Keiser University’s SEAHAWK TANK Pitch Contest recently provided valuable opportunities for students to jumpstart their entrepreneurial goals. Led by Professor George Stamas, the system-wide tournament held at Keiser University’s West Palm Beach Flagship campus provided learners the opportunity to present their ideas to a panel of industry judges in hopes of winning cash prizes.

Top winners included:

1^st Place – $4,000
Nadine Turner-Crosdale, Pembroke Pines Campus
Business Idea: Fore-Play Dessert Boutique, a full-service restaurant offering Creole-style meals along with decadent desserts.

2^nd Place – $2500
Claudia Gomez: Pembroke Pines Campus
Business Idea: Watch the Birdie Photography, an app that specializes in creating fantasy-like pictures for children and then creating a montage of photos.

3^rd Place – $1250
Danitza Sersen: Ft. Lauderdale Campus
Business Idea: e-Dolac, an e-commerce hub promoting high quality products to the Americas to promote opportunities for small businesses.

These remaining finalists were each awarded $425

Linnea Axengren: Flagship Campus
Business Idea: CanBack, a can recycling system, including machines, for members who receive store credits on their CanBack account.

Michela Tjan Sakti Effendie: Flagship Campus
Business Idea: Bangka Shrimp, a shrimp farm in Indonesia where the shrimp will be farmed in salt water and fed with organic food.

Adolfo Diaz: Flagship Campus
Business Idea: Dotus Systems, a blockchain-operated DeFi system that will streamline peer-to-peer transactions with embedded contracts, tokens, NFT’s.

Daniella Zaldana, Christof Buehler, David AArhammar: Flagship Campus
Business Idea: CEPS, a cloud portal as third party to match employers and vetted employees.

Gunnar Poley, Flagship Campus
Business Idea: Sashini, provider of traditional Greek healthy snacks based on recipes from ancient Greece.

Keiser University congratulates all student contestants for their innovative ideas and sends thanks to its expert team of judges for their deliberations and advice. The judges’ panel included:

Bradley Gies
Brad Gies is a practicing business attorney in Palm Beach County, Florida. He provides legal consulting to small and medium-sized businesses and startups, with a focus on business transactions and intellectual property. A native of Palm Beach County, he graduated with honors from the University of Florida and then graduated from the University of Florida, Levin College of Law in 2011. In 2013, he ‘hung up his own shingle’ and founded his own law firm, Bradley Gies P.A.

Christopher Losquadro
Chris Losquadro is the Principal Broker and Managing Director of Quantum Realty Advisors, Inc., a boutique real estate brokerage and advisory firm located in Palm Beach Gardens. Florida. He has been in the institutional real estate industry for more than 25 years and holds Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) & Master of Business Administration (MBA) degrees from Florida Atlantic University.

Dr. John Dobson
John Dobson is Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Graduate School of Management at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts and an Adjunct Professor at the Harvard Extension School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Before joining academia, he was a successful entrepreneur during and after college. His focus is on the real-life application of entrepreneurial theories to solve problems, which he then applies to student experiential learning in the classroom based on problem-solving modalities as opposed to process-based (traditional) modalities. He has a DBA from the University of Manchester in Manchester, United Kingdom (2014) and a Master of Science in Development Management from the London School of Economics (2007).

Keiser University’s Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration with an Entrepreneurship Concentration promotes the objectives of innovation, profitability, and sustainable growth. In addition, entrepreneurship promotes environmental, economic, and societal benefits through creativity and innovation. The Entrepreneurship concentration considers current entrepreneurial thinking, processes, and practices, including related skill-sets required to create sustainable new enterprises and to improve existing enterprise performance. The program stresses small business experiential (hands-on) entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and business modelling in start-up enterprises and emphasizes ethical decision-making in both for-profit and not-for-profit business ventures.

Keiser University is a private, independent, non-profit university serving nearly 20,000 students at 21 Florida campuses, online, and two international sites. Co-founded in 1977 by Chancellor Arthur Keiser, Ph.D., and Evelyn Keiser, Keiser University currently offers more than 100 degrees from associates to the doctoral level. Keiser University is a  designated Hispanic-Serving Institution, a member of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, and was ranked No. 5 in the U.S. in Social Mobility by U.S. News And World Report in 2022.