For the presenters at Seattle Pacific University’s Social Venture Plan Competition, an entrepreneurial event, their passion projects came to completion on Thursday, April 18. Upper Gwinn burst with chatter, laughter and business jargon as students presented their final pitches to the judges and the SPU community. Projects for the 2024 SVPC ranged from medical devices to mentorship programs to nonprofit initiatives.
The SVPC is a competition in which teams spend months forming an idea, researching, and creating a business plan. At the end of the process, the teams pitch their projects at a live event and are evaluated and scored by business professionals.
The Center for Applied Learning runs the competition with SPU’s School of Business, Government and Economics. Mark Oppenlander is the Director of the Center and has been involved with the SVPC since its first year. Oppenlander explained that the Center has several goals for the competition and how students can benefit from it.
“One is to help students think about entrepreneurship as a way to affect social change,” Oppenlander said, “So how do you take business and use it as a tool to make a difference on issues?”
Oppenlander feels it is essential for students to learn how to take their ideas and dreams and turn them into action. Students often have brilliant solutions but need help knowing the next steps. Oppenlander believes the SVPC sets up students for the future by teaching them the entrepreneurial skills to bring an idea from conception to reality.
“We just think entrepreneurship skills are vital to the new economy,” Oppenlander said. “This is how the economy is moving, more and more people are contractors, run their own small businesses and nonprofits. We just want students to have that experience while they’re still in college, gain skills, dream, turn ideas into action, and really find out, maybe they’re an entrepreneur and they didn’t know it.”
Yassir Alaoui Mdaghri, a junior finance major and his team — freshman Joel Leiva-Rodriguez, junior Avery Nguyen, junior RJ Hernandez and senior Hunter Enos — created Build-Beloved, a company focused on the housing crisis and pollution in Guatemala. Build-Beloved hopes to provide sustainable and cheap houses using trash, cement and wood. With the conclusion of the competition, Mdaghri and his team have high hopes for their business.
“Our next steps, we’re trying to make this real,” Mdaghri said. “First thing would be a trip to Guatemala to study the market there, then actually investing in this. We are planning on taking a loan to actually have a shot.”
As the competition ended, the presenters lined up to hear the results of the judges’ votes.
For 2024, the top five teams were awarded a cash prize: $10,000 for first place, $5,000 for second and $2,500 for three honorable mentions. The second place prize was given to Deploy-A-Pad, and OPIO, Intentions and The Village received honorable mentions.
Students, professors, and other community members who attended the event also voted for a People’s Choice Award. The team receiving the most audience votes earned a $1,500 prize. The 2024 People’s Choice Award winner was The Village, founded by senior Viktoriya Prozapas, junior Madison Raines, freshman Emilio Tolomei, junior Xavier Smith and junior Johnny Lo.
“Essentially, The Village provides resources for first-generation high school students by pairing them with a first-generation college student that’s already gone through the process to give them someone to look up to and someone to go through with questions,” Prozapas, an accounting and business administration major, explained.
A first-generation college student, Prozapas knew at the beginning of the ideating process that she wanted to create an organization that would benefit people like her.
The first-place award was won by Freya Maternity, a sustainable maternity clothing rental company. Freya Maternity was brought to life by junior Haley Blain, senior Ava Dreon, senior Canyon Farmer, senior Lauren Duisenberg, senior Shawn Bowen and junior Amelia Perez.
Blain, a global development and economics major, recounted the amount of work that went into creating the project and expressed her satisfaction with the final result.
“We are so proud of ourselves and so grateful,” Blain said. “It was so much work, and I’m just so happy that our work paid off. I was just happy to be there. I think I learned so much regardless of the win.”
Ross Stewart, dean of the school of government, business and economics, believes the SVPC can bring out a side of students they do not even know they have.
“For our students, a lot of them, if you ask them ‘Are you interested in entrepreneurship?’ they probably wouldn’t say straight up ‘I’m interested in entrepreneurship,’” Stewart said. “But they say, ‘I want to solve a big problem in the world’ or ‘I want to solve a small problem in the world.’ They get excited and passionate. That’s the kind of students we have.”
