2022 New Venture Competition Winners | GW New Venture Competition

Social Ventures

Paths

Linda Mangera SMHS '22
Yasmine Dessouky

Paths provides a convenient way for housing-voucher recipients to search for nearby homes with welcoming landlords. It follows the user’s movements alongside the local government housing database to present available housing options. Paths aims to reduce the rates of expired housing vouchers due to overcrowded existing marketplaces and landlord discrimination.

$20,000
Social Venture Track Winner ($10,000)
Best Women's Venture ($5,000)
Best MBSA Student Venture ($5,000)

POP!

Anna Shah GWSB '24
Maya Levine CCAS '23
Stephanie Cheung CCAS '22
Rachel Cohen CCAS '23

POP! (Power of the Purse) is a pop-up thrift store that has generated $12,000 in revenue by selling secondhand, fashionable and affordable clothing to GW students. We reduce textile waste by promoting a circular economy and hope to broaden our impact by scaling to DC universities by franchising POP!.

$25,000
2nd Place Social Venture Prize ($5,000)
Best Financials Prize ($10,000)
Best Undergraduate Prize ($5,000)
Viewers Choice Award ($5,000)

Lōpe Tree

Lauren Servin GWSB '24
Ruth Dwyer GWSB '23

Once used in Ancient Egypt, Lōpe harnesses oil from the Desert Date tree in Northern Uganda to meet the growing global demand for efficacious, clean skincare, while establishing a new model which shares high-end retail profits with people who work on its supply chain and protects the forest.

$11,000
3rd Place Social Venture Prize ($3,500)
Quinn Prize for Social and International Entrepreneurship ($7,500)

PickMeUp

Katie Fernberg CCAS '22
Krista Minas CCAS '22
Hannah Froimson SEAS '22

PickMeUp is a social venture that will shape college students’ lives for the better. Beginning with George Washington University, PickMeUp will be the leading mental health app on college campuses. PickMeUp will connect students with the mental health resources that they need as they navigate their transition to college life.

$2,500
4th Place Social Venture Prize ($2,500)

Technology Ventures

Rugged Redemption

Sarah Malinowski SEAS '23
Tanner Reinholtz

Rugged Redemption is a prosthetic knee device meant for active transfemoral amputees, specifically Veterans. This device will allow users to run and walk for long distances and on uneven terrain. This will let these active people regain their lifestyle without having to manually change or adjust their knee.

$27,500
Tech Venture Track Winner ($10,000)
Best Medical Device Prize ($5,000)
Best Veteran Prize ($5,000)
CirrusLabs Best Tech Prize ($7,500)

PIR Prevention Systems

Sam Smith SMHS '25

PIR Prevention Systems has designed a device that tracks patient movement using several cloth-attachable motion sensors that wirelessly transmit to a bedside monitor. The device alerts staff of patient immobility to prevent pressure injury formation in nursing homes with the goal of saving nursing homes money and preventing suffering.

$8,500
3rd Place Tech Venture Prize ($3,500)
Best Medical Device Prize ($5,000)

Currant

Ashwath Narayanan CCAS '22
Ellie Artone ESUA '23
Vidyut Ghuwalewala
Jasmine McCarton

Currant is a platform that matches brands with influencers on TikTok to grow revenue, awareness and scale their business. Our platform is focused on finding brands the right influencer fit through a combination of quantitative and content analysis.

$5,000
2nd Place Tech Venture Prize ($5,000)

Narrative

Trevor Doucet GWSB '22
Olivia Wilcox GWSB '22
Chelsea Sutch GWSB '22

Narrative is a peer-to-peer story non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace that enables individuals and organizations to mint audible historical moments, events, and ideas while monetizing them on the blockchain.

$2,500
4th Place Tech Venture Prize ($2,500)

New Ventures

Clebby's

Sabrina Clebnik GWSB '22

Clebby’s is a cannabis-infused baking mix brand launching into the legal cannabis market. Prolonged third-party testing timeframes for THC dosage and strength makes selling fresh-baked edibles in dispensaries impossible. Clebby’s eliminates testing latency by providing customers the ability to bake fresh, delicious, cannabis-infused products with dosage consistency at home.

$15,000
New Venture Track Winner ($10,000)
Best Food and Beverage Venture ($5,000)

SurgCycle

Ameen Khalil SMHS '24

SurgCycle introduces surgical metal and biohazard waste recycling solutions, revolutionizing the field of medical waste disposal as we know it. Using gasifier technology and a streamlined operational model, we aim to drastically cut the unnecessary wasteful nature of the healthcare industry, which accounts for 10% of the US's carbon emissions.

$5,000
2nd New Venture Prize $5,000

ByLil

Lily Khosrowshahi GWSB '22

ByLil Bikinis is redesigning the bikini world; by creating reversible and versatile pieces, ByLil offers bikini-wearers the chance to transform one bikini into several looks, for the price of one - it’s “just a lil’ you.”

$3,500
3rd Place New Venture Prize ($3,500)

Asthguard

Jordan Shock SMHS '25
Jacob Diaz SMHS '25
Johhny Davoodifard SMHS '25
Grey Madison SMHS '25
Arash Agharahmanian SMHS '25

Current interventions in the treatment of asthma focus primarily on the prevention of exacerbations and control of symptoms. Asthguard seeks to identify allergens shown to be involved in the development of childhood asthma in the home of expectant parents in order to prevent its onset.

$2,500
4th Place New Venture Prize ($2,500)

Finalists