University Innovation Fellows

The mission and vision of the E&I program that Peter and I founded is featured prominently in the brochure above. Now in it’s fourth year with over 200 active members, the program has received a $400k endowment from Ron Bell, as well as generous donations from Chuck Boldt. The program has become so competitive that students must apply simply to be a part of the house, yielding an impressive 23% acceptance rate. I have been so personally touched by how this program has literally transformed the experience of Bucknell students who might have never otherwise reached their creative and entrepreneurial confidence.

TEDxBucknellUniversity is an annual, student-organized event that Peter Puleo and I brought to campus in 2015. The event is an opportunity for the Bucknell community to explore thought-provoking, personal, and sometimes controversial ideas in the hopes of bringing people together in a way that will allow them to bring bold ideas to life.

I gained an incredible amount of project management experience as lead organizer for the event in it’s first year. The TED organization gave us permission to use their brand, but that’s about it. We had to come up with a theme, select and coach speakers, handle event planning, secure $10k in funding, create and execute a marketing strategy, etc. Since then, I’ve been delighted to see that the student-organized team provides an opportunity for leadership experience to about 25 Bucknellians annually. I have most recently transitioned into a role as head of the Speaker Coaching Team, meaning I spend most of my time studying great talks and working with our speakers to help them hone their message for the TED stage.

Our team looks forward to building meaningful, sustainable events that will continue to expand and help inspire engineers, designers, scientists, sociologists, STEM students, and liberal artists to make a lasting impact on our world.

After spending time at Google and the Stanford d. school, I recognized the importance of space on the creative process. Our UIF team felt that it was our responsibility to bring some of those elements back to campus in order to help us achieve our four strategic priorities.

We worked with the Dean of Students and Director of Residential Education to have a creative space put on the slate for a new apartment development on campus. The students voted for our space as one of the designs, which meant that we would then spend the next 6-8 months designing and outfitting the space with the help of Dean of Students, Amy Badal. Today, Square One Studio is the first student-designed space on campus dedicated exclusively to kick-starting the creative process. Square One features customizable furniture, rolling white boards, a lego wall, jumbo jenga, sketching and prototyping supplies, and more. The space and its resources are open free of charge, 24 hours a day to all Bucknell students, and there are monthly programming events, including creativity workshops with industry leaders about a range of topics.

I gained valuable experience with intentionally designing a space for optimal collaboration and creativity and working closely with administration and other stakeholders to acquire funding and approval. I had to source materials and supplies through vendors and establish relationships with key partners. In addition to organizing programming in the space with industry professionals, I also helped lead the logo and graphic design for the branding of the space. Perhaps most importantly, I learned how to persevere thru times of crisis when our space flooded halfway thru the implementation process.