Every year, students at The College of New Jersey have the opportunity to take part in the Mayo Business Plan Competition, a contest named after retired Professor Herbert “Buddy” Mayo and held by the college’s School of Business.
The intent of the competition is to inspire entrepreneurial spirit and introduce students to the challenges of developing a business. Participants in the contest are mentored through several rounds as they look to overcome all the challenges inherent in creating a viable business plan.
TCNJ students come from all around the state and, indeed, the world. But for two years running, the competition’s winning team has included a graduate of Hopewell Valley Central High School.
This March, senior Sangam Shivaprasad and her teammates, Lauren Cunningham and Emma Routé, took top honors with their business plan for a venture they have named Golden Connections. Shivaprasad is a CHS graduate.
Golden Connections is conceived as an AI-powered health and wellness digital application platform designed to address the needs of seniors and caregivers. The app would feature an AI assistant that could help users with tasks and reminders and provide health and wellness insights based on speech biomarkers.
One year earlier, the first-place team in the competition was H.E.R., or Health Empowerment Reimagined, a collaboration of CHS grad Molly O’Brien and her teammate, Katie Olsen.
Their business plan for H.E.R. outlines a women’s health and wellness app whose mission is to educate, inspire and transform the lives of young women with chronic health conditions. The app would be designed for women, taking into account the special health needs and challenges of living with CHCs.
First-place winners receive a prize of $30,000, shared equally among winning team members. Second-place finishers get $20,000, and third place $10,000.
“Sangam and I do not believe that both of us winning this esteemed competition, two years in a row, is a coincidence,” O’Brien told the Express. “We believe that the education and opportunities we were provided at both the Hopewell Valley Regional Schools and The College of New Jersey helped prepare us for success in the competition and beyond.”
The competition is a serious commitment for students who decide to participate. Teams must declare their intention to compete in October. Business plans are due in mid-January, and semi-finalists chosen in February. From there, teams have 10 days to revise their plans in hopes of reaching the finals.
The three finalist teams are chosen in early March, with one final chance to revise their plans using feedback they have received from the judges. They present their final visions to the judges in a live Q and A in late March, after which the winner is determined.
O’Brien, who graduated with a degree in business, works today as an assistant brand manager for Ricola, the cough drop company. She says that winning the competition gave her more than just an appreciation for the process of starting a business.
“After winning the competition, I felt on top of the world — I felt fearless,” she says. “Not only did it give me this nice talking point, it gave me a boost in self confidence, like, ‘I did that, so why can’t I go into a job interview confident.’”
As a biology major, Shivaprasad says she was aware of the Mayo competition, but not necessarily planning to enter it, until Cunningham, a friend who was a business major, approached her and Routé, a chemistry major, about creating a team.
They sat down with an adviser from the school of business, Karen Becker, came up with the idea for their app, and from there were off and running. Shivaprasad admits that before the competition, she was not very familiar with the process of starting a business at all.
“I feel pretty well versed in business now,” she says. “This competition opened my horizons to the business world. I always wanted to be a doctor, but now I see doing business and health at the same time.”
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O’Brien is hopeful of turning H.E.R. into a real business at some point in the not-too-distant future. But it is on hold for now. She is focused on her job at Ricola, and Olsen, who moved to Arlington, Texas, after graduation, is focused on her job with Nestlé.
“We have the investment from TCNJ, we both have it bookmarked. We’ve spoken to app developers, applied for VC (venture capital). It is still something we are interested in doing. We’re just hoping one day our lives will settle and we’ll be able to regroup and make it come to life.”
Shivaprasad and her teammates, meanwhile, are going full steam ahead with Golden Connections, to the point where she is putting her plans for medical school on hold for a year to focus on the business. “We are passionate about bringing it to market soon,” she says.
Shivaprasad’s parents are both gastroenterologists with a shared practice in Hamilton. She has a brother, Omkar, and a sister, Poojitha.
O’Brien’s mother works at TCNJ and her father for the Department of Corrections. She has a brother, Sean, who also attended TCNJ.
O’Brien says she believes that one reason that she and Shivaprasad were successful in the Mayo competition is because the high school does a good job of preparing students for college.
“Hopewell has a wide variety of classes, offers AP classes and plenty of opportunities to excel in your education,” she says. “But I think it goes beyond the classroom in Hopewell. Everything I did inside and outside the classroom helped me to become a well-rounded person.
“When I went to TCNJ, I didn’t feel this really intense transition. I felt comfortable speaking to professors, speaking in large groups. I felt capable of going from high school to college seamlessly. I was in student council, I played sports (soccer), and I think that’s what helped me become a confident person. When I got to TCNJ, I felt really committed to become a person in leadership.”
Shivaprasad agrees. “I would say the rigor of the classes at Hopewell Valley is really similar to how it is at TCNJ. They really do set you up so that wherever you go in college, you feel prepared. TCNJ is a smaller school, but I feel like my classmates who went to bigger schools felt the same way.”
Though the competition took O’Brien and Shivaprasad out of their comfort zones at times, they agree that the experience was valuable and worth it.
“I was very worried about the workload and us being capable of doing all of the necessary pieces (at the start),” O’Brien says. “With both of us having no experience in app development, I did propose to Katie early in competition that maybe we should bring on a third team member.
“And Katie gave me all the confidence in the world. She said, ‘It’s nothing we could not teach ourselves.’ She was the driving force. As we went through different rounds, I found myself thinking, ‘We could do that. We can figure out.’
“At the end, it was this feeling: we did it, just the two of us. We learned all of the necessary financial pieces and operational pieces. To have an opportunity like this is great for young women.
“It’s super cool to be two women from Hopewell to win two years in a row. Our deans at TCNJ are all women — it was just an amazing experience to be a part of.”
Sangam Srivaprasad and Molly O'Brien, HoVal and TCNJ graduates and back-to-back winners of the Mayo Business Plan Competition at TCNJ. (Photo by Benoit Cortet.),
