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The entrepreneurial accomplishments of Lehigh University students and faculty were celebrated during the annual Innovate! Celebrate! Entrepreneurship Awards Dinner hosted on April 16 by the Baker Institute for Entrepreneurship, Creativity & Innovation and Lehigh’s newly-created Office of Entrepreneurship.

Several students or alumni who participated in the event were international students, or have participated in the programs offered through the university’s Office of International Affairs (OIA), demonstrating the interconnectedness between entrepreneurial and international programs at Lehigh.

“We are always excited to celebrate all Lehigh entrepreneurs at this event every year and are particularly proud to see so many of this year's participants incorporating knowledge, skills, and attitudes they developed during their international experiences into their entrepreneurial pursuit,” said Lisa Getzler, VP, Entrepreneurship Vice Provost for Entrepreneurship at Lehigh.

The event was hosted at Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania at Lehigh’s Mountaintop Campus. It opened with an Innovation Alley reception, during which 12 student venture groups showcased their work and pitched ideas to the audience to earn their investment in “Baker Bucks,” which were distributed to attendees. The team to earn the most received a cash prize and the People’s Choice Award.

After the Innovation Alley showcase, three student ventures with the most highly-developed ventures pitched their concepts during the Joan F. & John M. Thalheimer ’55 Grand Prize competition.

International Student Participants

The People’s Choice Award went to Nancy Henry-Naiho ‘27, an international undergraduate student who was born in Nigeria and has also lived in South Africa. She won for her venture, Crelet, a freelancer platform for college students that allow users to create profiles and portfolios, so various campus departments can access them and contact them for freelancing opportunities.

“Something I love about the Baker program is how inclusive it is,” said Henry-Naiho, who is studying business and economics at Lehigh. “All you really need is passion and an idea, and you can make it work here.”

Henry-Naiho was inspired to enroll at Lehigh in large part due to the Baker Institute and other entrepreneurial programs, which she first learned about from other Lehigh alumni. She said she plans to help other students as an International Orientation Leader next year, adding, “I very much think Lehigh is a globally-inclusive kind of place.”

Abylaikhan Mukhamejanov ‘27, an international student from Kazakhstan studying mechanical engineering at Lehigh, was also among the student honorees at the Innovate! Celebrate! event. He pitched his venture SkillSat, educational platform kits that allow children to build and operate small-scale satellites known as CubeSats.

Students who pitched for the aforementioned Grand Prize had previously participated in the EUREKA! Venture Program, Baker’s signature initiative for student venture founders. Mukhamejanov had done pitch events in Kazakhstan before, but he struggled with them in the U.S. at first due to differences in language and how to present to American audiences.

“Baker and the EUREKA! program helped me to boost my skills and overcome those challenges,” said Mukhamejanov, who was one of three grand prize finalists at the Innovate! Celebrate! Event, and won the Michael W. Levin Advanced Technology Competition Award. “Lehigh has a lot of great entrepreneurial resources for every stage of your startup.”

Alumni with International Experiences

In addition to the student participants, several alumni who have participated in Lehigh international programs spoke during the Innovate! Celebrate! event, including Olivia Abrams, ‘21, the co-founder & CEO of Tick Mitt; and Taylor Pistone ‘21, who works as a technical associate at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research within MIT.

Tick Mitt is a chemical-free glove that can be used to remove loose ticks from people or pets after hiking, camping, gardening, or other outdoor activities. Abrams started developing her startup during entrepreneurship classes at Lehigh, and she benefitted from such student entrepreneurial programs as Baker, Lehigh@Nasdaqcenter, and the Lehigh Venture Lab.

She also participated in the LU/UN Partnership’s Global PreLUsion Program, and studied abroad in Paris during the spring of 2020. Although her time there was cut short due to COVID-19, she was able to take a class about entrepreneurship and small business from a European perspective, which she said was very impactful for her.

Pistone studied electrical engineering and cognitive neuroscience at Lehigh, then got her Master of Engineering degree at the University of California. As a Lehigh student, she studied in Amsterdam through the Iacocca International Internship Program. It was her first time overseas, which she called a “very transformative experience for me, both personally and professionally.”

During the Innovate! Celebrate! event, Pistone said although she has not formed a startup or product, her entrepreneurial studies and experiences at Lehigh helped her develop a design-thinking and problem-solving mindset that is directly applicable to the work she does today at MIT.

“I’ve had an unconventional entrepreneurial journey,” she said. “An entrepreneur is not just someone who creates a new venture or company; it is someone who is identifying a problem and working to solve it. The Iacocca internship introduced me to entrepreneurship, and introduced me to how academia and industry can work together.”

Some of the other student entrepreneurs (and their ventures) who participated in the Innovate! Celebrate! event include:

• Canaan Kimball (Screenwise Eating)
• Cedrique Wafula (Qlover Technologies)
• Griffin Doherty (Paxev)
• Kathryn Keating (RenewBluSurf)
• Malik Normuradov (The Possibly)
• Miguel Vazquez (Mountain Movers Storage)
• Skyler Mott (Mark-It)

To read more about this event, please visit the Baker Institute webpage.