{"id":1794,"date":"2025-11-18T20:20:54","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T20:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/?p=1794"},"modified":"2025-11-20T20:20:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T20:20:44","slug":"holy-cross-students-dish-out-big-ideas-at-2025-innovation-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/2025\/11\/18\/holy-cross-students-dish-out-big-ideas-at-2025-innovation-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Holy Cross Students Dish Out Big Ideas at 2025 Innovation Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-1797\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2025\/11\/InnoChalWinners-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"The winners of the 2025 Innovation Challenge standing next to the projection screen with the event's logo on it\" width=\"507\" height=\"380\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2025\/11\/InnoChalWinners-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2025\/11\/InnoChalWinners-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2025\/11\/InnoChalWinners-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 507px) 100vw, 507px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">On Wednesday, November 12th, Holy Cross students gathered in Hogan for the 2025 Innovation Challenge, an annual event spotlighting student entrepreneurship and creative problem-solving. Hosted by the HC Launch Club with<\/span><b> Andrew Trachimowicz &#8217;27<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> as the emcee, this year\u2019s challenge centered on WiseDine, a new meal plan generator that syncs students\u2019 dietary needs directly with campus dining data to provide personalized recommendations. With WiseDine targeting a 2026 launch, the event <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">provided students an opportunity to share their ideas surrounding Nico&#8217;s project.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Teams were challenged to address one of the three core areas: driving student engagement, monetization strategy, and marketing and expansion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Judges looked for creativity, realistic solutions, and clear presentations as each team pitched with three minutes on the clock, followed by a two-minute Q&amp;A. Thank you to this year\u2019s judging panel, including WiseDine founder <\/span><b>Nico Corporon \u201926<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a current senior at Holy Cross, along with <\/span><b>Brendan Candon \u201910<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, CEO of SidelineSwap whose company was featured in the last Innovation Challenge, and <\/span><b>Nick Lazarro \u201923<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, founder of Nick\u2019s On-Site Detailing.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><b>First Place:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> $1,000 &#8211; Ella Grainger \u201926, Maeley Nakamura \u201926, Bridget Sachs \u201927<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><b>Second Place:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> $500 &#8211; Julian Beban \u201926 and Ryan Donavan \u201926<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><b>Third Place:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> $250 &#8211; Gavin Kempskie \u201927 and Bill Wang \u201927\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><b>Audience Favorite Award:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> $50 &#8211; Emile Keza \u201929 and Lani Lopez \u201929\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We also congratulate all of the participants who shared their innovative solutions, including Ben Berger \u201926, Billy Black \u201926, Cayla Friedman \u201926, TJ Haigh \u201926, and Jack Murphy \u201927. The event showed the strong creativity of Holy Cross students and gave WiseDine helpful ideas as it prepares for a wider launch. Thank you to everyone who made the evening possible and showed up to support WiseDine!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Update: Just six days later on November 18th, Nico went on to pitch WiseDine at the annual 5 Minute Pitch (5MP) event hosted by Venture Forum where he took home the second place prize of $2000 in non-dilutive funding!<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Written by Kevin Birenbaum \u201826 and Maeley Nakamura \u201826<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Wednesday, November 12th, Holy Cross students gathered in Hogan for the 2025 Innovation Challenge, an annual event spotlighting student entrepreneurship and creative problem-solving. Hosted by the HC Launch Club with Andrew Trachimowicz &#8217;27 as the emcee, this year\u2019s challenge centered on WiseDine, a new meal plan generator that syncs students\u2019 dietary needs directly with &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/2025\/11\/18\/holy-cross-students-dish-out-big-ideas-at-2025-innovation-challenge\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Holy Cross Students Dish Out Big Ideas at 2025 Innovation Challenge&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":784,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/784"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1794"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1800,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794\/revisions\/1800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}