like any other August morning in Boston. 

The air was thick with humidity, and Drew D’Agostino’s phone buzzed with notifications for website errors and other work-related alerts requiring his attention. He and his business partner, Greg Skloot, woke up that morning as 23-year-old executives in charge of a burgeoning venture-backed startup. By the end of the day, they found themselves sitting in a McDonald’s booth, jobless and wondering—over a shared carton of chicken nuggets—how it all went downhill.

Theirs isn’t so much a riches-to-rags story as it is about processing and learning from failures and setbacks, and about perseverance and reinvention. Now, six years later, the Northeastern graduates are co-creators of Crystal, an app that helps users identify personality traits of people with whom they want to communicate better.

D’Amore McKim School of Business graduates Drew D’Agostino and Greg Skloot were recognized by Forbes for their company, Crystal. Courtesy photo via Crystal

The company has raised $7 million from companies, including the cloud-computing software company Salesforce, and garnered 3,000 customers comprised of sales people, recruiters, managers, and consultants. 

Along with seven other Northeastern graduates, D’Agostino and Skloot have made Forbes’ annual 30 Under 30 lists of 600 young entrepreneurs who are using their ambition and ingenuity to blaze new trails.

A full account of how they were fired from Attend, their first venture-backed tech company, is outlined in D’Agostino and Skloot’s book, Predicting Personality. Contending that the cause for their termination was miscommunication, the entrepreneurs explain that their new app is designed to help others avoid similar situations by using personality data to improve daily communication in negotiating and writing emails. 

The business partners credit Northeastern for their success—and friendship. It was where they developed a prototype for their first company, with the university’s alumni relations office as an early client. 

“Drew and I were roommates and built our relationship from years of shared experience exploring entrepreneurship ideas, being part of the entrepreneurship club at Northeastern, and building a great friendship as students,” says Skloot, who received a business degree from Northeastern in 2012.

D’Agostino, who graduated in 2013 with a degree in marketing and entrepreneurship, attributed his success partly to the co-op experiences that allowed him to work in sales as a student.

Personality Map. Courtesy via Crystal

“Building a book of business from scratch is very challenging, and it forced us to learn so many entrepreneurial skills: pragmatic thinking, effective communication, negotiation, and persistence,” he says.

Forbes also recognized 2018 graduate Joshua Martin and his co-founders at Fortify, who met in the lab of Randall Erb, an associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Northeastern. Martin and his colleagues Andrew Caunter, Dan Shores, and Scott Goodrich Delos, who graduated in 2016, and Karlo Reyes (who graduated this year), are credited with creating a company that developed a new type of composite 3D printing. The co-founders have raised $13 million with venture capital firm Accel.

Also making the Forbes list is Brian Sanderson, a 2013 Northeastern graduate who specializes in financing buyouts and corporate mergers at Morgan Stanley. Sanderson has led the execution of deals that have raised more than $150 billion for companies such as Uber, Slack, and Netflix. He also finances deals for software-focused private equity firms.

Ryan St. Pierre, who graduated from Northeastern in 2012 and is now a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, was honored by Forbes for designing tiny robots that can accomplish tasks too tricky for human hands. Hoping to match the biomechanical abilities of insects, St. Pierre has dedicated his career to building bug-inspired bots and applying new types of materials to robotics.

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu.

Northeastern journalism grad John Simons wants to target disinformation as new executive editor of Time

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News organizations should focus on delivering truth and developing trust as corrosive conspiracy theories and mudslinging erodes faith in journalism, says John Simons, a Northeastern alum who recently became executive editor at Time.

Simons is joining the vaunted publication at a precarious time for journalism, both ideologically and financially. But the 1992 graduate says he’s more hopeful than ever.

“The biggest mission for the profession of journalism right now is combating misinformation and being champions of truth,” says Simons.

“In an age when people can get taken through all kinds of rabbit holes and create their own news, trusted names and trusted organizations are rising to the top and people are gravitating to them because of a need for trusted sources,” he says.

Time has been through its own tumult over the last five years. The news magazine, once a paragon of national journalism and a prominent cultural barometer, was purchased along with  Time Inc. publications in 2017 by Meredith Corp. of Des Moines, Iowa.

The new owners slashed the number of print copies by publishing twice a month instead of weekly. They then put the flagship magazine, which has more than 200 employees, up for sale. Circulation is roughly 1.6 million as of December 2020, according to the Alliance for Audited Media, a company that verifies circulation figures. It’s a steep drop from 3 million in audited circulation in 2016.

Technology mogul Marc Benioff, the founder and chief executive  of Salesforce, purchased the magazine in 2018 and has said he wants to continue publishing top-notch journalism and combatting media distrust, a mission that dovetails nicely with that of Simons.

“Right now, there’s a big need for publications that people can turn to and trust for real news and real information,” says Simons. He will be managing editors and reporters while guiding coverage of national news, and business and technology coverage.

Simons says he learned about earning an audience’s trust while working at The Wall Street Journal, both as a reporter and later as an editor.

“The Journal ranks really high among trusted publications and I think it’s because the organization has strong rules and standards, things they just don’t budge on,” says Simons.

Simons had always wanted to write, but he initially started at Northeastern working toward a business major with a focus on economics. It was only after a friend suggested he try an introduction to journalism class that he realized he could make a living pursuing  his passion.

I loved that you take something you’re good at and you figure out how to make yourself useful in the world,” says Simons, who added that a journalism class focusing on local government made the biggest impression on him.

Students were told to pick a Boston neighborhood and make the beat their own. Simons chose the Fenway.

I did all sorts of stories about people and issues confronting the neighborhood. That’s kind of what we were encouraged to do,” says Simons.

“There are very few things you can study in school and practice and do those things from the very start, and that’s what was so cool about journalism,” he says.

A Northeastern professor helped Simons get an internship at U.S. News & World Report after he graduated, and he was hired following the internship. His specialized focus on technology during the time of the internet boom helped Simons make a name for himself.

While many print news publications continue to shutter, Simons says he believes the misinformation crisis could help journalism become profitable again.

“What happened when organizations first started putting their content online for free is that it trained a whole generation of consumers to think that news should be free, and it had no monetary value,” he says.

“Over the last few years people are starting to realize that it takes real work to get things right and organizations need to hire professionals. I’m hoping that it’s only going to become clearer that to get a quality product, you need to pay for it,” Simons says.

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu.

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Recent grads say giving back, staying connected bring them rewards

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Lisa Randall, a journalism major who graduated in 2016, can quickly rattle off many reasons she gives back to Northeastern, which she says has helped shape her career, her priorities and even her social life.

But the solid work experience she got from her co-ops at a publishing startup and in higher education were key when it came to landing a job directly out of college.

Northeastern alums Lisa Randall and Les Kernan walk their dog in Beverly, Massachusetts. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

“I remember my interviewer saying that I had more experience on my resume than some people that he had looked at who are a couple of years out of college,” says Randall, who shifted her career focus to higher education and works at Endicott College.

Randall is one of more than 30 members on Northeastern’s Young Alumni Advisory Board raising funds or volunteering their time for Giving Day, a celebration focused on fostering school spirit and donating to student groups and programs. Randall even credits her alma mater for her husband-to-be, whom she met her freshman year and plans to marry in September surrounded by many of the close friends they made at the university.

“I look back at Northeastern as a catalyst for everything wonderful I have going on in my life right now,” says Randall, 27. She’ll serve as vice chair of the Young Alumni Advisory Board next year.

“It’s a really fun way to give back, you know, using my time and being able to volunteer and connect with current students and prospective students as well as alums,” says Randall.

The giving spirit extends to Randall’s future father-in-law, Leslie W. Kernan Jr. He donates annually to the men’s rowing team, which provided a key outlet for his son to compete and make friends.

I think alumni certainly need to step up and give back, but I think it’s also important for parents of alumni. Especially when they feel as though their children have benefited from a quality education like the one Northeastern provides,” says Kernan Jr. “I’ve always been a firm believer that education isn’t just obtained in a classroom. You get a life education at a school like Northeastern, and I think it’s important that we support that.”

Young Alumni Advisory Board member Cory Krzanik gives back in part by sharing what he’s learned from his career as a financial consultant and helping students practice their interview skills. Krzanik, an economics major who graduated in 2016, says the university gave him much needed financial aid and also provided direction.

“I wouldn’t be where I am without Northeastern,” says Krzanik, who works at Windham Labs, a financial software and advisory firm. “As someone who grew up in a lower-class family in Massachusetts and someone who really didn’t take school seriously until later, it pretty much changed everything.”

Left, Rebecca Leeper, an engineering major who graduated in 2019. Photo by Ruby Wallau/Northeastern University. Right, Young Alumni Advisory Board member Cory Krzanik. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Krzanik also appreciates that he can choose where his donations go.

“A lot of my donations go towards financial aid just because it was so important for me,” he says. “I think that if something really enriched your life, you need to give back in some way, whether it’s monetary or giving your time.”

Rebecca Leeper, an engineering major who graduated in 2019, says her donations and volunteer work at the Young Alumni Advisory Board helps her remain connected to the innovation and growth that continues to happen at Northeastern.

“I don’t want to just leave and never look back, because I think that your university is with you forever. You carry that title with you,” says Leeper, who works as a software engineering consultant in Boston. “So I try to stay connected to the university through giving back and helping it continue to thrive because that benefits me as well.”

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu. 

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The not-so secret life of bees

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The not-so-secret life of bees

Elena Getsios, who just finished her third-year behavioral neuroscience and philosophy major at Northeastern, got a taste for beekeeping after attending an event about the craft a few years ago.

She jumped at the chance to learn more when she saw that the university offered a co-op at Best Bees, an urban beekeeping company located in Boston’s South End neighborhood. The company, founded by Noah Wilson Rich who graduated from Northeastern in 2005, also provided Getsios with something a little different than the normal 9 to 5 office job.

Checking on the health of hives in the city and in fields around Greater Boston was just the “alternative work experience,” that she’d been seeking.

Interior of a crowded van
A frame from a beehive
A woman putting on a beekeeping suit
Two students put their beekeeper suits on

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Q1Ok, let’s just get this question over with. How many times have you been stung?

I was recently stung for the first time. Before I worked here I’d never been stung before. I was kind of waiting, you know, in anticipation to see if it would happen. And yeah, it happened.

Best Bees Besties

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Q2What’s a cool fact about bees that people might not know, something that you admire?

Somehow all the bees just know exactly what they’re supposed to do. They all have different jobs within a hive, and I think it’s really cool that they’re able to communicate with each other. I don’t know if it’s through smell or movements, but it’s very cool.

Also, I love that they’re able to always find their way back home. Like they can be miles away and somehow they’ll just know where their queen is.

Two beekeepers suit up next to a van

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Q3Was there anything surprising or unexpected that happened?

The bees pooped on me. A lot.

During the winter, when I would go and open the hive, I guess they just don’t go out a lot in the winter because it’s cold. When I would come along and open the hive, they’d just start pooping,, because I guess they’ve been holding it in or something.

Bees swarm the many wooden frames in the beehive
Woman in bee keeper suit looking at beehive fram
A close up of bees hovering
A close-up of someone writing a beekeeping label

Q4What have you learned at this co-op that will help your future career?

I really like all my co-workers, and that definitely makes this job so much fun, you know? It’s important. I look forward to coming into work every day, because one, I like what I do; and two, I love who I’m around every day.

A beekeeper checks a frame of a beehive

Q6What can people do to help bees?

One thing that I learned recently is that dandelions are one of the first things that bloom in the spring, and so basically they’re the first sources of pollen for bees after winter. So it’s important to keep those around.

A close up of bees landing on beekeeper hat
A beekeeper surrounded by bees next to a beehive

Two beekeepers inspecting bee hives

Q7What is your favorite bee product?

Um, I mean obviously I think beeswax is really cool, and honey of course. But something that’s really interesting is their pollen frames. The bees fill some of their home with pollen to eat. It basically serves as their protein. Sometimes if you shine those frames in the light you’ll see that it’s super colorful. It’s bright yellow and bright orange, and it also can be red or green sometimes.

Two students in beekeeper suits in front of a van
a bee on a finger
A beehive frame
A student wearing a beekeeper hat and mesh surrounded by bees

Q9Do you have any advice for other students considering a beekeeping co-op?

It’s definitely a lot of fun. I would say that a lot of the job takes place outdoors, so you have to be dressed for the weather. You have to travel around Massachusetts, too. And I would also tell them it’s physical. Very physical. I’ve learned how to lift with my legs now, because if you don’t, you’ll hurt your back.

Another thing is that you definitely see Boston in different way. I’ve been on so many rooftops of different kinds of buildings, and it’s really cool to see the city from up there. Now, whenever I’m passing by, I’ll be like, “I’ve been up there. There are hives there.”

Two women working at a beekeeping company

Beekeeper attending to hives on a city rooftop

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A sprouting subscription service kept this microgreens farmer growing during the pandemic

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Oliver Homberg’s urban farm had grown rapidly before the pandemic, so fast that he expanded his roster of flavor-packed microgreens to include offerings like garlicky Chinese Mahogany and red Shiso, a Japanese plant from the mint family.

Boston Microgreens co-founder Oliver Homberg poses for a portrait. Photos by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

Homberg, who earned his international affairs degree from Northeastern in 2013, began Boston Microgreens in 2018 and had cultivated a clientele from among the top chefs in the greater Boston restaurant scene.

“I had finally paid myself my first paycheck and then: boom. The pandemic,” says Homberg, who grows racks of flavorful, nutrient-packed microgreens in the basement of a renovated brick and beam building in South Boston. The greens, often used to add color and flavor to meals, are the first leafy stems of vegetables like kale, swiss chard and beets.

Within a few weeks of the state-imposed shutdown, all of Homberg’s clients were gone.

“It was scary to see Boston restaurants losing that much money and knowing that my business model was directly linked to that. Especially not knowing how long they’d be gone or if they were coming back,” says Homberg.

Boston Microgreens had two things going for it, however. First, Homberg’s only staff member decided to leave the company and move to Maine, which meant no one would go without a paycheck except Homberg.

Boston Microgreens, co-founder Oliver Homberg and farm manager Natalie Wannabaker discuss the micro green growth at their South Boston location. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

Second, an international, active community of microgreens farmers helped Homberg navigate the shutdown and diversify his business model.

“I was having conversations with a lot of other microgreens business owners and asking them, ‘What are you guys doing? We’d been trying to push residential, but we don’t know how to format it,’” Homberg says. After a discussion with Canadian microgreens company Micro Acres, Homberg decided to offer monthly subscription-based residential sales.

“People really responded to the subscriptions. People are at home a lot more and cooking, and they’re also becoming more health conscious. We’re a local, sustainable company which I think most people appreciate,” Homberg says.

Photos by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

Homberg, who decided he wanted to grow local produce after he graduated, started the business with a roommate in his apartment after watching dozens of YouTube videos about farming microgreens. The project quickly grew into a passion.

“We had racks everywhere. I mean, I had no living space—they were in the living room, on the dining room table, it was all racks. There was just dirt all over the place,” laughs Homberg.

His roommate moved on from the business and Homberg expanded his operations to South Boston. The basement farm is bursting with various shades of microgreens sprouting along 12 towering racks of stacked shelves lit by florescent bulbs. The greens, supported with hydroponic technology, will grow anywhere between a few days to a few weeks before they’re cut and packaged for delivery.

Photos by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

Homberg says the number of restaurants buying from Boston Microgreens has doubled since Massachusetts fully reopened, and supermarkets like Whole Foods began carrying the greens at local branches. He’s been able to hire four new staff members, most of them former co-ops.

As a new business owner with sky-high standards, Homberg originally spent sleepless nights relentlessly reworking his sales plans or figuring out how to out-maneuver his competition. The pandemic gave him a chance to reassess his priorities and grow confidence in his product—a key factor for business owners.

“We eat this at home, and there’s so many people who live near us who we also knew would love it. We knew there was a market for this kind of product,” says Homberg.

He wishes he pivoted a little faster and had been able to expand his clientele sooner, but Homberg says that overall the shutdown helped him gain perspective.

“I think we all learned to calm down a little. Having a little bit more distance from the day-to-day concept of society gave me some time to realign my values,” he says.

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu

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How a boost from Beyoncé helped sustain her skin care business

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Yewande Masi had already made the tough decision to pivot her business away from hair extensions at the end of 2019, but the Northeastern graduate had no idea how important her decision to focus on skin care and self-care would be in 2020.

Photos courtesy of Yewande Masi

It took a pep talk from Masi’s sisters, combined with a breakup with her boyfriend, to give the 2009 criminal justice graduate a new focus that served her when the COVID-19 virus shut down many brick-and-mortar businesses in March 2020.

“My sisters knew that hair extensions were my passion, but they suggested I put it aside and focus on my homemade skin care, which a lot of people were requesting,” says Masi, who had created her signature lotion for the boyfriend she would eventually break up with.

“I was thinking about the rebrand and doing a bunch of inner self work because I realized the boyfriend I was in love with just wasn’t going to work out for me,” says Masi.

“I found myself in the bathroom a lot. We, as women in general, the bathroom is kind of a ritual for us and a place to decompress. There’s nothing really centered on making that a self-care experience, and so that was what I wanted to do with Ornami,” she says.

The name means “to adorn,” and it comes from a little-known international language called Esperanto. Masi named her signature lotion “Let that Mango,” marketing her brand as a focus on self-care by eliminating toxic products and relationships. She launched in April 2020, just weeks into the pandemic.

“That was around the time that everybody kept saying, ‘Oh, this is just going to be for two weeks,’ about the shut down, so I didn’t know it was going to affect me as much as it did,” Masi says. ”But the funny thing is it actually affected us in a positive way because people were really seeking experiences in their home.”

Photos courtesy of Yewande Masi

Once Masi realized that retail stores and open-air markets were unlikely to reopen, her focus moved to e-commerce where she sought to gain name recognition. She partnered up with online stores similar to Credo or BLK + GRN that promoted natural skincare lines as well as Black-owned businesses.

“We started getting some press coverage in late summer, and that’s when things started to pick up,” she says.

But Masi’s biggest business bounce came in October, when superstar singer Beyoncé Knowles chose Ornami to receive a $10,000 grant as part of her ”Bey Good” initiative focused on helping small Black-owned businesses during the pandemic.

“Yeah, getting that grant from Beyoncé was pretty dope,” says Masi, who had filled out an application months before the announcement. “I was having a terrible day that day and wondering how I was going to get through this and then that grant came through.”

Smaller companies were thrown into a precarious situation, she says, “where it was very scary for us because we didn’t have the name recognition or the resources that larger companies had. However, we could be a lot more nimble.”

Lessons learned? “Try to keep your expenses as low as possible. Also, see how the customers respond to your products and listen to them. That’s how I came up with my second product, and it’s probably my best seller,” she says, highlighting a sugar and vitamin E scrub called ”No Scrubs,” used to slough off dead skin while deeply moisturizing.

She urges new business owners to have confidence in their product and to nip negative thoughts in the bud.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. Just keep pushing forward and everything’s gonna work itself out,” says Masi. “Try not to be mean to yourself. There’s enough of that happening in the world.”

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu

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This former Northeastern hockey star scored with a rebound during the COVID-19 downturn

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The real reason that a protective sports gear business named G-Form staved off bankruptcy and survived the economic downturn sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic all comes down to attitude, says G-Form CEO and Northeastern graduate Glen Giovanucci.

Giovanucci, who earned his business degree at Northeastern in 1983, pivoted quickly after the shutdown and transformed G-Form from a protective sports equipment manufacturer to branch out to be a personal protective equipment manufacturer—shipping out 250,000 clear face shields per week to frontline workers helping to battle the nation’s health crisis.

G-Form CEO Glen “Gava” Giovanucci holds the new mountain biking protection made in the Smithfield, R. I. production facility. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

He is proudest of cultivating a can-do attitude and determination from his manufacturing team.

“Culture is the most important thing in a company. You can teach skills, you can teach business acumen, but really you just have to have the people who have the fighting spirit and want to be there,” says Giovanucci, a former Husky hockey captain who later served as assistant hockey coach at Northeastern.

“I’m just coaching a bunch of corporate athletes. That’s what I do, and I try to surround myself with the best players,” he says. “Surround yourself with the best people who have the same values that you have, and coach them, and have a clear sense about where you want to take the company.”

G-Form, which sells lightweight protective pads for sports like soccer, mountain biking, and baseball to chain stores like Dick’s Sporting Goods, was already in trouble when Giovanucci joined as CEO in late 2019.

“I realized when I came in that we were a very underfunded company,” says Giovanucci. He had updated the management structure and put a new sales strategy in place when the pandemic struck and all of his customers stopped placing orders.

technology his company uses to revolutionize sports protection made in their Smithfield, Rhode Island facility on Wednesday, July 7, 2021. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University" data-src = "https://i0.wp.com/news.northeastern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/070721_as_GForm09-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1" tabindex="0">
G-Form CEO Glen Giovanucci, a Northeastern graduate and former hockey player, explains the SmartFlex™ technology his company uses to revolutionize sports protection made in their Smithfield, Rhode Island facility. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern

“We were really looking at going bankrupt within a month, because we didn’t know how we were going to come up with payroll,” he says. “The first action was we were going to shut our factory down. And then we were going to shut down the corporate offices.”

Instead, Giovanucci rallied his employees and managed to retrofit the business to sell face shields. His team of 40 local employees churned out 100,000 face shields over their first week and quickly ramped up to 250,000 per week at the Smithfield, R.I. facility. The operation partnered with other local manufacturing companies that constructed some of the masks as orders increased.

Then came last September, when suddenly the face shields that G-Force might sell for $2.50 were available from China and sold for 20 cents, says Giovanucci.

“They essentially put us out of business,” he says. “At that point in time we were dragging. You know the bus coming down the street with a flat tire and a muffler that’s hanging by a thread? That was us.”

G-Form staff are back to producing protective sports wear equipment at the Smithfield, Rhode Island facility after making face shields for first responders during the pandemic. Photos by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

Giovanucci decided to appeal to the board of directors for some financing, and that’s when one of them—a high-profile business magnate named Tony Minella—decided to purchase G-Form outright. Minella is the president and co-founder of Eldridge, a multinational business that invests in and manages companies like DraftKings and Dick Clark Productions.

“They decided to buy us based on a number of different things—but I think one of them was that the president was just really excited about our story,” says Giovanucci. “We’re very lucky to be on a great financial foundation with them.”

Giovanucci says the company not only bounced back but had its highest earnings ever in 2020, with half of those earnings coming from PPE. G-Form now has roughly 80 employees and is branching out—working on protective gear for the military and industrial gloves sold at Home Depot. Diversifying is another lesson learned from the tumultuous last year, he says.

“It probably inspired us to figure out a way to broaden our portfolio and diversify so we never get caught in that again,” says Giovanucci. “If you just stick with team sports and something like this happens, you’re out of business.”

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu.

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The royal history of King Husky, Northeastern’s mascot

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The Northeastern Husky mascot has a storied history going back nearly 100 years, including a long line of canines that retired as sled dogs and joined the university as live mascots. Here’s the story of the Northeastern Husky, replete with vintage photographs that underscore how deep the mascot is engrained in school spirit.

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1920s-1940s

1920s-1940s

king husky receiving a birthday cake

King Husky’s birthday, March 17, 1927. “[He] received many…gifts, among them being … a tan leather collar and leash, bought with money contributed by the students, a dog-mat from the Class of 1923, and a large meat pie, in the center of which was a large candle.” – The Cauldron 1927.

Northeastern University President Frank Palmer Speare introduces King Husky I to the crowd, March 4, 1927.

Assembled guests at the coronation of King Husky I, March 4, 1927.

“It was on March 4 that the entire student body of the day schools assembled at the North Station to welcome Husky The First. From the station the parade proceeded to the University.” – The Cauldron 1927

king husky poses next to his breeder

King Husky I, poses between his breeder, Leonhard Seppala (l) and NU Student Council member Ray Todd (r). Seppala was portrayed by actor Willem DeFoe in the 2019 film Togo which chronicles the 1925 Alaskan serum run.

The Cauldron, 1927

Why a Husky?

Northeastern had no mascot until 1927 after momentum grew to find a fitting symbol for school spirit. Animal mascots were in vogue during the 1920s and one story that gripped the nation was the rush delivery of a diphtheria antitoxin serum by dog sled across uncharted Alaska. Several sled teams led by huskies covered 674 miles in less than a week to deliver the vaccine, thus saving Nome, Alaska, and the surrounding isolated communities from an impending epidemic.

In short, the husky was a superstar and Northeastern chose its mascot. On March 4, 1927, a husky named Sapsut, whose father had been on the team during the Alaska run, was delivered to the university by Leonhard Seppala, one of the Alaskan serum run’s lead mushers. Then Northeastern president Frank Speare canceled classes on the day of his arrival and presented him as the new mascot in a university-wide celebration. Sapsut was given an honorary degree and named King Husky. He served for 14 years as the mascot and died of old age in 1941.

1950s

1950s

northeastern cheerleaders with king husky

Northeastern cheerleaders with King Husky II, 1949.

king husky being coronated

Eva Seeley of Chinook Kennels presenting King Husky II at his coronation, January 12, 1942.

Assembled guests at the coronation of King Husky II, January 12, 1942.

Eva Seeley of Chinook Kennels holds King Husky II.

King Husky II is crowned and presented to the crowd, January 12, 1942.

NU cheerleading squad with King Husky III, October, 1952.

King Husky IV wore the crown in 1958.

New kings and turnover on the throne

The next long-serving mascot was King Husky II, who came from a long line of sled and exploration dogs. King Husky II served as Northeastern’s mascot for 10 years until he retired in 1952.

1960s

1960s

Unveiling of the finished King Husky statue, June 8, 1962. L-R: Dean of Students Gilbert G. MacDonald, Northeastern University President Asa Knowles, Student Council President Robert L. Washburn, President of the Sophomore Class Suzanne M. Nourry.

A student poses with the husky statue in Ell Hall, March 1963.

Here come Mr. and Mrs. Husky

In 1960 “Mr. Husky” was born. Set up as an election-style competition, one male student was awarded the title and would wear a husky suit to sporting events. Later in the 1960s, Mrs. Husky was introduced, becoming an official co-mascot.

The Husky Statue Fund Drive began in the late 1950s to install a statue depicting the beloved King Husky I. Sculpted by Adio di Biccari and Arcangelo Cascieri, the statue was installed in 1962 in Ell Hall, where it remains to this day. Tradition holds that rubbing the husky’s nose will bring good luck in the coming academic year and the bronze statue’s nose shows distinct signs of wear from hopeful students over the years.

1960s-1970s

1960s-1970s

king husky poses next to a female student

King Husky V poses with student on the Northeastern University campus in 1966. King Husky V was mascot at Northeastern from 1965 to 1970.

king husky at the radio station

King Husky V takes to the airwaves with WNEU DJ Herbert Schachter in 1967.

king husky with a female student

King Husky V poses with a student in 1966.

a student rubbing the king husky statue

A student rubs the husky statue’s nose for good luck while King Husky V looks on.

Return of the live king

In 1965, the graduating class of 1970 decided to raise funds to buy a new canine mascot for the school with the stipulation that the dog would “graduate” with the class. King Husky V served as the live mascot for five years until the class of 1970 graduated.

2000s

2000s

king husky mascot outside in the snow giving two thumbs up

Paws enjoys a snowy campus. Photo by Brooks Canaday/Northeastern University.

king husky mascot with students on campus

Paws with incoming freshman on the Snell Library Quad. Photo by Brooks Canaday/Northeastern University.

king husky mascot

Paws. Photo by Mary Knox Merrill/Northeastern University.

Introducing Paws

In the fall of 2003, Northeastern unveiled Paws—a new, updated, costumed mascot designed to replace the student-elected Mr. and Mrs. Husky. Paws proved to be a fun and popular character and maintains an active appearance schedule.

2005-present

2005-present

king husky being petted by a student

The current King Husky—”Moses”—visits campus during Wellness Week, March, 2021. Photo by Ruby Wallau/Northeastern University.

king husky with his breeder and three husky puppies

Husky breeder, Margaret Cook, LA’64, visits Northeastern University with puppies and King Husky on Oct. 2, 2017. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University.

husky puppies

King Husky and his puppy friends visit Centennial Common on May 03, 2021. Photo by Ruby Wallau/Northeastern University.

king husky wearing a graduation cap

King Husky is ready for class! Photo by Ruby Wallau/Northeastern University.

king husky being petted by students

King Husky visits campus in March, 2021. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University.

A new beginning

In 2005, Northeastern looked to return to its tradition of having a live mascot. Margaret Cook, a 1964 graduate of the university’s liberal arts program and breeder of Siberian Huskies at Teeco Kennels in Easton, Massachusetts, answered the call. Three of Cook’s huskies have worn the crown since 2005. The current king, called Moses, frequently makes appearances on campus. If you’re lucky, you’ll see Moses with puppies in tow.

All photos courtesy Northeastern University Archives & Special Collections unless otherwise noted.

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LonelyBones Skate Collective is shredding up gender stereotypes­­–and skate parks–on the East Coast

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On an overcast day in mid-March—the kind that’s colder than one would hope for early spring in New England—a skate park in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston slowly filled with people on roller skates and skateboards. This wasn’t unusual for the park, conveniently situated right near a stop on one of the city’s public transit lines. What made these skaters unique is that none of them looked anything like Tony Hawk (no offense to the Birdman).

The skaters who convened on this particular evening were members of the LonelyBones Skate Collective, a diverse group of skaters of all levels of experience, founded by two Northeastern graduates.

“We’re a collective of nontraditional skaters, a community of people who maybe wanted to learn how to skate when they were kids, but didn’t have the chance,” says Claire Lee, one of the group’s founders, and a 2021 graduate who majored in  bioengineering and math at Northeastern. “To some degree, we all have the same shared experience of wanting to do something but feeling like we weren’t welcome.”

Joy Lustig, a current Northeastern student of chemical engineering, and a member of the LonelyBones Skate Co., practices tricks on her roller skates during an impromptu meetup at the Jamaica Plain Skatepark. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

It’s not just a matter of perception; a majority of skateboarders in the United States are white, straight, and male, according to a number of surveys. A 2016 study published in the Society of Sport Journal used a decade of research at skateparks and other skateboarding sites throughout the U.S., United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand to determine that 83 percent of all frequent skaters were male.

“It is difficult to overstate how much skateboarding remains an intensely masculine gendered activity,” the researchers wrote.

That may be changing, albeit slowly.

A 2019 study by researchers at the University of Southern California and the Tony Hawk Foundation found that 75 percent of skaters are male, 72 percent are straight, and 54 percent are white.

Though they both hold down demanding full-time jobs—Tate, left, as a software engineer at Capital One and Lee, right, as a bioengineer at SQZ Biotech—the founders have big plans for the skate collective. Photos by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

Lee, along with Rayven Tate, a mechanical engineering student at Northeastern who also graduated in 2021, seeks to carve out a fun, welcoming space for all the skaters who aren’t male, straight, or white.

Thus was born LonelyBones Skate Collective—so named because it represents a place for people who might otherwise feel lonely in skate parks. The group hosts meetups once a month (except during the winter months) and invites newcomers and experienced skaters alike to join in a day of camaraderie and shredding. Usually 80 or more people show up, and closer to 100 in the summer, Lee and Tate say.

An organic kind of community forms each time, Tate says. People will bring music, snacks, and artwork to share and sell, while more experienced skaters will teach newcomers. Everyone supports each other’s attempts to learn something new, whether that means nailing a flip or simply getting on the board without falling.

“Being around other like-minded people makes me feel way more comfortable in that space; it’s a familial feeling almost,” Tate says. “I’m more inclined to try a new trick when I’m not worried that people will judge me if I fall. Here, if I fall down, my friends are right there to pick me up and tell me to try it again.”

Clockwise from left: Molly Gagnon, an architecture student at Northeastern; Tate; Peri Drew MacRae, who is studying sociology and cultural anthropology at Northeastern; Lustig; and Lee. Photos by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

At the impromptu meetup in Jamaica Plain, a  group of LonelyBones skaters were cheering each other on encouraging each other to stick a landing or pull off an elusive trick. Shouts of “You got this!” and “Once more, get up there!” formed a certain kind of melody over the rhythmic whir and thud of wheels on concrete.

Though they both hold down demanding full-time jobs—Tate as a software engineer at Capital One and Lee as a bioengineer at SQZ Biotech—the founders have big plans for the skate collective. Last summer, they won a grant from Skate Like a Girl, a nonprofit organization based in Seattle, that enabled them to attend leadership workshops for “grassroots skateboard community leaders who identify as queer, trans, and/or women,” according to program information.

The program is ongoing, and enables Tate and Lee to learn more about how to formalize their collective, if they want, with basics in the legal, business, and financial underpinnings of nonprofit organizations. In September, they’ll fly out to Seattle to participate in Skate Like a Girl’s biggest event of the year, Wheels of Fortune.

Tate and Lee have plans to grow LonelyBones Skate Collective beyond Boston, envision offshoots all along the East Coast.

Most skateboarders in the United States are white, straight, and male, according to a number of surveys, but LonelyBones seeks to change that, and create space for everyone else who skates in the meantime. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

“I had no idea, when we started, how much the East Coast needed a group like LonelyBones,” Lee says. She and Tate were inspired by nontraditional skate collectives that have popped up in the West Coast. But, they realized they needed to tailor an experience that reflects East Coast—and particularly New England—skate culture. That means skating on cobblestones, through tightly-packed cities, in colder weather—in short, in conditions that deviate from the kind of golden, year-round conditions in the West.

No matter how big they get, though, Tate and Lee plan to stay true to their Boston roots. They’re considering starting a skate scholarship for gear and lessons for elementary-school-aged skaters (or would-be skaters), and expand opportunities for local artists and artisans.

“This is one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done,” Tate says. “I knew that I would enjoy doing this work, but it still surprises me every time how fulfilled I am by it.”  

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu

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50 years after graduating from Northeastern, Golden Grads reflect on what has changed–and what has not

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This is part of our coverage of Northeastern’s 2022 Commencement exercises. For more, visit our dedicated Commencement page.

More than 50 years have passed since their own graduation from Northeastern. But as they sat around a table at Fenway Park before the university’s 2022 Commencement ceremonies, Ken Vancisin, Dave Nettleton and Lynn Loudermilch Andersen still referred to each other as “The Roommates.”

Of course, Andersen wasn’t actually one of the roommates when they were students from 1966 to 1971. Women wouldn’t have shared an apartment or dorm room with their male counterparts at the time. But Andersen became an essential part of the friend group while dating her husband of 50 years, Richard Andersen.

He was not present on Friday, but is another member of “The Roommates” and is currently a part-time lecturer at Northeastern. The group has annual traditions that they have continued to share with their spouses and families over the decades.

“The Roommates” were back in Boston on Friday for this year’s Golden Graduates events, during which Northeastern alumni who graduated 50 or more years ago participated in the university’s annual Commencement ceremonies and reconnected with classmates through reunion festivities. 

The Golden Grads reminisced about the challenges they faced both big and small as students in the 1960s and 1970s. With far fewer dormitories on campus at the time, many students lived off campus and commuted. Vancisin said that when “The Roommates” lived on Hemenway Street, they had an additional, uninvited housemate: A mouse they nicknamed Rasputin. 

Northeastern’s Boston campus has changed tremendously in the last 50 years, said Vancisin, who graduated in 1971 but carried his student ID card in his wallet to the 2022 Commencement ceremonies. When he was a student, Dodge Hall was the library and there was a patch of dirt for the parking lot.

Three of “The Roommates,” a group of Northeastern graduates from the class of 1971 that have remained close friends over more than 50 years. From left to right, Dave Nettleton, Lynn Loudermilch Andersen, and Ken Vancisin. Vancisin still has his student ID card. Photos by Eva Botkin-Kowacki

The Boston campus is “amazing” now, said Robert Maddock, a 1972 College of Engineering graduate who also joined the Golden Grad festivities. “When we were here there were like 12 buildings.”

“I love the campus. I love that it has trees and flowers and everything built in,” Maddock said. “The buildings are now where parking lots were before. We had nothing on the other side of the railroad tracks, and now you’ve got phenomenal buildings.” He was referring to the parts of the campus on the Roxbury side of the MBTA train tracks, which includes the Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering Complex.

The campus isn’t the only thing that has changed over the last 50 years. The world has, particularly for women. When Andersen was a nursing student at Northeastern, she recalls her father having to cosign for her to purchase a $35 sewing machine. Women couldn’t get their own credit card without a man signing for it, she explained, calling it “the dark ages.”

Professional aspirations were limited for women at the time, too. Male/female roles were fairly standardized, Andersen said, and in high school in the 1960s, girls typically had the option of joining the future nurses, teachers or secretaries clubs. Andersen didn’t know any men in nursing at the time. 

At Northeastern, there was more openness to women in other professions, she said. One woman who ran for Homecoming Court with Andersen was an engineering student, and Vancisin recalled that there were two female students in one of his accounting classes. 

Things were changing. “It was like I started in my mother’s generation and ended in my sister’s generation,” Andersen said, describing the cultural shift as the 1960s shifted into the 1970s.

Cheryl (Grenier) Garside, who graduated in 1972 with a bachelor of science degree, described a notable shift in her experience: “Our year was the first year that women were allowed to leave the dorm with pants on,” she said. “We had to wear dresses.”

The years that these Golden Grads studied at Northeastern coincided with the Vietnam War. And in 1969, men just their age were up for the draft. The draft and other aspects of the war fomented intense protest—particularly by students.

“When we were in school, it was the height of protest,” recalled Jeff Garside, Cheryl’s husband, who also graduated in 1972. “Students were taking over buildings, peace marches, stuff like that.”

In response to the U.S. invading Cambodia as part of the Vietnam War, students on nearly 900 campuses across the nation walked out of classes and participated in protests in 1970.

A catalyst for the massive protests occurred when National Guardsmen opened fire into a large demonstration at Kent State University in early May and four students died. The Kent State shooting further fueled strikes that shut down hundreds of campuses across the country. Students also traveled by the busload to Washington. 

Ken Block, another member of the class of 1972, remembers participating in the protests. There was a network of contacts across universities, he recalled, coordinating marches and other protests. Students would hand out fliers all over campus every day, and Block even traveled to D.C. with press credentials as a student journalist. 

Without the internet, it was difficult to know if the protests were having an effect, he said, so he’d call home to his family in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, to gauge the influence the striking students had beyond campus.

For students in the college military honor society Scabbard and Blade, which is for members of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), “it was a hard time to be in uniform,” said Vancisin. He recalls protestors disrupting morning exercises for the student trainees. 

When asked how he felt about his Northeastern experience more than 50 years later, Vancisin said, “If I had to do it all over again, I would do the same thing. Maybe I’d study more.” 

Jessica Taylor Price contributed reporting.

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu

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Women Who Empower announce 2022 Innovator Awards winners among Northeastern students and alumnae

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Twenty-two is the lucky number for recipients of the 2022 Innovator Awards, given out by the Northeastern’s Women Who Empower platform. A panel of judges selected 22 female honorees, who will receive a total of $220,000 in cash prizes, with first-place winners taking home $22,000 each in the award program’s second year. 

Diane MacGillivray, Northeastern’s senior vice president for university advancement, is the co-founder of Women Who Empower. She said the awards provide more than just money. They also provide an opportunity to share what these female entrepreneurs are working on, find mentors and a supportive community.

“These awards are not materially large enough to create the difference in a business’ success or not,” she said. “[It’s about] increasing visibility and recognition for some of the most impressive entrepreneurs in our community and enabling access to somebody that can help make a difference in what they are doing.”

The 2022 winners represent all Northeastern colleges and multiple countries on five different continents. The contestants came from a variety of disciplines ranging from consumer goods to robotics to social enterprises.

“The finalists were reflective of the university as a whole, in its global reach and in its interdisciplinarity,” MacGillivray said.

The participants were divided into five categories: young alumnae graduates, young alumnae undergraduates, experienced alumnae who graduated before 2014, undergraduate students and graduate students.

The winners of the first-place awards in each category are:

  • Samantha Johnson, a young alumnae graduate of the College of Engineering, Class of 2021, who is working on a low-cost communication product customized for deafblind individuals at her company, Tatum Robotics. 
  • Temidola Ikomi, co-founder of a female-owned womenswear business, Irawo Studio, in Nigeria and a young alumnae undergraduate of the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Class of 2017. 
  • Natasha Shazana, an experienced alumnae of the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Class of 2013, and owner of the empowering bra brand, Soko, for everyday women in Malaysia. 
  • Tabitha Boyton, founder and editor in chief of an interdisciplinary magazine of politics, law, art and culture, Res Publica, and an undergraduate student of the London-based New College of the Humanities, Class of 2022. 
  • And Cynthia Orofo, a graduate student at the Bouvé College of Health Sciences, Class of 2024, who created a hybrid health support program, Culture Care Collective, that integrates community health workers into clinical care teams to coordinate care for marginalized groups and increase access to socially supportive healthcare at low costs.

More than 135 contestants were evaluated this year based on several rubrics: innovation, leadership, entrepreneurship, authenticity, community and inclusion, and their track record. The highest scorers faced the expert judges for the final showcase via Zoom.

All of the winners demonstrated “a great deal of heart,” love for what they are doing and willingness to keep trying and face the obstacles, MacGillivray said.

“It is really inspiring to be around all of these women who really are taking ownership of their leadership, and taking ownership of ideas, and taking ownership of where they want to go in life,” said Jill Bornstein, one of the judges and founder of UpNext Leadership and Executive Coaching.

Other judges included Leslie Kilgore, a board member and former chief marketing officer at Netflix and a former director of marketing at Amazon; Julietta Dexter, co-founder and chief growth and purpose officer of ScienceMagic, a creative and strategic brand-building company; Cathy Papoulias-Sakellaris, a former executive at global companies like Procter & Gamble, Nielsen Marketing Research, ITT, and Dun & Bradstreet; Cheryl Kaplan, president of M.Gemi, an Italian shoe and handbag brand; and Jean Kovacs, an entrepreneur, angel investor and partner at a venture capital firm Hillsven.

“Part of the value of this competition is they will have each other,” Kovacs said. “And there is a tremendous amount of value in having a cohort where they are all at about the same stage of their business journey. Just having people to bounce ideas off of is really, really valuable.”

The Innovator Awards are given to the woman and not to the venture, said Betsy Ludwig, executive director of women’s entrepreneurship at Northeastern, who oversaw organizing of the award. There are a lot of other accelerator programs that focus on the venture itself and that have stringent rules about how the money can be spent.

“I believe that as a university, we are in the business of building and supporting entrepreneurs and innovators and not building businesses, so we want people who are going to go out into the world and keep doing this,” Ludwig said, adding that if a woman succeeds she will hopefully start investing in other young entrepreneurs.

“We know that women’s access to capital still lags far behind,” said MacGillivray, despite improved balance in the number of women who think of themselves as entrepreneurs and men with the same ambitions. 

This year’s second-place winners will receive $10,000 grants, while two additional honors recipients in each category will each get $5,000.

“There is just a huge appetite for this award, and there are just so many amazing women from all different backgrounds who keep applying and keep wanting to be part of this community,” Ludwig said. “We hope over the years that this community will grow to support each other, nourish each other, and also just inspire the next generation of female founders.”

MacGillivray hopes that Women Who Empower will continue to scale its support of students and alums throughout the entire Northeastern network.

“Northeastern is the only place with this number of campus platforms that can really create that really direct connection between different countries, between different cities, between different sectors,” she said.

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu.

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This entrepreneur empowers Malaysian women, one bra at a time

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When Natasha Shazana meets her Instagram followers in real life, some can’t even recall her name. To them she is @brapreneur, the force behind a new bra company, Soko, whose mission is to bring empowerment and comfort to everyday women in Malaysia.

To launch the bra business in her home country, Shazana, a Northeastern graduate, Class of 2013, quit a private equity job in New York City. But she hasn’t regretted the move, she says. In just a year after the launch she has grown her revenue to six figures. She won a 2022 Innovator Award, presented by Northeastern’s Women Who Empower, in the experienced alumnae category, and $22,000 in June.

“I am a big extrovert, I derive my energy from other people,” Shazana says. “That is why I love and [am] so excited to be a part of the Women Who Empower supportive community.” 

Her old college friend Jessica Pogranyi confirms, “She is super sociable, probably the most sociable person I know. 

“She has a lot of energy. She is a go-getter.”

While Pogranyi is preparing herself to launch an environmentally-friendly mezcal brand in Mexico, she and Shazana often discuss their businesses.

“She is a great listener and advice giver,” Pogranyi says. “Every time I message her, she is awake somehow.”

And Shazana does have a lot to share after the last three years of developing a product and launching her business. 

“It’s hard. It’s really hard,” she says. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve done in my life.” 

Shazana grew up between Malaysia, Singapore, U.K., Australia, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, while her parents pursued careers in banking. At the age of 17, Shazana came to study at Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business in Boston, after her prom date told her about the university and its co-op programs. 

She maximized every single opportunity at Northeastern, Shazana says, doing two co-ops, two internships, and a semester abroad in Shanghai, China. She majored in marketing and finance.

Surprisingly, unlike a lot of her classmates, she struggled to secure a job before graduating, despite applying to close to 200 companies. She almost started a food truck business to create her own opportunity, before she landed a foreign exchange broker position and moved to New York City.

“I had five computer screens, and I was getting yelled at all the time on the phone,” she laughs. Next, she spent five years working in institutional sales and private equity at Morgan Stanley, which she left in 2019 to move back to Malaysia to pursue her own entrepreneurial idea. 

Shazana was ready to try her own business with the support of her future husband, Chris Evans, who also quit his day job and originally acted as Soko’s co-founder, providing her with big picture, strategic advice.

Although Shazana has not lived in Malaysia for almost two decades of her life, she felt a pull to go back and try to build a business that would represent real Malaysian women. She ventured into bras because women’s empowerment has not reached this industry in Malaysia yet. The existing brands did not reflect values of modern women or what local millennials and Gen Z’ers wanted from them, Shazana says.

“I wanted to drive change and accelerate change in the broad industry in terms of representation, first and foremost,” Shazana says. 

As she says, the industry either offered “grandma” bras or pushed oversexualized images of mostly white women, photoshopped and airbrushed, in the ad campaigns. Very rarely one could see a brown skinned model in the ads.

“For me, that’s not enough. Like, why do we put up with this?” Shazana says.

She knew that in a Muslim country like Malaysia, change could only be brought about in a respectful way and at a pace that people can appreciate there, she says. But Shazana wanted to at least start and have a brand that stood for representation 365 days a year and not just during infrequent token diversity ad campaigns. 

two women holding up a bra together
Soko, a bra brand that a Northeastern’s graduate Natasha Shazana launched in Malaysia in 2021, aims to empower and represent real, everyday and diverse women of this Muslim country. Photos Courtesy of Natasha Shazana

Shopping for a bra was an overwhelming experience in itself, with hundreds of items from different brands packed into one store, which made women as uncomfortable as Shazana felt, buying her first bra at a Malaysian mall 20 years ago.  

“I have my personal stories, but I interviewed, spoke at conferences and focus groups and surveyed over 300 women before I even launched my business,” Shazana says.“I needed to see if other people feel the same pain about representation, about the dislike for the bra shopping experience.”

Shazana focused on three things with her bra brand: representation, utmost comfort and great shopping experience. She called her company Soko, from a Malaysian word sokong, which in English means “support.” 

To create the bras she would be proud of, Shazana conducted extensive research. She found an experienced technical designer who carefully designed the bras. First manufactured samples were tested by 50 women, who slept, jogged and jumped in them. 

Currently, Soko offers three styles of bras—an everyday wireless bra, a lacy bralette and a sports bra-like lounge one—for about $29 each. With the Innovator Awards prize money, Shazana is planning to expand Soko’s size offering from L to 2XL. 

During the COVID-19 lockdown, Shazana started building her community on Instagram under the handle “brapreneur.” 

In the first three hours after the launch, Soko made five digits in sales, Shazana says. She attributes the launch success to her followers who were posting about the bras on Instagram.

She is growing her business organically, through word of mouth because it is capital intensive and she is using her own limited savings.

“Everything I make goes back into saving for our next purchase order,” Shazana says.

Her main marketing tools are social media, specifically, Instagram, and pop-up events. In Soko’s first year of operation she only spent $2,500 on marketing.

There were some major setbacks in her entrepreneurial journey as well. The first factory in China she used to manufacture the bras ghosted her during the pandemic. The second factory in China did not meet the quality standard Shazana hoped for. She found a third factory in Sri Lanka that came highly recommended for their workmanship.

She cherishes the feedback and stories her clients share with her, from a cancer survivor, to a mother who bought the first bra for her 12-year-old daughter, to a transgender person, to a client who was happy to see a model in a hijab that looks like her.

“I have grown the most in these last few years than I have ever in any other chapter in my life,” Shazana says. 

That is why she doesn’t regret leaving the corporate job at Morgan Stanley. But she is eager to share practical advice she has learnt the hard way, “Don’t quit your day job immediately is what I wish someone had told me.”

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu.

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Northeastern graduate takes sketch comedy show on first Off-Broadway run

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Nick Shanman has always loved performing, especially if it makes people laugh.

“My dad said I put on a pirate costume when I was 4 and I wouldn’t take it off for a year,” says Shanman, 27, a graduate of Northeastern University class of 2018.

The days of playing pirate in his living room are long gone, but Shanman is still making people laugh––it’s just on a much larger stage. With his first Off-Broadway show, “I Mostly Blame Myself,” the Northeastern graduate is performing to sold out crowds at The Players Theatre in Greenwich Village. If laughter is a drug, Shanman is riding high.

“When you’re up there and you get that laugh from something you wrote or something you’re saying, there’s just no better high,” Shanman says.

A series of thoughtful, humorous sketches based around a common theme that changes every few months, “I Mostly Blame Myself” is a showcase for Shanman, the creative force behind a show that has had a winding path to the Off-Broadway stage. Shanman’s recent success as a writer/director/actor didn’t happen overnight.

The Off-Broadway version of “I Mostly Blame Myself” hit the stage in July, but it’s actually the third iteration of Shanman’s sketch comedy show. After graduating from Northeastern with a degree in business–“I got it to make my parents happy,” Shanman jokes–and a minor in film production, Shanman, like many young artists chasing stardom, moved to L.A.

Throughout his time at Northeastern, he was making short films with other students. He hopes to take that experience and apply it to bigger and better projects but found he was mostly shooting documentaries for other directors. But in his spare time, he wrote and filmed a pilot version of “I Mostly Blame Myself” with a few friends.

“I just wanted to create a show that was really all about dark yet relatable sketches that people could connect with,” Shanman says.

He successfully pitched and released the 15-minute, three-sketch pilot to YouTube where it quickly racked up about 90,000 views. Ultimately, the pandemic threw a wrench in Shanman’s plans for the show, and he moved back east to New York City, turning instead to the film and theater scene there.

By the time 2021 rolled around, theater companies were looking for ways to get back audiences after a 19-month shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, including finding new acts. Shanman pitched a live, theatrical version of his YouTube pilot to several theaters and ended up securing a test run performance at the 50-person black box in The Players Theatre.

Despite having no cast or crew, Shanman pulled the show together in two months and sold out the first performance in August 2021, even receiving a standing ovation.

In transferring the show to the stage, Shanman had to make some changes.

“The original pilot was a little darker, a little sadder, like that type of comedy, and with the theater, we wanted to make it a little bigger, a little more digestible,” Shanman says.

The stage show features more movement and more musical numbers, which have become such a huge hit with audiences that Shanman makes sure to include at least three in every show.

“Half of us are not dancers, which made it even funnier, but we worked our asses off to get on the same page,” Shanman says.

After the test run, Michael Sgouros, owner of The Player Theatre, offered Shanman and the show a full residency for the remainder of 2021. Until June 2022, when it ended its Off Off-Broadway run, the show had sold out each of its bi-monthly performances. When Sgouros offered Shanman the chance to bring the show to the theater’s 180-person main stage for its first off-Broadway run, Shanman jumped at the opportunity.

“Hearing 180 people laugh is so much more satisfying than 50 people laughing,” Shanman says.

Going from Off-Off-Broadway to Off-Broadway–the definitions are based on crowd capacity–came with some new challenges. Shanman had to learn to relinquish some creative control, something he was initially reluctant to do. Shanman wrote and directed the original YouTube pilot by himself, but now, with a cast of trained actors, there are more cooks in the kitchen.

“When you’re doing a show in Manhattan … and bringing the script to eight actors, some of them are writers, some of them don’t think their character would say that,” Shanman says.

Now, the entire cast is involved in writing sketches, which has given them a new sense of connection to the show.

“When people are performing in the show, you want them to be proud of it, you want them to be happy doing it, comfortable doing it,” Shanman says. “You want to make sure they’re just as excited and think it’s just as funny as you do.”

That doesn’t mean Shanman is any less involved. He still writes or has a hand in the majority of sketches. And while he originally resisted the idea of putting himself in sketches, he’s now, due to the encouragement of his castmates, in almost every single sketch, including the musicals.

Shanman has been overwhelmed by the response to “I Mostly Blame Myself.” He’s dreamt of “making it” as a writer and director since he wrote his first feature length script as a junior in high school.

At the moment, he still has a day job working as a digital marketer for Slate, a lactose-free chocolate milk startup created by two fellow Northeastern graduates. But he hopes the success of “I Mostly Blame Myself” will be a way for him to transition into feature film work. His role model is sketch comedy-genius-turned-horror-maestro Jordan Peele for a reason.

“This is the first thing for me that has actually been tangible, and it’s put me in a position where I’m actually getting a lot closer to my goals,” Shanman says. “This coming to life has given me the motivation and the energy and the inspiration to keep pushing forward as a writer and a performer.”

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu

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Northeastern graduate leads the charge on guaranteed basic income

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When Abbey Holland graduated from Northeastern University in 2022, she knew she wanted to make a difference in her community. Now a coordinator for Boston-based nonprofit Camp Harbor View’s guaranteed basic income program, Holland is fulfilling her dream. 

More than that, she’s leading the charge on guaranteed basic income programs, which have found increasing support nationwide since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Camp Harbor View’s program, which provides $583 in unrestricted cash funds every month to 50 families, is in the middle of its two-year pilot, but it’s already been a success for the families in the program, Holland says.

“There are, luckily, positive financial impacts, like being able to save more and paying down debts and working toward financial goals,” Holland told Northeastern Global News. “The families who are receiving the money are experiencing less psychological stress and more stable family environments, which is really great.”

Camp Harbor View, which funds its programs using donations from individuals, corporations and foundations, kicked off the program in September 2021, but it’s far from the first guaranteed basic income program. The idea for guaranteed, or universal, basic income has a long-history that stretches back to the concept of a negative income tax, proposed by British writer Juliet Rhys-Williams in the 1940s and popularized in the U.S. by conservative economist Milton Friedman in 1962. President Richard Nixon, through his proposed Family Assistance Plan, and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern attempted to bring the concept of a negative income tax to the public, but both failed.

More recently the idea, revived as universal basic income, has picked up steam. As the pandemic revealed cracks in the welfare system, cities like Los Angeles, New Orleans, Denver and even Birmingham, Alabama, launched universal basic income pilot programs. Even the federal government provided direct cash payments during this time, albeit on a less regular basis.

The name changed but the purpose was the same: to give low-income people a safety net that can help them afford the most basic necessities, like food and shelter.

Headshot of Bob Triest
Professor Bob Triest. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

“The main benefit is one of lifting people out of poverty and providing a real solid base of guaranteed income that people can depend upon,” says Robert Triest, chair and professor of economics at Northeastern.

“Over several decades now, we’ve experienced a very substantial increase in income inequality in the United States as well as in many other advanced countries,” Triest adds. “There’s a sense that we need to do something about this and that there’s too large a degree of inequality in economic well-being.”

Boston-area local governments in Chelsea and Cambridge kickstarted programs, and, in lieu of Boston offering a similar program, Camp Harbor View followed suit. Holland, who has worked with Camp Harbor View since she was a service learning tutor in 2018 and later a guaranteed basic income co-op in 2021, leaped at the opportunity to join the team full-time. Her capstone as a human services major was focused on the history of public services and “the gaps that need to be filled”––and how programs like the one at Camp Harbor View could fill them.

“Based on pilots that I looked at and journals that had been published and different information that I was able to find, [I came up with] what I thought was a possible ideal guaranteed income program,” Holland says. “Being able to do that was very cool, but it still felt very far away. … To now turn around and have my hands on something real, it’s been a really cool progression.”

Holland’s capstone and classroom experience, combined with her co-op at Camp Harbor View, primed her for the challenge of coordinating a fledgling program.

Camp Harbor View serves mostly Black and brown families across Boston through its summer camps, food distribution and holiday assistance program. But Holland says the guaranteed basic income program has provided a different level of support, one that could “change the ways that social services work and can be provided.”

“One mother was telling me that because she’s trying to budget better, her family is eating less takeout so they’re eating more nutritious food and they’re getting to cook meals together and her kids are able to learn those skills because she can afford to buy more groceries,” Holland says.

Although there’s been a groundswell of support around universal basic income programs, there are still critics. One of the main criticisms has historically been how UBI or GBI programs would impact the workforce, partially based on the results of earlier experiments in cities like Seattle and Denver during the 1970s, according to Triest.

“There was a concern at the time that if you gave people money, then they wouldn’t want to work,” Triest says. “The experiments generally found there is a modest reduction in labor supply, although not one that was catastrophic.”

Holland has heard similar criticisms, but the community at Camp Harbor View has been nothing but positive. Families are already asking about how the program can extend and expand to help even more people. 

“Being able to work on a program that is contributing to a really amazing body of work that is pushing forward guaranteed income and showing that it does work and it’s meaningful and should be invested in, I am very grateful for that,” Holland says. 

Cody Mello-Klein is a Northeastern Global News reporter. Email him at c.mello-klein@northeastern.edu. Follow him on Twitter @Proelectioneer.

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How a Northeastern graduate is using his brewing company, Rupee Beer, for cultural diplomacy, not just good times

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When Vanit “Van” Sharma graduated from Northeastern University in 2011, he wanted to be a diplomat. Instead, he created a brewing company, but it turns out they’re more similar than you might think.

Founded by Sharma and his brother, Sumit, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rupee Beer is a lager designed to be paired with Indian food, but it’s more than that. Rupee is a way to honor their family’s Indian roots, their parents’ legacy as entrepreneurs and show the world the beauty of Indian culture. 

“This is beer diplomacy 101,” Sharma says. “We’re representing the culture.”

What started as an experiment in their parents’ Indian restaurant in Maine has become a successful brew that’s available in three major retailers in 10 states. And that’s only the beginning. Sharma says there are plans to expand Rupee into the South this summer and that the company is laying the foundation to bring Rupee to London.

The brothers have big dreams, but if anyone is equipped to make them a reality, it’s Sharma. Entrepreneurship runs in his family’s blood. His parents originally hail from India but have spent their lives globetrotting, from Germany to London, where Sharma was born, to Maine, where they eventually settled and opened a few Indian restaurants in the early 1990s. They still live in Portland and run their flagship restaurant, Bombay Mahal, a Maine institution and the oldest Indian restaurant in the state.

Some of Sharma’s earliest memories are connected to his parents’ restaurants––the tastes, the smells, the energy. Growing up in one of the few Indian families in Portland, which at the time was even less diverse than it is now, wasn’t always easy, Sharma says. But his father often told him and his brothers to be “good cultural ambassadors for India,” something Sharma took to heart, especially as he started studying international relations at Northeastern. 

By the time Sharma had graduated with degrees in political science and international relations in 2011, he had gone on five Dialogues of Civilizations. His taste for global experiences brought him back to Northeastern, and he graduated with a master’s in international relations and global studies in 2013.

After graduating, Sharma returned to London to work in sales and continue entrepreneurial ventures on the side. He founded Work Spot, a coworking space startup, in London with another Northeastern graduate, but then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Both he and his brother, who was in Australia at the time, were forced to return to the U.S. due to pandemic lockdown procedures. They suddenly found themselves back in Portland, working at their parents’ restaurant like they had when they were younger.

Like a lot of restaurant owners in 2020, Sharma’s parents fell victim to supply chain issues, particularly when it came to major Indian beer brands like King Fisher and Taj Mahal. 

“A lot of the containers coming over from India just weren’t coming as consistently, and the ones that were coming, they were giving preference to the distributors in the larger regions, like New York City or Florida or California, since that’s where they sell the bulk of their beer,” Sumit Sharma says.

That was enough to spark the Sharma brothers’ imagination. What if there was a domestic-brewed Indian beer, one that actually complemented Indian food?

Sharma and his brother knew they weren’t brewers, so the first thing they did was find a partner who knew the ins and outs of the brewing world. Fortunately, they found someone right down the road from their parents’ house: Alan Pugsley, the founder of Shipyard Brewing Company. Known as the Johnny Appleseed of craft brewing, Pugsley has helped launch more than 80 craft beer brands in his more than 40-year career.

Sharma and his brother met with Pugsley, and he had them set up a tasting at their parents’ restaurant with different beers and different Indian dishes. The core concept of what Rupee would be––and, more importantly, what it wouldn’t be––came out of that early tasting.

“The one problem that we were always trying to solve is that when you are having something like chicken tikka masala and butter naan, those are really heavy things already,” Sharma says. “If you take a really gassy traditional beer that’s mass-produced, that’s not a vibe. You’re going to be burping, having indigestion. Going out, you’re going to feel really uncomfortably full.”

To account for that, Rupee has a lower level of carbonation than most beer. It also is made using rice, maize and malt, as well as three different kinds of hops, to smooth out the taste and complement, not interfere, with the powerful flavors in Indian food.

“You want to taste those flavors, those intricate spices, and other beers were competing with those,” Sumit Sharma says. “We wanted to make something that was very smooth, that still had its own flavor but complemented the food and didn’t overpower it.”

It took two and a half years and four pilot brews to finalize the formula, but Sharma says the final result was worth the wait. Rupee is now available in Whole Foods, Costco and Total Wine in 10 states, from Maine to Virginia. It’s also the only Indian beer offered at their parents’ restaurant.

Rupee contracts with Dorchester Brewing to brew, package and ship its beer, and currently produces 60 barrels––about 600 cases––per month. With plans to expand its operations into the South this summer, Sharma anticipates the operation will double in size this quarter. Sharma and his brother also have their eyes on London, which Sharma calls the “curry capital of the world.” 

“We chose [the name] Rupee because it was iconic, and now we want to execute our mission to bring more iconic Indian inspired items to an audience that wants a little more masala in their lives, a little more flavor, a little something different,” Sharma says.

Cody Mello-Klein is a Northeastern Global News reporter. Email him at c.mello-klein@northeastern.edu. Follow him on Twitter @Proelectioneer.

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‘That sense of togetherness is what is needed.’ Northeastern entrepreneur from Ghana builds his restaurant business on African hospitality

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Ramzi Yamusah, an ambitious entrepreneur from Ghana, is on a mission to become “the king of African hospitality.”

photo of Ramzi Yamusah
Ramzi Yamusah, a Northeastern graduate who is building his restaurant and experience business around African hospitality, at a construction site in Ghana. Courtesy Photo

His company, Lifestyle Experiences Holdings, owns three restaurants in Accra, the capital of Ghana, but Yamusah does not wish to limit himself to the restaurant business or to one continent.

The 2014 Northeastern University graduate wants to better connect the rest of the world to Africa and its more than 1.4 billion people by creating outstanding, memorable experiences both for visitors to the continent and outside of it.

“That sense of togetherness is what is needed [in the world] to really drive collective progress,” he says. “And there’s no better way to share ideas, talk about collaborations, bring positive energy in conversations than over good food and drinks.”

African people find strong grounding in where they’ve built their culture, Yamusah says, in the meaning of their heritage and community.

“Rene Descartes, a French philosopher, said ‘I think therefore I am.’ Africans are more about ‘I am because we are,’ or ‘I am related therefore I am,’” Yamusah says. “That philosophy is something that we want to push and spread all around the world where people really see that hospitality is about community.” 

Yamusah says he gets his drive and ambition from his father.

“He has really shown me that it’s not where you start from, but it’s really where you want to see yourself and how you make that happen,” he says.

He also has a close relationship with his mother, who helps him maintain strong values in business, he says.

“When it comes to who you are, how you do business, how you relate to people, maintaining a high level of integrity is very important. And how important your reputation is,” Yamusah says. “It’s things that I really don’t joke with.”

Yamusah, 32, was born in Ghana and attended high school there, but his family also lived for some time in Düsseldorf, Germany, where his father worked for Ghana Airways. He says his upbringing in Germany helped shape him as a person.

“That German culture of discipline is real,” he says, smiling. “African culture of doing business requires a bit more flexibility when it comes to timelines and other things.”

When Yamusah was looking to attend a university in the United States, Northeastern emerged as the clear choice because of its location and signature co-op program. He enrolled in 2010.

“I discovered this love for the city and that really narrowed down my choices,” he says. “Northeastern co-op program was very much the reason why I really wanted to go there and selected it, because it gave me not only the book knowledge, but also practical experience.”

Majoring in biology and minoring in business, Yamusah did his co-op at The Wyss Institute at Harvard University, which develops innovative technologies based on how nature builds things and accelerates their translation into commercial products.

In addition to a top-notch education, he says, Northeastern also helped him connect with people from around the world who he met as a student and continues to do business with.

“You don’t just graduate with a degree, but you graduate with tools that allow you to actually succeed,” he says.

After graduation, Yamusah decided to go into business instead of going to medical school, which was his original plan. He launched a tech startup in Boston offering on-demand valet parking, learned how to fly helicopters and received his commercial pilot license. 

At that point, he had to make another decision—go to med school, work as a commercial helicopter pilot or “upskill” himself to be a better businessman. 

Yamusah decided to get a master’s degree in business finance from Brunel University in London, and after that, moved back to Ghana in 2016. There, he worked as a general manager at an oil and gas services company and the family hotel and real estate business, Yamusah Group.

“I had been involved in concept development, sourcing, franchising and construction,” he says. “I can basically take a site anywhere in the world and take it from dust to a fully functioning business.”

In 2017, Yamusah decided to start his first restaurant, Vine, that serves Afro-Mediterranean food.

“I honestly didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I didn’t really know the business,” he says, even though he was hoping his experience with hotels would translate into the restaurant business.

“But you know, when you’re running a restaurant on its own, it comes with its own challenges,” he says. “Nonetheless, I braved all that out.”

Vine was his learning curve, he says. After gaining more confidence, he developed an Afro-Asian fusion food concept with executive chef Sakorn Somboon for his next restaurant, Kōzo.

“It was a big restaurant, almost 200 covers, fine dining, really about 10 levels above where I was a year before,” Yamusah says. “I threw myself into the deep end of the swimming pool.”

Kōzo opened in December 2019 and hosted the Essence magazine New Year’s Eve party attended by such celebrities as American rapper Ludacris, German-American actor Boris Kodjoe, singer Beyonce’s mother Tina Knowles, and American DJ Fresh.  

In November 2022, Yamusah opened a third restaurant called Chicken and Wine, targeting the fast-casual segment of the industry.

“We want to make sure that we don’t leave anybody out,” he says, referring to customers with various purchasing power. 

Being a part of the community also translates for Yamusah into developing homegrown talent for his businesses, working with local suppliers and thinking about sustainability. 

Kōzo’s menu is built on the farm-to-table approach, using produce and herbs from local farmers and coffee from a local roaster, Bean Masters, which exclusively sources beans from Ghanaian female growers. Vine restaurant serves beverages in glasses made at a local glass blowing studio from recycled glass bottles.   

In the second quarter of this year, he plans to open his first international location in Kigali, Rwanda, which has come a long way in almost 30 years since the civil war and Tutsi genocide, Yamusah says.  

He is also interested in developing events, unique products and other experiences to promote Africa.

He recently returned from Mexico City where Lifestyle Experiences partnered with a refined tequila brand Casa Dragones and curated an Afro-Mexican experience at a gallery opening. His goal is to bring his business to the U.S. within the next five years.

“We want to truly create that bridge where you have the same restaurants, the same experiences also in North America, which will serve as a shopfront for people to see what Africa is about in this new contemporary way,” he says.

Yamusah is certain that aspiration is important in achieving anything and anyone anywhere in the world can be successful.

“I have always believed that the most important thing that anybody could have is dreams and aspirations, because it is something that nobody sends you a bill for,” he says. “You don’t pay to dream, so if you’re dreaming, it’s best to dream as big as you can.”

Alena Kuzub is a Northeastern Global News reporter. Email her at a.kuzub@northeastern.edu. Follow her on Twitter @AlenaKuzub.

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Springfest is coming to New York City with a lineup full of Northeastern alum performers

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Springfest, Northeastern University’s annual weeklong celebration, culminated with an energetic concert from Carly Rae Jepsen and Aminé last weekend, but the party isn’t over quite yet.

Alex Bender, a Northeastern graduate, is keeping the good vibes going on Thursday with a Springfest concert in New York City spotlighting a lineup made up entirely of Northeastern alum performers. 

The concert, which will be held at the Market Hotel in Brooklyn, will feature performances from electro-pop duo Hey WOW, rapper LEEWAY and indie-pop artist Maya Lucia. The event starts at 7 p.m., and the first set kicks off at 7:30 p.m. There will be a $10 cover charge that includes a drink ticket and appetizers.

Bender says the idea behind this Springfest offshoot is to celebrate the strong and significant alumni community in New York City––there are more than 4,000 alumni in NYC––as well as the university’s artists.

“Through this, I think it really shined a light on the amount of artists we have, even if they didn’t study in [the College of Arts, Media and Design,]” Bender, who graduated in 2020 and now serves on the Young Alumni Advisory Board, says. “This is a very tangible way to appreciate that, create space for it and also just give people a chance to have a lot of fun.”

Headshot of Alex Bender
Alex Bender, the organizer for the Springfest in New York City event, graduated from Northeastern University in 2020 with a B.S. in industrial engineering and M.S. in engineering management. Photo Courtesy of Alex Bender

Bender has always had a knack for bringing people together, especially at Northeastern, where he received a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and a master’s degree in engineering management. As an orientation leader and residence assistant, Bender relished the opportunity to open the doors to new members of the Northeastern community.

He’s found it difficult to leave that community behind. In 2021, after working for a supersonic airliner designer in Denver and going on an 11-month road trip around the country, Bender moved to New York City to work for The Routing Co., a public transit software startup. It didn’t take long for him to realize how many Northeastern alums lived in his neighborhood in Bushwick, let alone the city in general.

He found the inspiration for his Springfest in New York City concept at a concert put on by a fellow Northeastern alum, Kabir Dugal, a member of the band Komodos. Bender had a great time, but he was also impressed by how the show brought people together.

“I wanted to do something that was mimicking that concert, that was very organic, that felt like it was coming from the performers and the alumni,” Bender says.

The process of putting together this concert has been like organizing a block party with some friends, Bender says. After getting the Office of Alumni Relations onboard last summer, Bender started contacting friends and, through word of mouth and close connections, was able to put together the lineup. 

Murray Sandmeyer, one half of the electro-pop duo Hey WOW and a close friend of Bender’s from their days as orientation leaders, says the event is a chance to celebrate Northeastern’s small but mighty music community. Sandmeyer was a member of the Northeastern University Songwriting Club, which most of the artists in the concert lineup belonged to at one point or another.

“I’ve been surprised by the amount of musical talent that I’ve known at Northeastern,” says Sandmeyer. “It’s meaningful for me to represent the talent we always had.”

Bender is hopeful that this week’s event will be a success based purely on the RSVP numbers so far. At first he was expecting, at most, 75 people to RSVP for the event, but the week before the event that number had climbed to 150.

“I did the first round of outreach among all my friends, and from there it’s just taken off,” Bender says. “So many people have RSVP’d who I’ve never heard of, which just makes me so happy. The word is definitely spreading naturally.”

Although Bender is focused on ensuring this week’s concert goes off flawlessly, he’s excited at the prospect of future arts-focused alumni events––and other alumni communities potentially making their own Springfests. If nothing else, Bender is happy the concert and the talent on display can show the Northeastern community the value of making space for creativity.

“Especially in some people’s crazy jobs doing engineering, investment banking, startups, whatever it may be, it’s so easy to get lost in the busyness and get overwhelmed,” Bender says. “Just seeing some of these performers either try to create art and not try to make a living off of it or try to make a living off of creating art is a really inspiring way to think about how to design a lifestyle.”

Cody Mello-Klein is a Northeastern Global News reporter. Email him at c.mello-klein@northeastern.edu. Follow him on Twitter @Proelectioneer.

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