From April 4 to 11, the Zahn Innovation Center and Blackstone LaunchPad hosted the Spring 2025 Social Impact Innovation Sprint. This event brought together CCNY students from all majors for a memorable week of creativity, collaboration, and impact.
This semester, we partnered with the Robin Hood Foundation, where six startup founders from their Blue Ridge Labs’ Catalyst Accelerator presented challenges related to their new ventures for our student teams to tackle. Participants formed diverse interdisciplinary teams and started developing innovative solutions to tackle poverty-… Read More »
The Zahn Innovation Center is proud to welcome the 2025 Venture Incubator and Competition cohort. This year’s group comprises inspiring entrepreneurial teams from City College and the broader CUNY community. These innovative ventures span diverse industries; each team brings unique ideas and a passion for solving real-world problems. Over the next six months, these student teams will refine their business models, develop prototypes, and pitch their ventures to expert judges while competing for significant funding opportunities, including a $15k grand prize for each of the four… Read More »
We are honored to spotlight Easy Meets, a dynamic startup from our 2024 Venture Incubator and Competition cohort. Founded by Marwh Alzandani and Basmalla Attia, Easy Meets is a marketplace that simplifies planning hangouts and trips for groups or individuals, while providing businesses with valuable insights into potential customers. As the Standard Chartered Women+Tech grand prize winners, Marwah and Basmalla received $15,000 to help drive their innovative venture forward.
Reflecting on their entrepreneurial journey, Marwh shared, “I fell into it accidentally. It wasn't… Read More »
On July 1, 2024, we greeted 39 dedicated and talented students at T¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey. One month later, we heard 8 community-minded pitches around building healthy communities; we also celebrated the accomplishments and friendships of these aspiring female entrepreneurs, another cohort of proud Bossgirls.
Sponsored by Standard Chartered Bank’s Futuremakers Initiative and powered by The Zahn Innovation Center, Bossgirls has sent off eight summer cohorts, and continues to teach high school girls… Read More »
We are excited to be working with these amazing student-led ventures in this year's Venture Incubator and Competition Program!
Kaylie Hardware Track
BSTS - Better Safe Than Sorry enhances oven safety against fire and smoke from unattended cooking accidents.
CarbonCLAIR - improves air quality by filtering carbon dioxide and particulate matter.
Flyupav - building inspection company that maintains the structural integrity of building.
Tracking Alert Device - TAD is a reliable tracking device that gives parents peace of mind to allow their adolescents to enjoy their… Read More »
Representing diverse neighborhoods in New York and New Jersey, 26 high school students can now proudly proclaim themselves Bossgirls and join this ever-expanding entrepreneurship community as the seventh cohort. Sponsored by Standard Chartered Bank’s Futuremakers Initiative and powered by the Zahn Innovation Center, Bossgirls teaches high school girls and non-binary students about entrepreneurship utilizing an experiential learning model.
On July 5, we kicked off our first fully in-person program post pandemic, back on the historic campus of T¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ. In room… Read More »
If you have been following us, you know that we have been collecting applications for our 2023 Venture Incubator and Competition. Over the past weeks, we have worked with external judges to narrow down the entries. The top teams were interviewed by Zahn staff, who then selected the semi-finalists to join our 2023 competition cohort.
We will begin working with these teams in February. The students will complete our Lean Startup Bootcamp, conduct customer research, work towards completion of an MVP for their startups, and prepare pitch decks. They will also meet with… Read More »
The Zahn Innovation Center fosters a community of changemakers. Encouraging young entrepreneurs to explore their creativity through startups has been one of the main focuses of the center. November 19th is Women's Entrepreneurship Day. A global recognition of women and their contributions to the entrepreneurial community. We are highlighting the founders that achieved outstanding results in the 2022 Zahn Innovation Center Competition -- Carella, Hybridraw, and I AM LIT. Carella and I AM LIT were grand prize winners in the Standard Chartered Women+Tech competition and the… Read More »
This summer the CCNY campus was abuzz with the energy only high schoolers can generate. Thirty five students representing cities across New York and New Jersey were here for the Bossgirls Program. Sponsored by Standard Chartered Bank’s Futuremakers Initiative and powered by the Zahn Innovation Center, Bossgirls teaches high school girls about entrepreneurship utilizing an experiential learning model.
Our first time back on campus since 2019, and we were just as excited as the girls! This is our sixth year and the first time we implemented a hybrid model. The program… Read More »
Amy Divaraniya, the founder and CEO of OOva, will tell you she had no intention of becoming an entrepreneur. As a matter of fact, she avoided taking any business courses during undergraduate studies, but as fate would have it, Amy was destined to be an entrepreneur.
Instead of business, Amy gravitated towards science with a focus on biology. She was interested in the intersection of biology and technology. Getting her masters degree in bioinformatics merged these two sectors for her. After graduating, Amy joined a large pharmaceutical company. It was a challenging environment… Read More »
Last Updated: 10/08/2020 22:24