CHANCELL-ING: Aggie alumni drive local entrepreneurship
One of my key goals is for all our UC Davis students to be prepared for success once they graduate. Whether that means placement in a top graduate program, a fulfilling job, or becoming a driving force in innovation, our students are poised to leverage their entrepreneurial spirit to shape their communities.
This is especially true right here in the city of Davis, home to nearly 20,000 Aggie alumni. Many of them contribute to the local economy through their entrepreneurial endeavors and innovative ideas. They’re running businesses and launching start-up companies and, in many cases, developing technologies with the potential to shape a brighter tomorrow.
I mentioned a few examples of Aggie entrepreneurs in a recent Chancell-ing column, including The Avid Reader owners Brett and Erin Arnold, who met as UC Davis students in the 1990s. Our most recent graduates are also joining the business community, including Donbi Kim from the class of 2022, who co-owns the Yesterday vintage clothing store in E Street Plaza.
We’re deepening our entrepreneurial culture even more. Next fall, backed by strong student and community interest, UC Davis will launch our undergraduate business major, which is built on math, statistics, and economics. The major will admit 175 students and connect them with local businesses for practical, hands-on experience that directly transfers into jobs and startups.
We see tremendous promise in current students such as Ijeoma Uche, a second-year Ph.D. and MD student who developed Birth By Us. It’s the first comprehensive tool for connecting mothers and healthcare providers in the often confusing and fragmented healthcare landscape. The app focuses on serving Black women, who still experience maternal mortality rates four times higher than the national average.
Her work follows in the footsteps of innovators who built their skills at UC Davis and shape the city’s business landscape. One of these is Tim Keller, who earned both a viticulture degree and his MBA at UC Davis. He’s the founder and executive director of Inventopia, a Davis-based incubator and research space for life sciences, agricultural technology and engineering startups.
Keller believes that Davis has the potential to be the Silicon Valley of sustainability, given UC Davis’ world leadership in agriculture and environmental sciences. He credits the university for teaching him the language and logic of business, along with providing crucial hands-on experiences.
Keller won our annual Big Bang! Business Competition, which gave him the confidence and some initial funding to pursue an entrepreneurial career. With Inventopia, Keller is striving to create an ecosystem here in Davis where “tough tech” startups can thrive. These technologies are important to the survival of our species but challenging and expensive to commercialize.
The future of food, agriculture and sustainability is being forged right now in our on-campus labs. But for that research to reach society, we need alumni like Keller who are finding ways to translate that technology into companies and products that operate in our commercial sector.
Christy Serrato, who earned an economics degree from UC Davis in 1988, was also a Big Bang! Business Competition winner, earning the $10,000 Food + Agriculture Sector Award. In Davis, she founded PairAnything Inc., a software company that developed a mobile app used in the hospitality and retail industries to pinpoint food and wine pairings — and ultimately increase sales.
The inspiration came from trying to find a proper wine pairing with chicken adobo, her favorite Filipino dish. From there, she saw an opportunity to broaden the approach to a large, diverse customer base like they had a personal sommelier at their fingertips.
Serrato credits UC Davis with continuing to be instrumental on her career journey. Her win in the Big Bang! Competition not only provided early funding for PairAnything but instilled a strong commitment to collaboration and an innovative mindset. She believes Davis is the perfect platform for a new generation of transformative businesses, especially with university programs like Venture Catalyst and the Mike and Renee Child Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on campus.
Overall, we’re empowering our university community to become innovators, problem-solvers and agents of change. For many of our students, this entrepreneurial journey begins the moment they arrive on campus. Our location near Silicon Valley, the state capital and the growing tech sector in the region provides students with invaluable opportunities to transform their work from concept to practice before graduation.
The alumni mentioned in this column are just a few examples of Aggies who are thriving entrepreneurs in Davis and beyond. With our new business major about to welcome its first class and our enduring dedication to innovation, I know the number of examples will continue to grow.