Some are still in high school. None were alive when the United States hosted the World Cup in 1994, and most weren't during the Atlanta Summer Olympics two years later.
BostInno’s 25 Under 25 class for 2021 includes a few in the environmentally friendly realm (Earth-friendly menstrual products, cleaning materials that aren’t harmful and antimicrobial solutions), others hoping to make the world a better place (from T-shirts that benefit local nonprofits to an education app for refugee children) and others who are simply incredibly creative (like coming up with a chapstick-like applicator for hand sanitizer while in fifth grade).
Here are this year’s BostInno 25 Under 25 honorees (including a few who celebrated a birthday in the past few months):
Jose Amich, 25, founder and CEO, Zeta Surgical
Jose Amich has reached what could be considered the trifecta of Boston-area entities for someone looking to gain the right skills and connections: Harvard University, MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital. Amich is a 2018 graduate of the first, has deferred admission to the second, and has worked with the third through a firm he founded that provided low-cost eyeglasses for kids.
Amich, who was also a fellow at Harvard Medical School studying breast cancer biology, is now the founder and CEO of Zeta Surgical, a startup backed by the accelerator Y Combinator that helps surgeons with robot technology operate on patients without anesthesia. In July, Zeta signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Brigham and Women's Hospital and reached an agreement to perform its first clinical study with Singapore's National Neuroscience Institute.
Nick Cianfaglione, 22, founder and CEO, Artist Republik
Nick Cianfaglione wants to give more power to musical artists. Cianfaglione has started doing so by founding and running Artist Republik, a music management and promotion platform meant to help artists better make industry connections, keep more revenue for themselves and save on marketing.
Cianfaglione sees Artist Republik as "LinkedIn meets ASCAP — the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, an influential industry group. The idea has found success already, with a beta-version enrollment of 30,000 users worldwide and what it says is a valuation exceeding $8 million.
Emilee Cocuzzo, 25, senior consultant, Booz Allen Hamilton
Emilee Cocuzzo’s work as a senior consultant for the information technology consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton has included a project improving supplier records processes used by the firm’s 28,000-plus employees, as well as helping government clients with protection from cyber threats and responding to cyber-infrastructure changes.
Cocuzzo’s other focuses are also notable, including diversity and inclusion. She chairs Booz Allen’s Asian Pacific American Network events committee and volunteers outside work as a member of the marketing committee of Ascend, which helps Asian communities and leaders in their careers. Her other volunteer work includes coordinating marketing and social media for Feed Your Hospital, which has delivered meals to frontline workers during the pandemic, and providing mentorship through the organizations BUILD Boston, Out in Tech and LearnServe.
Katie Diasti, 24, founder and CEO, Viv For Your V
Katie Diasti hadn’t even graduated from Boston College before she started Viv For Your V, a sustainable period care brand that she’s since scaled up through the help of angel funding groups. Diasti was in an entrepreneurial marketing class with a semester project of pitching a new product that solves a problem. She was already thinking about sustainability and the waste that comes with many products so she had an idea: menstrual products that were more environmentally conscious.
Diasti, who grew up in Tampa with a large Egyptian family, graduated in 2019 and has since poured herself into the startup, whose products are made largely of natural materials and are almost entirely biodegradable.
Anj Fayemi, 22, co-founder of Rivet
Anj Fayemi, a singer and songwriter, has deftly combined his engineering abilities and his love for music into an app called Rivet that connects artists with their supporters. The idea is to lower barriers into an enticing but incredibly competitive industry, with artists able to sign up for free in a tiered pricing system.
Rivet’s early success has happened quickly, earning a $15,000 prize in the Creative Arts Competition at MIT, Fayemi’s alma mater, in May. By August, the app was officially launched but by then Rivet was already hosting 85 artists engaging with more than 6,000 fans.
Brian Gong, 23, analyst, Touchdown Ventures
Brian Gong wants to run each of the world’s six major marathons before he turns 30. That’s an apt goal — he’s finished two already — for someone who is so much of a go-getter.
Gong is already a veteran of sorts of the venture capital business, having worked on the staff of LearnLaunch’s Breakthrough accelerator program and DCU FinTech Innovation Center. He’s also worked for property technology startups in sales, marketing and operations and earlier this year joined Touchdown Ventures, which works with Aramark, 20th Century Fox and others to manage their VC programs.
Lena Harris, 21, Barnard College student, co-founder of 195Essential
T-shirts can offer ways of conveying a message while walking down the street or through a photo posted online — just the type of thing Lena Harris came up with while talking to her dad, an entrepreneur himself, about wanting to make the world a better place.
Harris, a Barnard College student, came up with a T-shirt company with messages about LGBTQ equality or voting rights whose profits go toward essential workers whose value was made clear during the pandemic, including medical staff and teachers. Proceeds from sales at 195Essential, which Harris co-founded with her dad, Jason, benefit Boston-based entities like Steps to Success, BAGLY, East Boston Neighborhood Health Center, Brookline Food Pantry and Nutré Meals.
Hailey Hart-Thompson, 22, co-founder of The Stateless Collective
Between climate change, the pandemic and upheaval in countries such as Afghanistan, there may be few times more important for students to learn more about the world around them. Hailey Hart-Thompson is leading an effort to help students with just such a thing.
Hart-Thompson is the co-founder of The Stateless Collective, part of the Innovate@BU 2021 Summer Accelerator cohort, which encourages global engagement by training students for studying, working, researching and volunteering abroad. When she’s not working on that project as its CEO, Hart-Thompson is studying at Boston University as an independent major in anthropology, classics and English with a dual degree in film and television.
Mary Imevbore, 25, co-founder of Waeve
Going to school at Williams College in the rural northwestern corner of Massachusetts, Mary Imevbore found how difficult it was as a Black woman to find a hair salon that catered to someone like her. The occasion of her 21st birthday led to the idea for Waeve, a company she co-founded with two others.
Instead of sitting in chairs for what could seem like forever getting their hair done, the co-founders of Waeve instead sold wigs that offer women a different look for each day of the week. In fact, that’s exactly what they sell, with wigs made of either human or synthetic hair named for Monday through Saturday. Imevbore, previously a software engineer for PillPack, and her co-founders want to create what they call “feel good hair,” but have also backed it up with something very tangible: $2 million in seed funding to get the project off the ground, demonstrating a too-rare instance of venture capital going to Black women-led startups.
Michelle Kim, 24, business operations head, K36 Therapeutics
It’s no hyperbole to say Michelle Kim got in on the ground floor with K36 Therapeutics. Kim was just the third person to join the Cambridge startup after the chief executive and chief scientific officers, helping the company create therapeutics for what it says are unmet medical needs of cancer patients.
Kim, a graduate of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, joined K36 from a startup within the publishing giant Simon & Schuster to help find new publishing strategies, and at K36, she’s aided with everything from brand creation to preparing for an investigational new drug application.
Sruthi Kurada, 17, director of MetroHacks
Sruthi Kurada, a Cambridge high school student, is on a mission that may fortunately sound familiar: a young woman who wants to make the STEM world more accessible for everyone. She’s doing that as the lead director of MetroHacks, a nonprofit that has organized coding competitions and works to spur girls to get into the field.
In its first year alone, MetroHacks’ EmpowHer competition included 85 mentors and 250 participants worldwide. Kurada and the MetroHacks team line up guest speakers and arrange for workshops on the skills young women will need to be successful in STEM.
Vanessa YiRan Li, 21, Wellesley College student, founder of Innovating Environmental Health
Growing up in Shanghai, Vanessa YiRan Li said she knew as a kid what it was like to live in a place with polluted air. Now a student studying chemistry and sociology at Wellesley College, Li has started a nonprofit social enterprise called Innovating Environmental Health that helps provide clean air for children in Nepal.
How? Li, working with experts and users, has designed a low-cost air filtration device that she says changes the air in a classroom at least six times an hour. The design was made specifically for Nepalese children and teachers in mind, and is solar-powered so not to be a financial burden in a part of the world where high electrical bills can be difficult to afford.
Yasmin Morais, 23, co-founder of RefEd Initiative
A native of Brazil, Yasmin Morais has long dreamed of making a meaningful impact on the world. She’s on her way now.
Morais is a co-founder, executive director and fundraising lead for RefEd Initiative, which works with partners to address educational needs of refugee children through an app that teaches English, Arabic or math. She’s also the program manager of the youth empowerment organization Global Changemakers, a group that says it has helped lead nearly 400 youth-led projects in 180 countries, benefiting more than 8 million people.
Bipasha Ray, 17, entrepreneur and University of Michigan freshman
Bipasha Ray didn’t even wait until finishing high school to become an entrepreneur. Ray, who began studying at the University of Michigan this fall as an entrepreneurship and pre-med student, launched three startups under the guidance of corporate mentors as part of the Junior Achievement Company Program.
Ray’s creations so far include co-founding Aware Bear, with customized bracelets raising awareness for the harms climate change is causing polar bears; Carvenience, a car-mount phone-wallet combination to reduce distracted driving; and RainDrop, a time capsule kit to help people improve their mental health while quarantining during the pandemic.
Gilli Rozynek, 23, owner, Kured
Gilli Rozynek has combined the old-fashioned world of Beacon Hill retail with the very 21st Century demand for online ordering and delivery. She has both with Kured, the charcuterie company she started last year after graduating from Boston College.
Rozynek thought up what would become Kured while studying abroad in Spain, where she said plates of cured meats are so ingrained in the culture. Last summer, she launched the company through BC’s accelerator program serving Boston and Cape Cod, and today Kured offers delivery or pickup at its Charles Street storefront, with charcuterie boxes, sandwiches and add-ons like homemade hummus — and even easy handheld versions called charcuterie cones.
Veer Shah, 21, Northeastern University student and CEO of Nanolyx
To call Veer Shah a master multitasker would be no exaggeration. The Northeastern student joined the university’s Nanomedicine Lab during his sophomore year, balancing research commitments there with a co-op he already started at Amazon Robotics. He fit both — and more — into his calendar by, for instance, scheduling lab experiments at 6 a.m. to make sure he could be involved.
Shah is now balancing his coursework with Nanolyx, a company he created while taking part in another prestigious program, the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps, starting with a thought of how better disinfection can help during the pandemic. Shah is the startup’s CEO, leading a goal of creating more effective antimicrobial solutions to help cut down on harmful and potentially deadly infections. He’s already presented the product to major industry players including 3M, Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble.
Tony Shu, 22, co-founder of Breaktime
Tony Shu’s mother came to the United States as a young adult knowing no English, and steep challenges forced her to sleep in the backseat of her rental car. The hard times didn’t last: she got a dishwashing job after four months and eventually saved up enough to go back to school.
Shu, inspired by his mom, has co-founded Breaktime, a Boston nonprofit that aims to end young adult homelessness by connecting them with meaningful employment. Shu and co-founder Connor Schoen, who met while working at the Y2Y Shelter as Harvard undergraduates, have already been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for social impact, but their impact appears to be just getting started.
Shivani (Shivi) Srikanth, 17, founder, WiST Next Gen and WEInnov8
Some don’t wait until leaving college before launching their own endeavors. Then there’s Shivani (Shivi) Srikanth, who didn’t yet graduate high school before starting two social initiatives: WiST Next Gen, which aims to connect middle- and high-school girls to sports technology opportunities, and WEInnov8, an interactive program that encourages minorities and underserved students to pursue a career in engineering design.
Srikanth didn’t exactly start there. In fifth grade she made a roll-on hand sanitizer, like how someone would apply chapstick, sold it to friends, family and others, making a tidy profit and learning a few things about inventing things. She also co-founded a robotics team in seventh grade, and today her team mentors an all-girls junior robotics team and has presented their work at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.
Bennett Thompson, 21, cofounder of Northeastern University blockchain group
Bennett Thompson has always been interested in point-of-sale systems, the often-unnoticed processes that allow people to easily transfer money or pay for goods. He’s also noticed how many ways they can be improved, from how long a transfer takes to fees to minimum spending requirements.
It’s little wonder, then, that Thompson co-founded a blockchain cryptocurrency organization at Northeastern University, where he’s a sophomore, with a goal of helping people access financial services virtually. He also co-founded a nine-week summer program called Gateway to Blockchain aimed at helping college students better understand the cryptocurrency and make connections to companies in the industry.
Eeshan Tripathii, 19, co-founder of Invictus BCI
Computer-aided prosthetics is a field experts have been toiling away in for years, hoping to help people gain functionality as well as possible. Eeshan Tripathii doesn’t see the task as too daunting to take on as a teen.
Tripathii is the chief technology officer and a co-founder of Incvictus BCI, a startup that wants to create an affordable, non-invasive, brain-controlled prosthetic that will allow amputees nearly natural functionality. The startup, which Tripathii helped found as a freshman at MIT, has already won awards from Cornell University’s Life Changing Labs and the MIT Sandbox, among others. Tripathii isn’t someone to bet against — he figured out how to reverse-engineer a $20,000 prosthetic glove for $500 and as a high school student patented a solution for monitoring and improving indoor air quality.
Noah Trofimow, 22, Suffolk University student, co-founder of the Paper Bag Mask Foundation
Noah Trofimow has been there, somewhere dark where no one wants to be: struggling with anxiety and depression and having dark thoughts about his life. But the Suffolk University student and Stoneham native has turned the corner and turned a bad chapter in his life into something he hopes can aid those with similar mental health struggles: the Paper Bag Mask Foundation.
The nonprofit foundation, which Trofimow co-founded with Fran Kilinski early in the pandemic, aims to get anyone who needs the help in a better spot mentally. The name is a reference to those who may mask their mental health challenges, and the foundation aims to destigmatize mental health and provide connections to necessary services. Its services so far have also included journals, greeting cards and activity books for the psychiatric department at Anna Jaques Hospital in Newburyport and care packages to the youth agency Bridge Over Troubled Waters.
Ryan Turner, 23, senior programmer at Liteboxer
Ryan Turner’s technical know-how used to help him with the video game series Minecraft as a kid. Now, he’s using his software prowess as a programmer at Liteboxer, the Boston company that makes at-home boxing workouts — like Peloton for those who want to throw a punch.
Liteboxer isn’t Turner’s first such tech accomplishment, having figured out as a student at Southern New Hampshire University how to program a robot to move and answer introductory questions at the campus library. Turner joined Liteboxer early in 2020 and today is a senior engineer, leading the company’s team in all of its software efforts as it’s raised $20 million in early funding, including investments from Pitbull and Timbaland. He sees the company’s potential through a gamer’s eyes, incorporating lights and music into the workout experience to better appeal to those who might not have thought of a workout as so much fun.
Fiona Whittington, 23, executive director, founder of TechTogether
Tech has always been a particularly male-dominated industry. But women like Fiona Whittington are working hard to change that. Whittington, the founder and executive director of TechTogether, led the launch in 2017 of a Boston female-focused hackathon, or gathering of programmers.
Today, TechTogether has other chapters in Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, New York and Seattle, with plans to expand internationally. Since its start, the initiative has supported more than 10,000 hackers, more than 4,700 of which it says are of marginalized genders, including transgender women, cisgender women, transgender men and nonbinary individuals.
Sophia Ying, 18, co-founder of History2Us and Boston Ice Dance Collective
Sophia Ying may have about the best example of combining interests with a knack for entrepreneurship. Ying, an accomplished competitive figure skater, founded the Boston Ice Dance Collective to use artificial intelligence for movement recognition in health and disease. The collective works with the The Micheli Center for Sports Injury Prevention in Waltham and the AI startup DeeperEdge to help capture data on figure skaters’ movements to measure health and performance.
Ying wasn’t new to starting up something that interested her, having started an initiative in middle school to bring student clubs to the German International School Boston and co-founded an entrepreneurship club at the Commonwealth School. In her latest project, she’s co-founded with colleagues at the Commonwealth School and Harvard an oral history platform called History2Us that brings generations together through storytelling.
David Zamarin, 23, founder of DetraPel
David Zamarin became an entrepreneur at just 15, launching a company after discovering what he found to be a lack of safe cleaning products for spills and stains. Zamarin ran a shoe-cleaning business that used a cleaning product that contained dangerous fluorochemicals.
Zamarin found a solution in launching DetraPel, a company that today is based in Framingham and includes everything from hand sanitizer and disinfectants to leather protection and stain removers. His efforts, with an ambitious goal to remake the chemicals industry, have already won him accolades and notoriety before, including a Forbes 30 Under 30 honor and a place on the TV show “Shark Tank.”
