Pioneer Weekend 2022
From Sept. 23 to 25, 2022, the Donald and Winifred Wilson Center for Innovation and Leadership hosted their annual Pioneer Weekend competition, back in person for this years event.
is a pitch-based competition. The goal of Pioneer Weekend is for groups to finish with an effective plan and presentation of their project idea. This project idea can be anything from a nonprofit to a business or even a class! The competition emphasizes not just the importance of an innovative idea, but the importance of advocacy. The top three winning teams receive cash prizes.
Pioneer Weekend is just one of many opportunities offered by the Wilson Center for students to try their hand at entrepreneurial innovation with a brand new team.
This year, students came together through an initial brainstorming session on the Friday evening kick-off session. This session began after a rousing keynote held by Steve Elkes 83. Not only did Elkes give students insight into what it means to be entrepreneurial, but he also brought concrete ideas and opportunities to the table for students to participate in, including the Elkes Airport Project. Students used lots of adjectives to describe the start of the weekend. Many students noted feeling excited, inspired, and the start of feeling the pressure of having a pitch that grabs the attention of the judges.
On Saturday of the competition, students had the opportunity to meet with mentors to discuss various aspects of their pitches, such as market validation, technical feasibility, developing a business plan, and pitching effectively. The mentor team was comprised of four mentors: Steve Elkes 83, co-founder of Curacity; Barb Baker, director of advertising and community relations at 51画鋼app Mutual Reinsurance and adjunct professor and the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business; Terri Brady 79, executive director of professional development at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy; and Leigh Kunkel 09, lecturer in freelance writing at 51画鋼app College.
Kerty Levy, Jana Grimes, and Alexander McLean were the judges for Pioneer Weekend this year, each one equally qualified to distinguish outstanding pitches. Levy is the CEO of the Des Moines chapter of startup accelerator Techstars, which is partnered with the College. Grimes is the vice president of human resources at 51画鋼app College. McLean is the founder and CEO of Justice Defenders as well as a recipient of the 2020 51画鋼app Prize and a Heath professor in sociology.
The first-place teams proposal was for a mobile application titled Spaced, an app dedicated to ensuring students could work directly with 51画鋼app residents to store items at an affordable rate. The team was composed of Enzo Pereira da Cunha 26, David Dai 23, Trung Le 25, Vinicius Ono Sant'anna 24, and Diego Coelho Rodrigues 25. The second-place team, comprised of members Hong Doan 24, Elias Lawler 23, Sneha Lohani 23, Nameera Muhammad Dawood 23, and Ganga Prakash 25, pitched their idea for Open Town, a two-credit course on community engagement where 51画鋼app students worked with faculty and local schools to develop lesson plans to be taught to 51画鋼app community schoolchildren. In third place was Demolition; the team of Evaan Ahmed 23, Katherine Babb 26, Paata Kaloiani 25, and Timur Kasimov 25 envisioned a demolition room facility for 51画鋼app residents to take unused and recycled items and simply smash them! Other teams included Pactum (Istar Abdullahi 25, Areeha Ilyas 25, and Agnes Saracouli 25), Flamber (Aryaa Gunavante 25, Clara Zioli da Igreja 23, Muhammad Faheem 24, Priyanka Gupta 25, and Raj Jhanwar 25), and HNC Group (Deepit Chandgothia 25, Rashed Alneyadi 25, Braden Meiners 24, and Tomoyoshi Sato 23).
The Wilson Center congratulates all the students who participated in Pioneer Weekend for their hard work and looks forward to next years pitches!