A tech entrepreneur aims to make spreadsheets easier to use

Since he was in middle school in upstate New York, Jason Chan has been fascinated with technology and entrepreneurship, and he was determined to launch a successful business.

Two years ago, he achieved that goal when he co-founded Subset, a technology company and collaborative spreadsheet app. After securing funding from a venture capital firm and angel investors, he moved to San Francisco because, in Chan’s words, “that’s where people start software companies.”

Chan says that his experiences at Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business prepared him to launch his own business. His studies in finance gave him the technical skills, internships gave him valuable work experience, and his participation in the Alternative Investment Club gave him a broad view of the world of investing. After graduating in 2017 with a degree in finance, he worked as an analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and, later, as an associate at PSG, a growth equity firm.

“My co-founder and I did a lot of spreadsheet work, and we were riffing one day and we were like, ‘What about spreadsheets?’ They haven’t changed in 40 years. It’s always been Excel, Google Sheets,” he recalls. “We were both experts at spreadsheets, so we figured out how to give the spreadsheet superpowers so it’s easy for everyone to use.”

Chan values the guidance he’s received from a former Fordham professor, John McCombe, GABELLI ’82, the president and director of distribution at Richard Bernstein Advisors.

“He’s still a mentor to this day,” Chan says. “He was the first professional person I told that I wanted to start a new company. He was very supportive right from the start. He said, ‘I know you want to do this. You should do it.’”

Read more “20 in Their 20s” profiles.

“I made pizza for months on end, to the point where my friends said I was totally crazy. I would have dozens of different types of tomatoes and dough samples and try recipes that affected the flavor profile,” he said.

The pressure was on, because Burke wasn’t planning on opening just any pizza place. He was going to serve deep-dish pizza. From Chicago. In New York.

It had to represent.

“When I got to a taste that reminded me of back home, I thought, ‘People would pay for this,’” said the Windy City native. It was only then that he started looking for a location.

The cozy MacDougal Street spot he opened in 2013 offers diners some serious Chicago eats. In addition to the seven varieties of deep-dish, there are also seven types of Chicago thin crust pizza (yes, it’s a thing), a Chicago-style hot dog, and an Italian beef sandwich.

FORDHAM magazine’s staff stopped in to Emmett’s for lunch on a recent Friday in October. The pies, made to order, can’t be rushed. No matter, though. The sunlight pouring in from the front windows, the fall breeze, and the ladies lingering over wine at the bar with their shopping bags reminded us that we weren’t in a rush, either. We sampled a couple of draft brews from Chicago, though the extensive beer and wine lists offered plenty of domestic and imported options.

The Food

The pizzas arrived on a silver pedestal accompanied by a small hourglass—warning  us to give the thick, substantial pies two minutes to settle. Topped with bold, chunky tomato sauce that was pleasantly tangy, and filled with plenty of oozing-yet-chewy mozzarella, these 10-inch pies were admirably contained by a sturdy, slightly crunchy, two-inch-at-the-edge crust.

The Italian beef sandwich and the Chicago hot dog—totally foreign to us Northeasterners—were both piled with all sorts of flavorful accoutrements. The beef came with giardiniera, a pickled blend of hot peppers and other vegetables, topping the almost pillowy bed of slow-roasted meat, which had a kick of its own. And the dog was covered with (organic) tomatoes, onions, and neon green relish.

It’s easy to tell that Burke takes care with his ingredients; the basil was fresh, the spices robust, and the sausage in our Meat Lovers pie was something worthy of your grandmother’s Sunday sauce. He gets it from Teitel Brothers on Arthur Avenue. “I spent time there in my days at Rose Hill and loved their cheeses, loved their sausage. When you walk in it feels like a real Italian food purveyor. It was fun to revisit the place.”

The Idea

Burke had the idea for Emmett’s while he was a Fordham student. As a newcomer to New York, he was surprised at the city’s lack of authentic deep-dish. “I thought that was crazy, because growing up in Chicago, it’s quite common for people to eat it on a regular basis,” he said. In his sophomore year at the Gabelli School, he was charged with designing a company for a marketing class, and he came up with Emmett’s. “Looking back, the idea hasn’t really changed much,” he said. “It’s a neighborhood-style restaurant that serves foods I grew up with and missed.”

The Rivalry

So does Burke get ribbed about bringing deep-dish to a city that lives and dies by its New York slice? Sure. But it’s all in good fun.

“You have to have fun with it, because it’s a constant thing. You have to play it up and embrace it. I love New York. I’ve spent almost half my life here. … And Chicago is who I am and it is a city I’m very, very proud of. I really don’t feel that the city gets as much respect as it deserves, whether it’s culturally or in the culinary world. … I think a lot has to do with this Chicago-New York rivalry.”

Two years ago, when the Mets played the Cubs in the National League Championships, Burke made a bet with pizza maker Mark Iacono, owner of Lucali in Brooklyn, a favorite of Beyoncé and Jay-Z. If the Cubs lost, Burke would have to make pizza at Lucali, and if the Mets lost, Iacono would have to try his hand at some deep-dish. The Mets won, but Burke has yet to make good on the bet. “We haven’t done that yet. He doesn’t want me to disrespect the oven,” he said, laughing. “But it’ll happen.”

Burke delivered pizzas in high school, but that was about as much culinary experience as he had before his pizza experimenting. At the Gabelli School he studied finance, interning at Merrill Lynch. “I really kind of cut my teeth in New York City at a young age, and that was really fun,” he said. After Fordham, he worked for a hedge fund then a bank in Chicago that transferred him back to New York when the financial crisis hit. They proposed a promotion in San Francisco, and Burke realized his heart wasn’t in that world anymore. So he took some time off and decided to pursue his pizza idea.

“I would say the first thing that really helped me was that I didn’t know anything. It was humbling in the sense that if you want to learn something, you have to start from zero and learn all the steps,” he said.

The Vibe

Burke’s buddy Brett Danahy, a friend from his Fordham days and a fellow restaurateur, has watched Emmett’s progression from endless pizza tinkering to a successful restaurant with up to a two-hour wait on weekend nights. He said he’s impressed with his friend’s execution of his college idea.

“The void in the marketplace, he’s not the first to see that,” said Danahy, a sports agent and an owner of Ledger restaurant in Salem, Massachusetts. “To be able to grow and focus on improvement—that’s the real magic.” Burke was “always pretty good at not being satisfied,” he said.

Danahy gets to Emmett’s about a dozen times a year. “It’s what I miss about New York, the little neighborhood spots,” he said. “Emmett’s is truly a community. People know him and ask for him and Dillon [Burke’s brother who bartends and helps manage the restaurant]. That is the core of that place.”

Burke cultivates a friendly café vibe and decorates the place with charming curiosities. He’s covered the bathroom doors with stickers from ’80s concerts and classic old slogans. And hanging behind the bar are pink, blue, and green bills of foreign currency—some given to him by customers, including travelers from South Korea and India.

And he’s still tinkering with his recipes, trying new ingredients all the time.

“It’s still constantly trial and error, because you are never going to make the perfect pizza or have the perfect golf swing,” said Burke, an avid golfer who played at Fordham, “but it’s a process, which is really fun.” Though he lives just a few blocks from the restaurant, he’s also got a place in Westchester with a garden and a greenhouse. He wants to start canning his own tomatoes and try his hand at an heirloom tomato sauce.

But for as much heart as Burke puts into his pizza, he’ll be the first to say it’s not all about the food. “Some people come in, they won’t even eat pizza,” he said. “They may have a glass of wine or a beer and just chat with their friends. We have really fostered this nice, local, neighborhood gathering.”

The winner was Cindy Poiesz, Gabelli ’11. She is the founder of Supernola, superfood granola.

Enter a Gabelli School of Business class taught by Christine Janssen.

Janssen, Ph.D., was so impressed with a company, Transfernation, that she offered last summer to have her Exploring Entrepreneurship class help it expand into the Bronx.

Transfernation is a startup nonprofit that serves as an intermediary between nine corporations and dozens of one-off events, and five Manhattan homeless shelters. The company is similar to City Harvest, except it leverages technology to coordinate the pickup of food from corporate luncheons, galas, and conferences.

Janssen, a clinical assistant professor of management systems and director of entrepreneurship at the Gabelli School, had previously invited Andra Tomsa, FCRH ’08, GSAS ’12, the founder of SPARE, which raises money for food banks, to her class.

As part of Fordham’s commitment as an Ashoka Changemaker Campus, she’s always looking to partner with entrepreneurs who are just getting started. This semester, her class is working with Cascada Dental Spa in Harlem.

“I love when people have goals beyond just making a buck. Whenever I can find folks who are social entrepreneurs, I love to bring them in,” she said.

Janssen split her class into five teams—to spearhead social media, look for corporate partners, look for groups to donate, recruit volunteers, and to design an official launch of Transfernation in the Bronx.

Danielle Gallagher, a junior new media and digital design major at Fordham College at Rose Hill who was part of the social media team, said working on behalf of Transfernation was one of the most unique experiences she’s had at Fordham.

“It was great to work through the unexpected twists and turns of everything. You really have to communicate with all the teams to make sure everything goes smoothly,” she said. “It’s something you can put on your resume and feel proud of yourself for doing.”

Transfernation was founded in 2014 by two students at New York University. Co-founder Hannah Dehradunwala said the company was initially focused on person-to-person food sharing, with the long-term goal of expanding to corporate clients/events. They quickly realized that collecting in bulk was the only feasible way to serve food shelter programs.

“Corporate/event food was a way for us to ensure and maintain a high quality standards for the food,” she said, noting that Transfernation drivers are required to pick up food within an hour of donation and then deliver immediately, to ensure it is fresh when redistributed.

The Fordham team established a preliminary partnership between Aramark, Fordham’s food service provider, and Bronx-based food kitchen and shelter Part of the Solution (POTS). It put together a list of students willing to transport the food to POTS’ Webster Avenue location, either by car or cart.

Dehradunwala said they’re transitioning over to an app that will be similar to Uber and Lyft, where corporate caterers and event planners can request a food pickup. The company can then claim the cost of the donated food as a charitable donation.

She said she is recruiting student drivers now, and expects deliveries in the Bronx to begin in early February or early March.

“We want this to be something that people can factor into their everyday schedules and not have to schedule large amounts of time for,” she said. “If you’re coming home from work, on a lunch break, or have time in between classes, you can help out.”

For Janssen, partnerships like those with Transfernation are an opportunity for students to learn that entrepreneurship is by definition taking risks and dealing with ambiguity.

“More often than not when they ask me how to do something or what the ‘right’ answer is, I tell them, ‘You’re dealing with a lot of unknowns. Get out there and talk to people and do your research,’” she said.

“I think one of the best ways to learn is through self-discovery.”

“It’s important you understand my goal,” says Calacanis, a veteran tech entrepreneur and an early investor in Uber and other successful startups. “I like winning. You’ve been picked by us out of all the hundreds of companies that applied—and by us, I mean me—because you can win. You are here to win. We’re going to win together.”

Calacanis started Launch to support entrepreneurs and inspire innovation. In addition to the incubator classes, he hosts the annual Launch Festival, a startup conference that draws thousands of attendees. He claims he might cut back on his involvement with the class this year, since he and his wife recently had twin girls (they also have a 6-year-old daughter). But he doesn’t seem to believe it. Just seconds later, he says he’ll probably come to all the sessions. And besides, it hasn’t been a time of cutting back for Calacanis. He also hosts This Week in Startups, a podcast named by several tech sites as one of the best of its kind, and he’ll soon star in a reality TV show he’s co-creating for Harvey Weinstein’s company about—no surprise—startups.

The show will be authentic, he promises, and different from others on entrepreneurship, such as Shark Tank, in that it will focus on how startups are actually created. He’ll personally pick the participants and judges, he says, and the show will help him achieve his goal of becoming the greatest angel investor of all time, helping others build wildly successful companies.

In class, Calacanis advises the entrepreneurs, often lacing his insights with expletives and exclamations. He decries Silicon Valley “tourists” who just want to get rich quick with “apps no one wants!” And he says there used to be too much money in startups, “now there’s no money!” But he tells his students they’re hard workers with skills and a real product, and he says what venture capitalists need to hear is simple: Who are your customers, how much money do they give you, and what’s your profit margin? Grinning broadly, he says it takes less than 30 seconds to make that kind of pitch, “and it’s everything investors want! Anything else is window dressing!”

A few days later, at his Launch offices in the Tenderloin district, Calacanis says there’s a good reason why he seems to be having the time of his life in his class: He is.

Calacanis has been in the tech world a long time. He started the Silicon Alley Reporter back in the mid-1990s and built it from a 16-page newsletter to a glossy magazine of a few hundred pages, becoming a key player in the internet industry as it was taking off in New York City. He not only published and edited the magazine, he delivered it as well, pulling a luggage cart around Manhattan. On the masthead, he listed himself as “Publisher, Editor, and Delivery Boy.”

The New Yorker called him “the kid who hooked up New York’s wired world,” and Charlie Rose, 60 Minutes, and other old-media giants sought the insights of the upstart publisher from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with a bartender father and a mom who worked as a nurse. He says it was a heady time. “All of a sudden you get to pick who’s on the cover of the magazine in the hottest technology sector in the history of mankind. There’s billions of dollars at stake, and you have 75 people working for you at the age of 27. For a kid with no power from Brooklyn who had to hop the turnstile, it’s pretty awesome.”

He displayed that kind of hustle getting into Fordham, a story he recounts fondly. With less-than-stellar grades, he knew Fordham was a long shot. But he was determined to go, so he listened to his taekwondo teacher, a Fordham alumnus, who told him to be persistent. Calacanis stayed in touch with an admission officer, bringing him reference letters from teachers and bosses, and showing him his senior year grades, which had risen significantly. Finally, Calacanis says, the admission officer told him he was leaving Fordham, and his last act at the University would be to grant admission to the most promising nontraditional student. When Calacanis told his father, his dad responded by saying that he’d just lost his bar for nonpayment of taxes. Good luck paying for school, he told his son.

After all that work to get in, Calacanis wasn’t going to let not having the tuition stop him. He went to Fordham full time at night and worked multiple jobs—as a barback, a waiter, and a tech in the University’s computer labs. He says he brought that work ethic to his founding of Silicon Alley Reporter. After it folded in the dotcom crash, he co-founded and built Weblogs Inc., a network of blogs supported by advertising. A few years later, in 2005, he sold it to AOL for more than $25 million.

Calacanis has called his investing success “dumb luck.” But as an early investor in Uber, Thumbtack, and other billion- and multimillion-dollar companies, he doesn’t actually believe that. “I say it as a joke to see if people are paying attention,” he says. “When I tell people I got lucky seven times, I’m trying to make a point to them, whether they get it or not, that I’m not lucky, I’m hardworking.”

Back at his Launch offices, Calacanis is summoned to get made up for his podcast. He continues talking as he walks upstairs. Now that he’s in his 40s, and he’s made his money and has a family, he says he’s outgrown his immature impulses to prove that his successes were more than just luck. And he wants to share his advice with a broader audience. Most reality shows are silly, he says, but if done well, they can teach people something about fashion, say, or cooking. He wants to do that for entrepreneurship—and not just for the ratings but for a fame that’s more lasting.

“I don’t need to be a celebrity or get any more press,” he says. “It all goes back to the grand plan to be the best angel investor of all time.”

—Emily Wilson 

The Fordham network of students, faculty, alumni, and community members promoting innovative solutions to these challenges is called the Social Innovation Collaboratory. This group has already sponsored workshops on three different themes, with more being planned. Each workshop allows students to apply their academic knowledge and passion for creating social value to solving a specific problem.

Members of the Clean Cookstoves workshop partner with the United Nations’ Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves in an effort to reduce the economic, climate, and health risks of inefficient stoves and dangerous cooking methods used in many countries around the world. The Food and Enterprise students collaborate with Slow Money NYC to examine how to evaluate and rate local sustainable food and farm initiatives. And the Urban Mobility team focuses on enhancing BMW’s new electric vehicles to expand sustainable transportation options for college students and New Yorkers.

Students from all backgrounds have joined the three workshops—from freshmen to graduate students, business majors to psychology majors, native New Yorkers to international students.

Brendan Dagher, a Fordham College at Rose Hill senior, helped design all three of the workshops. He says the diversity is one of their greatest strengths. “It encourages the kind of integrated thinking that creates novel solutions to deep-rooted problems.”

Though some students have no previous experience in the area of sustainability, others, like freshman Olivia Greenspan, participated in local sustainability projects while still in high school. At Fordham, Greenspan is an active executive board member of St. Rose’s Garden, the Rose Hill campus’s community garden. In her first semester, she proposed using a method of hydroponics (growing plants without soil) that is already being implemented by the group.

And she’s expanding her sustainability focus from food to transportation by joining the Urban Mobility workshop. “Every time I get more involved with sustainability I just see more and more value in it, and I see how feasible it is with the technology we have,” she says. “I feel like if I don’t contribute, it just might not happen. And when I’m doing it, I feel like I’m part of a larger movement.”

Carey Weiss, Fordham’s director of sustainability initiatives and social innovation, leads all three workshops. She says that one of the best things about these projects is how students in each of the workshops divide into small teams where everyone is an equal partner. They brainstorm together, and they’re all encouraged to share their unique perspective. Graduate students learn from freshmen, English students learn from biology students, and so on.

Weiss says that this format allows the workshops to “draw on the students’ individual passions, and they bring their whole selves to the table.”

This model not only gives students an inside glance at leading organizations, it expands students’ opportunities for valuable networking. And, according to Weiss, it promotes new and innovative ways of thinking.

“It’s action-oriented, and it’s impact-oriented,” she says, “and it stems from the Jesuit idea of being men and women for others.”

This spring, Greenspan and the other Urban Mobility students will pitch their finalized concepts to the team at BMW, and the company will choose which ideas to implement.

Greenspan says that working with the team has been an enriching experience, both academically and personally.

She has also received several summer internship offers because of her involvement with the workshop. “I’m not just making connections between what I learn in my classes and sustainable solutions,” she says. “I also have constant access to these amazing companies and internship opportunities.

“And I have a real sense of what it’s like to work on a productive, kind, and caring team.”

What did you enjoy most about being a trainer on My Diet is Better Than Yours?

I think the show has a great premise. This show really is all about bio-individuality, or which diet is right for which person at which time in their life. The funny part is, personally, I felt that we all got along so well that it didn’t necessarily feel like such a competition. Everyone was rooting everyone on, and everyone wanted everyone to win. It’s great to bring out all of these different dietary theories.

How did you develop the Strong, Safe, and Sexy diet you promoted while filming the show?

I think I owe a lot of it to my martial arts training, which focuses on the mind, body, spirit connection. I want all my clients to be strong, mentally and physically. I’m not a therapist, but trainers and nutritionists do work with people on an emotional level a lot, so that comes into play first—their emotional and mental strength. I have to say to people, “Well, first, before we even talk about food, I want to talk about why you think you’re fat. What’s going on there on a deeper level, on an emotional level?”

Then I want them to be safe—safe from disease, more aware of themselves and their surroundings, and better able to defend themselves by learning martial arts. And sexy to me has nothing to do with curves on your body or a six-pack. To me, sexy is all about inner confidence.

What do you see as the biggest misconception about dieting?

I actually try to avoid using the word diet. It’s a meal plan, it’s a nutrition program, it’s a fitness program, it’s a way of life. That’s why crash dieting never works. There’s this whole misconception that you just need to eat less in order to lose weight. It’s not a lasting strategy. You set yourself up like a yo-yo and screw up your metabolism. You don’t have to starve yourself to lose weight or be healthy.

You co-wrote a book for young women, Hear Me Roar: How to Defend Your Mind, Body & Heart Against People Who Suck. What do you like about working with that group?

I can tell them all the things that I wish I’d learned when I was in college. I wish I had more of that inner confidence then. Besides my family, there was no woman telling me that it’s OK to look how I look and to love myself and appreciate my strengths.

I also work at a rehab center for teens going through anxiety, depression, body image issues, self-image disorders, and lacking confidence because they’re constantly comparing themselves to others and to images they see in the media. I want to give them the positive messages I wish I had back then.

Besides following a healthy meal and exercise plan, what can women do to help themselves and each other be strong, safe, and sexy?

I like to tell women, especially when I speak at colleges, about what girl power really means. To me it just means sticking up for each other. You know, maybe when you see a woman being taken advantage of, you step in. Sometimes women, especially younger women, have a tendency to kind of join the crowd and not take a stand for things. Take a stand for what you believe in—what you believe is really right, not just what everyone else is telling you. Be a force for good.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Alexandra Loizzo-Desai.

Since its founding in 2013, his online bulk-shopping service Boxed has raised $26 million, hired nearly 70 full-time employees, and opened three shipping centers, which can deliver Costco-style value packs of anything from cereal to toilet paper anywhere in the lower 48 states within two days. And earlier this year, Huang announced an ambitious plan to fund college tuition for his employees’ children.

What inspired you to guarantee college tuition for children of your full-time staff?

My undergraduate tuition at Johns Hopkins was paid partially by financial aid but also through the generosity of my mom’s employer. They gave me a huge scholarship. I guess they saw something in me. 

And now you want to give the same opportunity to your employees?

Absolutely. I look at the folks in our warehouses and see that some of them can’t even afford a car. How are they ever going to get above that level? My parents were able to fight their way through hard work and a stroke of luck. But if that luck never strikes, there could be generations stuck at that level. I thought, “Why not give these folks that upward mobility that I achieved?”

How are you funding the program?

We have cash to cover the short-term obligations, and then the longer-term funds are tied up in my personal stock in the company. If Boxed does well, there’s enough to pay a lot of tuition. If Boxed doesn’t do well, the program won’t work. It’s kind of a motivation cycle that feeds into itself.

So it’s about leveling the playing field, correcting injustices. Is that at all why you chose to go to Fordham Law?

I always had a passion for the law, but as a kid I was more reacting to injustice. I could tell, even as a child, that my parents were having a difficult time with simple things, like getting a driver’s license. I still remember one vivid moment: The DMV rejected my mother’s signature [they couldn’t read her handwriting]. As I got older, I realized there’s some screwed up stuff going on in the world, and so that was the genesis of me being an attorney.

Why’d you go into tech?

I saw the rise of Facebook and mobile gaming upstarts like Zynga. I also had one of the first iPhones. I thought, “These things are only going to get more powerful.” We started Astro Ape Studios, and things really took off. Within a couple of years, Zynga bought the company, using us as their New York office.

 How did you make the transition from gaming to online retailing?

The most sophistication and knowledge on mobile is concentrated in gaming. We were at the forefront of knowing how user behavior works, how user acquisition works, how to make a great experience. So why not go after the largest prize we could find? The consumer bulk-shopping industry is a significant driver of the economy, but only 1.5 percent of it exists online.

It’s fairly far from where you started. Is your law degree still useful? 

Fordham has a pretty liberal study abroad policy, so my first summer we went to Korea, and I worked at Samsung in a business capacity. I really was exposed to both sides of the table. My training as an attorney helps me know what I don’t know, which is just as important as knowing something myself. If you don’t have legal training, either you need an expert for everything or you think nothing is dangerous, which can really screw you later on.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Corinne Iozzio, FCLC ’05.

Alex Niles, GBA ’11, sipped a green smoothie in his neighborhood West Village cafe, happy to talk about his new normal. The young entrepreneur has a lot on his plate these days: He’s running an apparel business, writing a column for the Huffington Post, and keeping medical appointments.

It’s a very different schedule than he was maintaining just over a year ago. In 2013, Niles was “living life as any 30-year-old would”—working, traveling, and staying out late with friends. A former Division 1 college soccer player, he was a healthy, active guy. But that summer, Niles began having stomach pains. And by September of that year, he’d been diagnosed with stage 4 gastric cancer.

“You have your foundation, your routine, but then something happens and you have to hit pause,” he said.

In October he shaved his head in preparation for his 21st cycle of chemotherapy. Now he’s doing so well that his medical team said he could take an indefinite break from treatments.

“All the doctors told me I wouldn’t be here, but I’m here,” he said. “They call me Superman where I get treated.” He’s adopted a plant-based diet and a “we-got-this” attitude. Still, he stresses that there is no cure for his disease.

Living with cancer has thrown Niles into a new routine—not only as a patient but as the founder and CEO of CureWear, an apparel brand for cancer patients and their supporters.

He developed the idea for the business during his lengthy chemotherapy treatments. Each time, he’d have to remove his shirt so caregivers could access the medical port implanted in his chest to deliver the chemo drugs.

“I just didn’t want to do that. It was very belittling,” he said, and especially tough on women and little kids. He could have worn a button-down shirt, he admits. “But I was cold. It was the coldest winter ever. And I wanted to wear what I wanted to wear.

“So what I did was I literally cut a hole in my shirt and safety pinned it afterward. And I said, hold on a second. Here’s a very simple concept that actually has a very big impact on a tough situation.”

And with that, the idea for CureWear’s patient shirt was hatched. The black T-shirt features a port-accessibility patch that opens and closes with Velcro.

“It makes me feel more comfortable. My parents, my family, and friends who are there, they see me a little more comfortable. It’s even a little less awkward for the nurses,” Niles said. “When I first brought in samples to my oncology team, everyone cried, they were so happy.”

After his first rounds of treatment were successful, Niles spent the spring sourcing fabrics and working out other production details for CureWear. In August, he launched a Kickstarter campaign with a video he produced with friends on a West Village rooftop. The campaign raised $50,000, exceeding his goal by $20,000. With the contributions came several shirt orders. He has just started making his first deliveries.

Niles said he’s always had the entrepreneurial “itch,” but he sharpened his business skills at Fordham.

“[My professors] allowed me to realize my strengths as well as what I had to work harder on,” he said. “And I walked out with some really good friends.”

David Soberman, GBA ’11, who appears in the Kickstarter video, is one of Niles’ former Fordham MBA classmates. The two speak almost daily.

“I think the Kickstarter way allowed him to ease into the process,” he said. “It allowed him to take advantage of his social networks,” which Soberman said are vast. They include many loyal friends from Fordham; from Drexel University, where Niles was a scholarship soccer player; and from other walks of life.

Soberman said that throughout his treatment, Niles was always concerned about how his friends and family were handing the news of his illness and how much they were doing to support him.

To that end, CureWear also makes shirts for supporters—short-sleeve, high-quality black athletic tees with pink, blue, or green trim. They offer supporters a way to help: Niles reinvests 10 percent of the company’s proceeds in making shirts for patients, some of which he plans to give away to hospitals and other cancer organizations.

When he’s not busy running his business, Niles brings his sunny outlook to his online followers. In addition to his own blog, Smiles for Niles, he’s got a regular column with the Huffington Post and has been published in The New York Times and Psychology Today. In his Times piece, “An Athlete Tackles Cancer,” he wrote about mentally preparing for chemo treatments: “I picture myself crossing that line, snapping the ribbon of victory, and celebrating with exuberance.”

Niles said the cancer is always on his mind. “It’s a very heavy backpack to wear.”

Writing was a way to heal at first. “But it very quickly turned into what I realized was a source of strength for people. People started reaching out to me and saying thank you.” And he said the same about CureWear. “It’s been an incredibly positive distraction for me. And we’re really making an impact.

“The biggest lesson for me is that time is the most valuable commodity, and I have all intentions to make the most of mine.”

While there, he wondered why so many houses still needed work almost eight years after suffering damage from Hurricane Katrina.

“When I talked to the homeowners, they’d say ‘I hired a contractor, and they took the money and took off,’” he said.

Many of these homeowners had won judgments against contractors in court. But DeCoster discovered that just because you win a case in small claims court doesn’t mean you necessarily get your money back. Claimants often turn to collection agencies to track down money, but many agencies won’t bother with judgments of less than $1,500. And even when they do, they often take a cut as high as 50 percent.
Consequently, DeCoster said 80 percent of judgments go uncollected, even though they might represent a poor person’s life savings.

Enter Judgment Pay. As part of the Law Without Walls (LWOW) program, DeCoster and two fellow students came up with a business plan that seeks to use technology to “bring judgment collections into the 21st century.”

LWOW is an international collaboration that teams up students from 30 law and business schools with academic, lawyer, and entrepreneur mentors that Fordham joined five years ago as a founding member.
Judgment Pay, a website that is under development, will capitalize on the importance of a business owner’s reputation. If contractors have any outstanding judgments against them, their name will be entered into a public database. Potential customers will be able to search the database and will likely be discouraged from working with such contractors.

Although the aim of the site is altruistic—getting money back to those people who’ve lost it—DeCoster said the site is designed so that everyone involved can benefit monetarily. Those looking to collect judgments can benefit by getting their money back; those who owe customers money can benefit from clearing their reputation; and tipsters who may know how to track down and help get a crooked contractor listed on the site will be entitled to a small cut of the collected judgment.

The emphasis on building in incentives for all involved made an impression on the LWOW judges; Eric Satz, managing director of Tennessee Community Ventures Fund, told the team “in the four years of LawWithoutWalls, this is the most fundable idea that we have seen yet.”

LWOW at Fordham Law came about through the efforts of Bruce Green, the Louis Stein Chair of Law and director of the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics. Green knew Michelle DeStefano, a professor at Miami law School, from ethics-related conferences, who initiated the idea and invited Fordham Law to join the initial group of schools.

Green said he was attracted to the collaborative’s emphasis on teamwork and exploiting new Internet technology. Traditionally law students look to join an established private law firm, government law office, or legal services office. Unlike business school students, they rarely strike out on their own.
But that has to change, Green said.

“The world is becoming global, and there’s a lot of exponential change in the legal profession,” he said.
“Nobody wants to stop training students in the traditional skills, such as legal analysis and communication. We want go beyond those, however, and to think about emotional intelligence, leadership, entrepreneurship, and teamwork.”

This isn’t to say that Fordham Law hasn’t turned out its fair share of successful entrepreneurs.
A short list of alumni would include Mukesh Patel, LAW, 94, who founded JuiceTank, New Jersey’s largest co-working space and startup incubator; Daniel Gross, LAW ‘07, who founded Brandworkers International, a non-profit organization protecting and advancing the rights of retail and food employees; and Zaid Hydari, LAW, ’09, co-founded Refugee Solidarity Network.

It would also feature Andrew Cabasso, LAW ‘12, co-founder, JurisPage, a New York based law firm Internet marketing company that helps law firms around the country to market themselves online, and Robert Sanchez, LAW, 14, Chief Strategy Officer for Manufacture New York.
Sonia Katyal, associate dean for research and the Joseph M. McLaughlin Professor of Law, said there are employment opportunities for lawyers particularly in the fields of intellectual property, employment law, and corporate law.

The Law School, in fact, has several initiatives devoted to entrepreneurship—from the recently founded Student Association for Law and Entrepreneurship (SALE) to an entrepreneurial law practicum that will be offered this spring.

“This exists partly because of the changing job market for our law graduates, but part of it is also the rise of New York City as a central innovation hub for tech firms,” she said.
“There’s a lot of information circulating about “Silicon Alley,” and the time is really right for getting our students into the tech start up market.”

Katyal and law professor Ron Lazebnik co-chair a university-wide entrepreneur’s working group that meets periodically. She said the law school has also collaborated with the Gabelli School of Business. It’s all part of a move away from the model of the lawyer as adviser.

“Lawyers are far more entrepreneurial than they’ve ever been in terms of how to develop new clients and embrace new ideas. Lots of people I went to law school with went on to join valuable companies first as lawyers and then in other roles within the companies,” she said.

As for Judgment Pay, DeCoster recently teamed up with Uriel Carni, LAW ’14. They’re still courting investors, but he’s hopeful that the site will launch shortly.

“Every step of the way, someone is motivated to help and get involved. So I think that’s probably one of the reasons why this project won, and why there’s a lot of buzz about it as a potential business idea,” he said.

Some 40 years later, Wright sits at her own desk at the Fordham Foundry, Fordham’s small-business incubator, as the founding CEO of the financial advisory firm L. Wright Co. LLC.

It was not an easy journey from University Heights to Fordham.

In 1999, Wright’s young son was hit by a bus and killed while riding his bike. Two years later her marriage fell apart. Wright says her ex-husband continued to be a good father to their other three children, but the increased duties of raising a family left her little time to go to school.

“To do the right thing, I had to put school to the side,” she says. “I just wanted to make sure that I raised my kids in a nurturing home.”

Eventually, Wright managed to take some online classes, and she gathered credits at Bronx Community College. When her childhood friend asked her to accompany her to Fordham while she applied to a master’s degree program, Wright had no idea that she’d also be recruited. Having recently been laid off from her job, she says she had little to lose when a Gabelli School of Business adviser encouraged her to apply for admission. She fretted about her writing skills, but was certain of her love of arithmetic and logic.

“I’ll never forget the call,” she says. “It was September 2008. The man on the phone said, ‘Congratulations, welcome to Fordham University.’ The tears just came down from my eyes and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I made it in.’”

The first year proved the toughest, Wright says, but she eventually found her footing. She even conquered her fear of writing.

“All I could see were the grammar mistakes, but one of my professors said, ‘Lavera, you’re going to be a beautiful writer one day.’ He saw the potential in me and knew that one day I’d be in a place where I could accept my voice. I thank God for my professors, because they didn’t give up on me.”

Wright graduated last February with a B.S. in public accounting. A couple of months later, her daughter graduated from college and her son graduated from high school. Her third son continues to do well in high school.

“When I walked down that aisle at graduation, it was like a domino effect,” she says. “I made that first impact, and because of that, it opened up many doors for my children.”

—Tom Stoelker