“I now realize that what I do at Sarah’s Handmade isn’t that different from my teaching background,” Park, BC ’13, said. “I’m doing more than just giving my employees an hourly wage—I am creating a community, a sense of purpose, and a sense of responsibility, and this is no different than creating a community in any environment I’ve been in.”
“If I’m going to put my heart and soul into something, I want it to mean something,” Vivian said. “It has not only a monetary value, but such emotional value attached to it. I think that’s really special.”
“I grew up backpacking, hiking, all that stuff, but I had never heard of bike touring,” he said. “And I thought, ‘How can I connect this idea of service that’s really important to me now from high school, and this idea of the outdoors, and mold these into one thing where the outdoors can sort of be this outlet for kids like me?’”
“I’ve always wanted to be a writer since I was seven and discovered that books were written by people, not machines,” Dionne said.
“Something that you might have thought was stupid or trivial is actually really game changing,” Shad said. “A little goes a long way.”
“I just remember my senior year, you know, obviously once we were all 21, I was able to get my bartending license and make cocktails for my girlfriends,” Fitzpatrick, BC ’17, said. “I thought, you know, it would be so great if I could just can this or bottle this and sell it but, but alas, you know, school got in the way.”
“Before there was authentic, there was Doxie,” Doggett said.
“I grew up working in my family business of nursing homes really since the seventh grade,” Wooley, BC ’17, said. “Senior care was not cool back then. Every family dinner conversation has been around senior care since I can remember.”
“Marketing is about storytelling,” he said. “It’s about connecting with people. And mastering those fundamentals like empathy, insights, what motivates people, how to connect with people through story and words—that is the craft.”
“Everyday there were and still are tough challenges, whether that’s product market fit, fundraising, building the team, or programming,” McDermott said. “There were multiple times when we wondered if it would even work or be able to stay alive. Some of our highest highs and lowest lows have happened in the span of the same day. It’s very much how a startup works.”
