{"id":1170,"date":"2025-07-25T06:04:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T06:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mynyla.org\/?p=1170"},"modified":"2025-07-25T06:04:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T06:04:16","slug":"njit-youth-group-hosted-entrepreneur-themed-event-for-young-innovators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mynyla.org\/index.php\/2025\/07\/25\/njit-youth-group-hosted-entrepreneur-themed-event-for-young-innovators\/","title":{"rendered":"NJIT, youth group hosted entrepreneur-themed event for young innovators"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Oya Tukel (left), dean, NJIT Martin Tuchman School of Management, congratulates Samaya Shah, founder, executive director, NYLA. – New Jersey Institute of Technology<\/p>\n\n\n\n

High school students experienced a day of innovation enlightenment when the National Young Leaders Association<\/a> and the New Jersey Institute of Technology<\/a> hosted the first Entrepreneurathon, an innovation-empowering event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entrepreneurathon brought together students from Newark\u2019s Link Community Charter School, Chatham High School, John P. Stevens High School (North Edison) and The Pingry School (Basking Ridge) to collaborate, generate ideas, and pitch original startup concepts before a panel of industry leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The initiative aligns with NJIT\u2019s commitment to local community impact, STEM education, and entrepreneurship. About 80 people attended the event on May 10 at NJIT\u2019s student center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Entrepreneurathon featured hands-on workshops in business modeling, market validation, and social impact strategy, followed by live pitch sessions judged by executives and entrepreneurs. Team Travella won the competition for its all-in-one travel companion app, integrating features from Expedia, Yelp and Google Maps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Participating students presented ventures ranging from AI-powered tutoring platforms to the next generation of security platforms, underscoring NYLA\u2019s core mission: to democratize access to entrepreneurial education and connect young leaders through hands-on, high-impact programming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis event was not about launching startups,\u201d said Samaya Shah, founder and executive director of NYLA and a student at Pingry. \u201cIt was about bringing together students from all backgrounds \u2014 public, private and charter \u2014 to collaborate, share ideas, and learn the fundamentals of starting a new business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speakers included NJIT alumnus Nick DeNichilo, former president and CEO of Mott MacDonald North America; and Aliza Mujahid, CEO of DermaMech, a company that aims to better understand the science of human skin grafting and develop technology that will reduce infections, rejections, and scarring. She is also an NJIT Innovation Fellow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The National Young Leaders Association<\/a> is a student-led nonprofit equipping middle and high school students with the tools, mentorship and experiences to become successful entrepreneurs. This was the first collaboration between the group and NJIT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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High school students experienced a day of innovation enlightenment when the National Young Leaders Association and the New Jersey Institute of Technology hosted the first Entrepreneurathon, an innovation-empowering event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynyla.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynyla.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynyla.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynyla.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynyla.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mynyla.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynyla.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynyla.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynyla.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynyla.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}