Levant Power

Energy Entrepreneurship Winner

Founded in 2008 by MIT students Shakeel Avadhany, Zack Anderson and Vladimir Tarasov, this company’s mission is to develop products that improve fuel economy by harvesting wasted energy in the suspension. Their flagship product, GenShock, is currently being produced for the defense industry. The Levant team also intends to develop GenShock for heavy trucking, rail, and consumer hybrid applications. Levant Power has been featured in National Geographic, the Economist, and on CBS News.

Website Details:
www.levantpower.com

Brand-Yourself.com

Marketing Entrepreneurship Winner

Setting out to allow everyone on the Web to “become remarkable”, Brand-Yourself.com is an integrated system that allows users to track, manage, and improve their online reputation. The company is the brainchild of three Syracuse University students in conjunction with Babson College – Pete Kistler, Robert Sherman, and Trace Cohen. Brand-Yourself.com brings job applicants into the 21st century by giving them the power to control how they are perceived on the web and transform a job applicant from a ‘Net Nobody’ into a highly polished candidate with a remarkable web presence that employers will act on. Initial features include: Hireability Grader, Hireability Dashboard, Hireability Recommendation Engine, Online Identity Builder, and Hireability Monitor.

Website Details:
www.brand-yourself.com

Circle of Women

Social Entrepreneurship Winner

Represented at the Summit by Co-Director and Harvard student, Elizabeth Brook, Circle of Women is a non-profit organization dedicated to building schools for girls in developing countries. Their business model teams students, who work on fund-raising and spreading awareness at home, and seasoned professionals managing the projects locally. Circle of Women promotes education for young women in developing countries. The organization’s philosophy is that by equipping young women with self-reliance, education, and increased capacities they will enhance their own lives and in turn positively impact their societies. The first project is a secondary school for 1200 girls in Afghanistan, which opened last month to students as a result of countless hours of work and more than $120,000 raised by Circle of Women. Organization members will continue working with the school until it is entirely self-sustaining: in the meantime they are seeking out new projects where they can continue to impact young women’s lives in the developing world.

Website Details:
www.circleofwomen.org

TerriblyClever

Technology Entrepreneurship Winner

Creating suites of Web-based apps – including those that work seamlessly with mobile devices such as the iPhone – this start-up was founded by Stanford students Kayvon Beykpour and Joseph Bernstein. The university-centric networking platforms focus on simplifying and streamlining university processes such as registration, course scheduling, university contact directory, view tuition bills, campus news and much more. Within the first two years of operation the company has amassed an impressive client list including Best Buy, Sprint, Hewlett Packard, Duke University, and their alma mater Stanford University.

Website Details:
www.terriblyclever.com

“With over 100 student businesses vying for the Kairos Summit awards, these winners represent the best-of-the-best. They show what can be accomplished with a bit of ingenuity and a lot of hard work. These winners and all the attending businesses are lead by entrepreneurs who won’t sit back and wait for the future to happen; they are taking control and shaping their futures by building the leading businesses of tomorrow,” said Ankur Jain, founder and President of the Kairos Society.

At the Kairos Summit, the entrepreneurs of the future rubbed elbows with and presented ideas to today’s successful business leaders. The event’s welcome addresses were given, via video, by the 42nd President of the United States of America, President William J. Clinton, and William Gates Sr., co-chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Other successful leaders who addressed the more than 500 attendees included Admiral Bill Owens, Managing Director AEA Investors & former Vice Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff; Bill White, President Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum and Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund; Scott Mednick, founder of Legendary Pictures and Mandalay Entertainment; Ellen Kullman, CEO of DuPont; and Naveen Jain, CEO of Intelius Inc.

In addition to attracting the attention of the nation’s top business leaders and student innovators, the Kairos Summit was seen as a way for sponsors to express their commitment to education and support for entrepreneurship among students. The title sponsor of the event was Intelius, Inc., a leading search, screening, and identity protection provider.