UNC Kenan-Flagler student Chijioge Nwogu got a summer opportunity unlike that of his fellow MBA students. He’s spent the last two months developing a startup concept that will use sports-themed PC or mobile games to help children learn STEM skills.
A sports and technology enthusiast with years of experience in the industry, Nwogu’s “basketball smartgames” are aimed to get kids excited about topics like quantum computing, machine learning, augmented reality and virtual reality. The concept of using sports as the focus of educational games, Nwogu says, is to hold the attention of children while teaching them data science.
If successful, the basketball concept will be expanded to create a suite of sports-themed educational games.
“Combining sports and learning has been a long standing idea, and now I am brainstorming the best ways to accomplish this,” Nwogu says.
Chijioge Nwogu, a MBA graduate student at UNC received the first fellowship from the EVC club and CommonBond, worth $5,000. | Credit: UNC Kenan-Flagler Center of Sport Business
The opportunity was made possible by a first-of-its-kind $5,000 fellowship Nwogu received through a partnership between UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital (EVC) Club and New York FinTech startup CommonBond, which helps students and graduates pay for higher education.
It’s the latest in a string of local university programs sponsored by corporations or alumni to support student entrepreneurship. The NC State Entrepreneurship Initiative Fellowship Program provides recent graduates entrance to its Andrews Launch Accelerator and other resources for six months after graduation.
The Melissa and Doug Entrepreneur Program at Duke supports undergraduates who want to pursue their creative business ideas with funding and mentorship. And UNC’s own Adams Apprenticeship is designed to provide entrepreneurial students with career-long support and mentorship.
The EVC Club has committed to awarding five fellowships in coming years, says its president, Matthew Dallhoff. The club hopes to partner with businesses like CommonBond that understand the struggles young entrepreneurs face and want to support them as they work on their ventures. They are accepting partnership applications for the 2016-2017 school year.
“Student debt is adding up for first years,” says Dallhoff. “This fellowship is allowing more students to continue what they came to school for. Fellowships put legitimacy to entrepreneurship and the pursuit of it.”
Following a calling
Nwogu’s passion for mixing sports and entrepreneurship began years before he entered Kenan-Flagler Business School with his own idea. Nwogu was on the founding team of two sports-related startups, Bloomberg Sports and Ballstar.
After working as an analyst on Wall Street after college, Nwogu’s enthusiasm for sports earned him a spot on the founding team of Bloomberg Sports when it spun out of the global financial company in 2012.
He was later promoted to assistant CFO, the position he held in September 2014 when Vista Equity Partners acquired the company and combined it with sports data leader STATS LLC. Nwogu worked as a broadcast and media analyst for STATS until he entered the MBA program.
Ballstar was a side project during that time. Nwogu’s work at Bloomberg Sports caught the attention of a friend building the database and management tool for local basketball leagues. He stepped in as CFO of the company for a time, and now serves as an advisory board member for Ballstar.
At Kenan-Flagler, Nwogu is using his experience as a student ambassador and marketing and analytics director for the UNC Kenan-Flagler Center of Sport Business. He also worked a business development internship for sports marketing firm Wasserman while participating in the fellowship this summer.
Though he has worn many hats in the sports industry, Nwogu’s passion for basketball and education goes back to when he was 18 years old. One of his first jobs was as a mentor for a youth program called Hoops & Leaders. The program leans on a common love of basketball to help mentors form a connection with at-risk youth, building leadership skills and encouraging various education or career paths.
“I strongly believe that all students learn differently and it’s on us as a society to find ways to engage them,” says Nwogu. “Rather than trying to force them to learn through existing frameworks, we should create tools and frameworks that make learning fun.”
Nwogu is excited about the validation the fellowship has given his idea. Over the summer, he spent time with IBM to build a workshop for fourth and fifth graders that will give him insight to what data science topics students find interesting and how he can engage them in a gaming setting. Nwogu aims to collect feedback from both students and teachers to help him build the best possible product over the next year.
Nwogu is part of the 2017 Adams Apprenticeship class, where he is able to seek counsel from seasoned professionals who have a close connection with UNC. | Credit: UNC Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club
Nwogu will get even more assistance through UNC’s Adams Apprenticeship, where he’ll seek counsel from the participating mentors. He will also visit CommonBond in September for a live working session. CommonBond’s VP of Finance Peter Wylie and Chief Risk Officer Vinayak Gurjar are UNC alumni.
Partnering up for social change
CommonBond’s involvement with Kenan-Flagler started in 2015, with the launch of the Adams Apprenticeship. However, the recent partnership sparked from CommonBond co-founder David Klein’s experience while he was in the MBA program at Wharton Business School. According to a CommonBond press release, Klein was awarded a $2,500 entrepreneurship scholarship that let him spend his summer building his company in 2012. That allowed him time and funding to work on his venture instead of take a traditional internship.
Students applying for the CommonBond fellowship were required to complete a one page application stating why they were pursuing the fellowship, what they planned to do if they won and how they have demonstrated a passion for entrepreneurship.
Dallhoff, says ideal applicants were involved with Kenan-Flagler activities and showed the “entrepreneurial bug” before they entered the program.
To make it easier on CommonBond to choose a winner, Dallhoff says the EVC Club narrowed down the pool of applicants to four finalists. After that, it was up to CommonBond.
As a company that advocates for corporate responsibility and change, CommonBond selected Nwogufor his continual efforts to provoke social change, the press release says.
“Chi’s efforts to teach STEM skills through sports aligns with our belief that businesses can— and should—be a positive force for change,” says Klein in the press release.
