LaunchPad Announces Winners of 2025 Freelance Small Business and Creatives Competition
Syracuse University Libraries’ Blackstone LaunchPad announced winners of the 2025 Freelance, Small Business and Creatives Pitch Competition held on Friday, October 31, 2025, at Bird Library. Undergraduate and graduate students building careers or side hustles through services or products delivered 4-minute pitches followed by a 2-minute Q&A session with a panel of expert judges. Winners were:
- Grand Prize: Haley Rose Greene ’26 (S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications), Founder of Miirror, an online platform to provide support services for people affected by eating disorders. Greene won $1,200 plus 12 mentoring sessions with alumnus Stacy Small ’91, founder of Elite Travel Club and sponsor of this year’s competition.
- 2nd Place: Ava Lubkemann ’27 (College of Engineering and Computer Science), Founder of ReVamped, won $800. ReVamped mobilizes the collection of clothing and textile byproducts and then turns them into useful assets for underserved communities.
- Two 3rd Place: Tristan Bey ’29 (S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications), Co-Founder of DoubleT, and Yasmin Madmoune ’27 (Martin J. Whitman School of Management), Founder of YAS Apothecary, each one winning $600. DoubleT is a high school apparel company made for and by students. YAS Apothecary is a Moroccan inspired body care brand.
- 4th Place: Amlan Pradhan ’26 (College of Engineering and Computer Science), Founder of Swapify, won $400. Swapify is a peer-to-peer marketplace platform designed exclusively for college students to buy, sell or swap items such as textbooks, furniture and everyday essentials.
- Fan Favorites: Amlan Pradhan, Founder of Swapify and Celes Buffard ’27 (School of Information Studies), Founder of Second Wave, each won $300. Second Wave combines financial literacy education with fractional real estate investing, starting with fix-and-flip properties and community development.
This year's competition was made possible by the generous sponsorship of Stacy Hope Small '91, a Syracuse University graduate and accomplished entrepreneur. After spending 15 years as a travel journalist and launching Elite Traveler magazine in 2001, Small followed her entrepreneurial instincts and transformed her expertise into Elite Travel International, growing it from a $200,000 home-based operation in 2005 to a $20 million global business by 2019. Today, she runs Elite Travel Club, an invite-only luxury travel planning service for high-profile clients worldwide. Small is a sought-after speaker on entrepreneurship, innovation and the travel industry, serves on the Los Angeles Regional Alumni Council and is the author of "Why Not Me?!?”