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Alumna on Front Lines of Fight to Advance Clean Energy

Manal Yamout McDermid often feels like she’s standing on the cutting edge of California’s multibillion-dollar green economy. One day, McDermid will be meeting with a company that is developing what are effectively electric helicopters designed to cover distances of less than 100 miles – basically, an Uber for the skies. The next day, she’ll sit down with a business that’s building a device that captures a semi truck’s carbon emissions directly from the tailpipe, pumps it into a tank, then either buries it underground or sells the CO2 for use in products like soda. Still other days might include huddles with firms that make rooftop solar panels, heat pump water heaters, even self-driving cars. “Each of the clients that I work with, I get a chance to embed in their team,” McDermid said. “I get to jump around. And not only is the subject matter different, but the people are different and the vibe is different. I like that diversity.” Those clients, in turn, value McDermid’s expertise, so much so that they’re willing to pay handsomely for it, in many cases while they’re still trying to get off the ground as a startup. The Cal State San Marcos alumna is the founding partner of Caliber Strategies, a Sacramento-based lobbying firm that helps energy and climate companies – whether sexy startups or stodgy utilities – navigate the regulatory maze that is the California policy arena. In doing so, McDermid draws on almost two decades of experience in state politics and policymaking, going back to when she was a clean energy adviser to former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in her early 20s, only a few years after graduating from CSUSM with a degree in biology. “I founded this company because it’s really challenging to bring new technologies to market, especially in a place like California where the market rules are quite complex and there are all these different agencies doing different things,” McDermid said. “We focus exclusively on climate and energy, and primarily on what I refer to as disruptive technologies.” Founded in 2013, Caliber now totals eight employees, and one of McDermid’s fellow partners is Michael Picker, former president of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the nonpartisan body charged with regulating the state’s utilities. The company has almost 50 clients, including investment management giant Blackstone, accounting firm KPMG and Sunrun, one of the nation’s biggest solar installers. Sometimes Caliber’s clients take the form of a legacy company that’s opening a new product line. A.O. Smith Corporation, for example, has been around for 150 years and is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of water heaters and boilers, with annual sales of almost $4 billion. But as California increasingly moves toward the full electrification of all buildings, A.O. Smith is gravitating toward heat pumps, which heat water using electricity instead of gas. Enter Caliber. The company worked with a team of nonprofit, industry and environmental organizations to help pass legislation to allocate about $44 million in incentives for heat pumps. Caliber then led an effort with this coalition and the CPUC to design an incentive program that would offer state residents payments of up to $7,300 for installing heat pumps. Another category of clients is fledgling businesses with an innovative solution to a climate-related problem. Charm Industrial is a Bay Area startup with a mission to, as its website touts, “put oil back underground,” an elegantly simple description of the complex science involved in carbon capture and sequestration. Charm approached Caliber in its infancy, seeking to get introduced to the right people, increase its name recognition and create a market from scratch. “It’s about streamlining the process, and even more so trying to educate regulators,” McDermid said. “We educate regulators and policymakers about what the needs of new technologies are. After the policymaker has already said, for example, we want electric cars and you have the market ready, there remain all these barriers that no one has figured out. So it’s a collaborative process to figure out how we get from where we are now to where we want to be.” It was at CSUSM where McDermid discovered her twin passions for environmental science and public policy. Having initially enrolled at the university on a cross country and track and field scholarship (she competed for two years before injuries forced her to stop), she decided she wanted to pursue conservation biology and save the earth one planted tree at a time. At some point in her college journey, however, it dawned on her that planting trees – even 10 to 20 acres worth – couldn’t compare with, say, protecting millions of acres through legislation. As a junior, McDermid spent the fall semester in Washington, D.C., as part of the Panetta Congressional Internship Program, and when she returned, she ran for and was elected president of Associated Students, Inc., for her senior year in 2004-05. She even started a progressive activist organization with some friends. “CSUSM was this perfect testing ground to try out all these different things,” she said. Using her student experience as a springboard, McDermid was accepted after graduation into the Capital Fellows Program, an initiative through Sacramento State that offers paid, full-time fellowships in each branch of California’s government. She was assigned to Gov. Schwarzenegger’s office for a year, followed by a year working in the office of First Lady Maria Shriver. In 2008, McDermid got her big break when Susan Kennedy, still early in her tenure as Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff, acted on a recommendation to tap McDermid as her top deputy. Kennedy was seeking not an executive assistant but someone who could step into her high-pressure position when necessary and not miss a beat. In McDermid, she found a kindred spirit, essentially a younger version of herself. “She was perfect,” Kennedy said. “She looked out at the landscape from the perspective of, if she were the chief of staff to the governor, how would you prepare for this? How would you brief him on this? What information do you need from the agencies or the departments or the senior staff? “It’s a very tough role to step into, and she earned everyone’s respect because she was so good at what she did. She made me twice as good at what I was doing because she was as good as me.” Near the end of his eight years as governor, Schwarzenegger began to feel a particular urgency to buttress his accomplishments in the climate space. He tasked Kennedy with figuring out how to secure permitting for a host of renewable energy projects being incentivized by the Obama administration, and Kennedy in turn tasked not only Picker – the former CPUC president and current Caliber partner – but also McDermid. “It was a failure-is-not-an-option initiative by the governor,” Kennedy said. “I gave Michael all the power, and I gave him the most powerful weapon I could think of, which was Manal. The two of them were responsible for basically unlocking gigawatts of renewable energy in California, which completely changed the landscape of the state’s climate initiatives.” McDermid’s efforts were so successful that, when Schwarzenegger left office in 2011 and Jerry Brown entered, she was among just a handful of staffers retained out of the nearly 100 in the governor’s office. She departed later that year to take a job in Washington as a lobbyist for NextEra Energy, an electric utility holding giant, before Kennedy lured her back to California in 2013. With her longtime mentor, McDermid launched not only Caliber but also Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS), a company that was born out of the shuttering of the San Onofre nuclear power station in June 2013. That closure created an immediate 20% power shortage in large portions of Los Angeles, a gap that AMS filled by building what McDermid called the “world’s largest virtual power plant” – battery storage systems at commercial sites like Kaiser Permanente, Irvine Company and Walmart. Over time, AMS shifted its focus from developing those large-scale energy storage projects to providing software that allowed others to optimize their own energy storage assets. When AMS was sold in 2020, McDermid rededicated herself to Caliber, which had been on the back burner for a few years. During the pandemic, she got married and moved from San Diego (where she grew up after her family escaped war-torn Lebanon when she was 3) to Santa Barbara, her husband’s hometown. Manal and Hitch, her husband, have a 3-year-old son, Malek. McDermid makes frequent trips to Sacramento and to San Francisco, where Caliber has a small office. Not coincidentally, the Bay Area also is the headquarters of the CPUC, one of the regulatory bodies that Caliber works closely with, along with the California Energy Commission, the Air Resources Board and the Natural Resources Agency. Many for-profit companies have an adversarial relationship with the regulators that establish the rules governing them, but that’s not the case with Caliber or most of its clients. They’re all in the same boat and rowing in the same direction when it comes to the state’s ambitious climate goals, which is one of myriad reasons why McDermid loves the work she does. “We’re very focused in California precisely because we actually want to get things done,” McDermid said. “I don’t want to spend my time convincing someone that climate change is a problem or that we should put more electric vehicles on the roads. The nice thing about California is, at the highest level, the leadership is completely bought in on what the problem is. And it’s more about figuring out: How do we solve it?” Manal Yamout McDermid Major at CSUSM: Biology Graduation year: 2005 Company: Caliber Strategies Website: caliberstrat.com Founded: 2013 Number of employees: 8 Talking Business With Manal Yamout McDermid What's the best advice you received about starting a business? Work with people you like. It's super simple, but if you pick people you like and admire and want to spend an inordinate amount of time with, you really can't go wrong. In some ways, getting the people right is more important than the idea and the path to market. What advice would you give budding entrepreneurs? Same advice as the first one: Choose your partners carefully, and choose them based on their character, their integrity and your level of trust in them. Don’t just think about breaking into a market. What's the greatest challenge in starting your own business? I think it's the uncertainty and the self-doubt that come with it, like: Should I grow? The greatest challenge is believing that as you scale up, things will work out, and getting the confidence to take that next step. Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently? No. I'm a firm believer that whatever happens was supposed to happen, and it doesn't mean that it was good. But I wouldn't have done it differently. What are the qualities of a good entrepreneur? I would say confidence, belief in yourself. The ability to really pay attention to what's happening around you, whether that's the market or the people you surround yourself with. Media Contact Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Dorm Dreams: Alumnus Leads Marketing Firm He Founded as CSUSM Freshman

It’s a tale as old as higher education itself: a college student desperately seeking a job to defray the cost of attendance or just to pocket a little extra spending money. That was the situation Elijah Schneider found himself in as a freshman at Cal State San Marcos when he attended a Thanksgiving celebration in the fall of 2015. One of the guests that day – Schneider remembers him being a neighbor or a distant family friend – was a business owner who was soliciting opinions about his company’s Instagram channel. Though firmly in its core demographic, Schneider was no big afficionado of Instagram – he estimates that he had posted fewer than 20 times in about a decade of having an account. He was (and is), however, very opinionated. So while fellow attendees declined the invitation to weigh in, Schneider didn’t hold back. He told the man that his company’s feed looked ugly, that the images resembled generic stock photography and that he should replace whatever marketing agency handled his social media. A few days later, Schneider followed up with a phone call in which he proposed a rather bold suggestion for who should be the replacement. As Schneider recalls it: “I was like, ‘Hey, you’re getting ripped off. You told me you’re paying this agency 10 grand month or something. How about you pay me 1,500 bucks a month? I will learn, I will become obsessed with this. Give me three months. If it doesn’t work, get rid of me.’ ” To Schneider’s surprise, the man agreed to the gambit. Schneider had promised that he would devote 10 hours a week to the enterprise, but he grew so fixated that he doubled it. After a few months, the company’s Instagram following had swelled by a factor of eight, and the man was so pleased that he wanted more services. “Do you know how to do paid ads?” he asked Schneider. “No, but I’ll figure it out,” Schneider replied, with a degree of self-assurance that would become his trademark. He did indeed, to the tune of quintupling a $1,000 investment in paid ads after taking a few courses on YouTube and LinkedIn. By the end of his freshman year, Schneider was managing tens of thousands of advertising dollars, being connected to a second client and hiring his first employee – all while living in The QUAD housing facility and taking classes toward his major in business administration. As a teenager in his dorm room, Schneider founded a digital marketing agency that he first called Mercury Media before changing the name to Modifly in 2017. He continued to build the company during his five years at CSUSM – eventually moving into an office at Union Cowork across the street from campus in North City – before graduating in 2020. Today, Modifly occupies a sleek, modern, 8,000-square-foot space in a high rise in downtown San Diego, a short walk from where Schneider lives with his wife, Sarah, an OR nurse at UC San Diego whom he met at CSUSM. Two years ago, Schneider sold a majority stake in his nascent business to a parent company called CourtAvenue, helping his team grow to 30 employees spread across four cities, including Mexico City. Modifly’s current and former clients include such brands as Mercedes-Benz, Nordstrom and UGG boots. Asked about his unorthodox path to becoming an entrepreneur, the now 27-year-old Schneider said: “Because I didn’t have the baggage of working for other companies, I hadn’t developed bad habits. I had to develop perspective, which allowed me to – with no experience – test things and see what’s working and what’s not. Not having a traditional background is fantastic in terms of the progression of the business because we do things differently. Every time somebody joins the company from another agency, they’re like, ‘It’s not supposed to work like this.’ And I’m like, ‘I know, it’s great.’ ” How does Schneider do things differently? He conducts a performance evaluation called a 360 review in which every employee of the company evaluates everyone else, meaning that the CEO (Schneider) can get critiqued by a lower-level worker who was just hired. “It’s not about age or experience,” Schneider said. “Everyone’s perspective is critical.” How does he do things differently? Even as the young leader of a young business, he’s not afraid to call established companies out on what he sees as flawed marketing strategies and to propose solutions that constitute much more than tinkering around the edges. Take Poo-Pourri, which devises and sells fragrant sprays for toilets. The company approached Modifly after its previous marketing partner didn’t work out. After a deep dive into customer feedback, Schneider proposed a complete overhaul of its approach, mostly notably removing the “Poo” and broadening to other types of sprays. Now rebranded as ~Pourri, the company peddles fragrances that reduce odors from not only the bathroom, but also pets, cars, shoes, baby diapers, even marijuana. “Digital media and digital marketing are constantly changing – every hour, it feels like,” Schneider said. “It’s a giant puzzle, and if you have to navigate that as a brand, it can become really confusing. I love this business because it pushes me to think outside the box to solve problems.” Schneider’s righthand man almost since the outset of his entrepreneurial journey has been Brandon Biancalani. They met at orientation before their first year at CSUSM – Schneider an incoming freshman from San Diego, Biancalani from San Clemente. They soon learned that they would be living a couple rooms down from each other on the same floor of The QUAD (Schneider’s future wife lived a few rooms down in the other direction). Biancalani initially was struck by Schneider’s outspokenness – a sharp contrast to his introversion – but while other residents of the dorm were distracted by partying or other teenage concerns, he and Schneider bonded over long, late-night conversations about life goals. Having entered CSUSM as a kinesiology student, Biancalani quickly realized it wasn’t for him, and when Schneider dangled an opportunity in the summer of 2016 to be Employee No. 2 for Modifly (then Mercury Media), Biancalani jumped at it. They moved into an apartment south of campus and lived together for the next 3½ years before graduating in the same class. Biancalani, who’s also married to a fellow CSUSM alumna, is now the head of paid media for Modifly. “We had this feeling early on that we could be really successful with this,” Biancalani said. “Even when we didn’t have an office, we’d meet at a coffee shop, just a couple kids figuring stuff out. And then it started turning into something big really fast.” Biancalani says their business partnership works so well because he’s a detail-oriented, data-crunching specialist while Schneider is a big-picture visionary. “Elijah has done so many personality quizzes that land him in that ‘thought leader’ category,” he said. “If something new pops up, he’s probably three steps ahead and already is best buddies with the person who owns the company. His superpower is that he can predict things and be on the cutting edge and be fearless in voicing that early. And he’s right 99% of the time.” After Schneider sold his majority stake in Modifly in 2022, he turned over day-to-day operations to a new president, Nico Coetzee, who’s been in the marketing business since Schneider was an infant. Now that he has built a stable company, Schneider is relentlessly focused on its growth. He travels frequently to meet potential clients, speak at conferences and generally proselytize on behalf of Modifly. Given that he stumbled upon his career in the most accidental way imaginable – giving offhand advice to someone at a family gathering – even Schneider is often amazed by the passion he feels for it. “I pour myself into this job because I can and because I want to,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like work; it’s my favorite thing. There are definitely days where I’m like, ‘I just want to go home, I’m done.’ But 99 out of 100 days, I love what I do.” Elijah Schneider Major at CSUSM: Business administration Graduation year: 2020 Company: Modifly Website: wemodifly.com Founded: 2016 Number of employees: 30 Talking Business With Elijah Schneider What's the best advice you received about starting a business? Surround yourself with the right people. You are a product of your environment, and if you have morally good people around you, then every piece of advice you're receiving is typically to your benefit. People over everything – that's the biggest thing. What advice would you give budding entrepreneurs? If you have an idea for a business, just do it. Don't overthink it. Just put it in the market. Also, make sure you give yourself permission to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. What's the greatest challenge in starting your own business? For me, it was age and experience. I didn't really have a good mentor system around me. The people I could turn to for advice, I kind of had to build that as we went. Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently? I would have evaluated myself more. I am good at some things, I am great at others and I am horrendous at others. I wish I had been able to take a step back and evaluate myself in a way where I could place levers of accountability to fill the holes. What are the qualities of a good entrepreneur? First and foremost is awareness. You have to be aware of yourself, your environment, your strengths and weaknesses. Number two is vision. As an entrepreneur, if you cannot bring people together to accomplish something, whether it's a task or solving a specific problem, you're not going to do well. Media Contact Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

More Than a Numbers Game

I don’t know if it was predestination, but I’ve certainly known for a long time that I wanted to be a scientist. I still have the picture I drew in elementary school when I was 8 years old. It’s a self-portrait with my dream job scrawled on the paper: “scantist.” I came across that picture not so long ago and, while my spelling has improved greatly since then, the statistics related to the number of Black people employed in science and engineering remain stark. Just 3% are Black men, according to the National Science Foundation. The numbers are worse for Black women like me – just 2%. But I’ve never been someone to let numbers define me or statistics deter me from pursuing my dreams. That’s probably a good thing considering I’m also part of another group that, statistically, struggles to complete college – former foster youth. Less than 3% of former foster youth earn a bachelor’s degree, according to the Education Commission of the States. I’m proud that I’m part of those small groups since graduating from Cal State San Marcos in May with my bachelor’s in biological sciences. Now I want to help other students do the same and see those percentages grow. Much like me, most just need an opportunity. It’s a lesson I learned from my grandmother, who taught me the importance of simply showing up and taking a chance on someone. In my grandmother’s case, she took in my three sisters and me when our mother couldn’t care for us. I’m also grateful to CSUSM for taking a chance on me. At the university, I had the good fortune of being in U-RISE, which is the Undergraduate Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement program. Part of CSUSM’s Center for Training, Research and Educational Excellence, or CTREE for short, the U-RISE program prepares talented and motivated underrepresented students majoring in the sciences to enter and succeed in doctoral studies. It was in U-RISE that I met some truly special mentors who stepped up on my behalf. CTREE and U-RISE have eligibility requirements – and I didn’t meet all of them. It’s not that I wasn’t good at science or passionate about my studies. But my grades weren't at the level that U-RISE requires. I had always been a strong student in high school. I earned a spot on the honor roll each semester and was involved in numerous extracurricular activities. But I struggled when I started college. I wasn’t as prepared as I thought. Fortunately for me, CTREE’s leaders looked beyond the numbers (in this case, my grade-point average). They took into account the challenges I was working to overcome and saw my potential. They were willing to take a chance on me. And it was truly life-changing. Becoming part of U-RISE led me to a spot in the lab of biology professor Dennis Kolosov, who was there for me every step of the way. Whether it was answering a question, meeting one-on-one or providing professional development, Dr. Kolosov was crucial to my development and shaping my identity as a scientist. The support that CSUSM provides is second to none, from faculty like Dr. Kolosov and Dr. Mallory Rice, who inspire students each day, to staff like Shanelle Watkins, the Black Student Success Initiatives coordinator in the Black Student Center. This fall, I’m starting a Ph.D. program at UC Irvine, where I will be studying immunology. While I put in years of hard work to get here, my support system at CSUSM was critical in helping me reach this point. I’m looking forward to helping other students like me in the future, whether through a nonprofit organization to give back to the community in my hometown of Rialto near San Bernardino, or by helping STEM students at CSUSM navigate the path toward their degree. I know firsthand how important representation is for students of marginalized groups, and I know what it’s like to persevere. Each time I have fallen, I have gotten back up. I crawled, walked and ran toward my degree at CSUSM. Now, I want to serve as a positive example and role model to ensure that other students facing similar challenges aren’t left behind. Media Contact Eric Breier, Interim Assistant Director of Editorial and External Affairs ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

Volleyball Standout Excels After Overcoming Challenges

Ever since Cal State San Marcos student-athlete Jada Blake was 6 years old, the volleyball court had been her sanctuary — a place where family issues and everyday struggles could fade into the background, leaving just her and the game. That was, until she reached her freshman year of high school. Quickly, the court she loved so much became a source of distress, and Blake found herself faced with her biggest opponent yet: depression. “I stopped caring about volleyball,” Blake said. “I even ended up not finishing club that year. I was just going through a lot mentally and couldn’t continue having that pressure on my shoulders.” Blake began skipping school to cope with her loss of motivation and overwhelming anxiety. She no longer had the desire to connect with her peers and spent most of her time isolated from loved ones. As Blake disappeared inside of herself, she found it increasingly difficult to face the outside world. “My house was walking distance from school, so my mom would drop me off and I would just walk back home once she was at work,” Blake said. “I didn’t want to be at school. I knew I would just go to the bathroom and cry.” Blake was raised in a single-parent household. Her father, who died in July 2023, was not in the picture due to addiction issues, so Blake grew up surrounded by her mom, older sister and younger brother. Having only each other to rely on, they became a team, always ready to support one another. As Blake’s streak of unexcused absences continued to grow, her mom learned of the situation from Blake’s high school counselor. Taken aback by her daughter acting so out of character, she knew it was time to intervene. “Jada’s freshman year was a struggle,” said Brianna Becker, Blake’s mom. “I would get that automated phone call every day at 4 p.m. saying your child missed class. There were even times I left work early and would find her at home. So, I started staying at home more and going into work late. Anything I could to make sure she went to school. “As a young single mom with no child support, it was just us most of the time. I feel like I grew up with them. I always want my kids to be open with me, and I feel like they can come to me about anything in the world. If there’s something I can’t do for them, we’ll figure it out together.” Blake’s first year of high school progressed, and with the help of her family, she started to throw herself back into school and social activities. As she regained a sense of motivation, she felt ready to resume her athletic pursuits as well. Her sophomore year, she kickstarted a long-standing reunion with the court and concluded the last three years of her high school sports career on a high, playing on varsity and being a candidate for league player of the year. Unfortunately, when it came time to explore colleges, her volleyball recruiting process was derailed by the pandemic. During such a time of uncertainty, it was practical for Blake to stay with family and attend community college in her hometown of Phoenix. There, she gained a strong foothold on her academics and started to feel confident in her schoolwork. “In high school, academics didn’t come naturally to me,” Blake said. “I always felt discouraged in that realm. I knew that I wanted to go to college, and while my sister had academic scholarships that were taking her there, I didn’t have that. I only had volleyball, and I had left it for a time. “You don’t realize when you’re super young that just one semester of making the wrong decisions and not prioritizing the right things can throw a lot of opportunities down the drain. My sophomore, junior and senior year were mainly just focused on fixing my freshman year. “But I’m actually very happy that I started with community college because it helped me with the transition from high school to university. Those two years in junior college taught me so much about how I could excel as a first-generation student athlete. In fact, that first semester after the pandemic was my first semester ever getting straight A’s.” When it came time for Blake to transfer to a four-year college, she was introduced to CSUSM’s head volleyball coach, Andrea Leonard. It felt like an instant connection between the two, and Blake knew she had found the school for her. As she made the plunge and moved to California last fall, she felt like she could finally breathe. She had earned her scholarship and could now play volleyball while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in communication. Blake’s freshman year of high school was no longer a regretful memory, but a marker of her resilience and ability to overcome any challenge thrown her way. “I knew Jada was going to be an impactful player in our program,” Leonard said. “She really embodies all the core values that we look for, someone who is resilient, accountable and driven. She has this energy that bounces off the team and brings joy to everyone around her.” Blake lives with her great aunt, a local volleyball legend in the San Diego area, and her great aunt’s daughter, a fellow volleyball player. Although she was initially anxious about moving away from her family and falling back into old habits, Blake found a second home, dubbed “the volleyball house,” where she is excitedly taking on this new journey and staying on top of her volleyball and academic commitments. After her freshman year, Blake learned the importance of seeking outside help when needed. She now stays on top of her mental health by meeting with a therapist and talking with her family every day. They are her biggest supporters and regularly make the six-hour drive to San Marcos to watch her games. Knowing she can always count on her family to be by her side, Blake feels like she can overcome any barrier that stands in her path, mental or physical. “I just love watching her play,” Becker said. “I’m so proud of her and so happy that she’s in the position that she is in now. Seeing how far she has come and how things have turned around for her — it makes me emotional. At the end of the day, there’s going to be things in life that knock you down, but you have to pick yourself back up and fight for something that you are truly passionate about. And she did. And she has so much more to look forward to.” Media Contact Eric Breier, Interim Assistant Director of Editorial and External Affairs ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

Lightning Strikes: Alumni Transform Passion for Helping Others Into Growing VR Enterprise

Murchison Falls National Park is a safari park in Uganda that boasts some of the best wildlife in the world, home to 76 different species of mammals and 451 species of birds. It’s located more than 9,000 miles from California, and a multiday safari there costs many thousands of dollars. On a Thursday afternoon in mid-February, a group of residents at the Bayshire Carlsbad assisted living facility made the exotic trip for free when white virtual reality headsets were placed over their faces. “You better hold on to your seat!” a resident named Jim Conley exclaimed as he craned his neck back and forth and spotted elephants, gorillas and monkeys in his field of vision, with a spectacular mountain range as the backdrop. “Boy, that is one pretty picture.” While Conley, seated in the first row of chairs, grew increasingly enmeshed in the virtual paradise around him, Jeremy Ford walked among the couple dozen other residents on hand for the VR session, carefully fitting them with their own headsets. Nearby, Tracy Ford, Jeremy’s wife, chatted with a couple of the residents as if they were old friends. After the safari experience, the residents hopped on a (virtual) plane and traveled to Cuba, then to Argentina and South Africa. A little less than an hour later, they were back at Bayshire, their eyes transfixed, their spirits lifted. “Every month when they come, I’m one of the first people out there,” said Conley, 72, a former boxer who has trouble walking now. “We saw a lot of cool stuff today. How often do you get to be that close to an elephant? After a while, you have to remind yourself that it’s not real.” That type of transporting experience is just what Jeremy Ford himself went through three years ago when, on an ordinary shopping trip to Best Buy with his wife, he strapped on a VR headset and found himself soaring over the Golden Gate Bridge like an eagle. Jeremy is a technophile who always has been an early adopter when it comes to electronic gadgets – he has waited in line for multiple iterations of the iPhone – and this would be no exception. Tracy bought him an Oculus Quest 2 for his birthday, only a year after it had been released. Neither Jeremy nor Tracy studied business as students at Cal State San Marcos – Tracy graduated with a degree in criminology and justice studies in 2007, Jeremy with a degree in sociology in 2015 – but both possess an entrepreneurial bent that sees them frequently bounce ideas off each other. Here was a golden business idea staring them in the face: the opportunity to combine Jeremy’s technological savvy with Tracy’s interpersonal skills and their mutual desire to help people. Following a year dedicated to research and development, the Fords purchased 20 of the Quest 2 VR devices and in October 2022 launched Lightning Tours (the name was inspired by their son, Colton, now 5, and his love of the character Lightning McQueen from the Pixar film “Cars”). They considered multiple demographics as their target audience before deciding that senior living facilities made the most sense. “It started out with just putting on a headset, experiencing it for ourselves and wanting to share that with others,” Jeremy Ford said. “We’ve always had a passion for helping others and putting a smile on people’s faces. And that’s what we do, day in and day out.” Almost two years after the company was formed, Lightning Tours still hasn’t spent a penny on marketing. In the early days, the Fords pitched their concept to multiple facilities in North San Diego County by giving free virtual tours, and they gradually attracted paying customers by positive word of mouth. Now, they have grown to almost 40 VR experiences per month, and in total have given more than 500 throughout Southern California. As the tech guru, Jeremy handles the VR side of the business – buying and maintaining the headsets, selecting and loading the proprietary travel software, rigging the equipment so that it’s as comfortable and user-friendly as possible for an older clientele. He also has used his background in sales to drum up more customers, and he has personally directed all but one of the VR sessions (the single exception was when he had to travel for a funeral). Tracy, meanwhile, shoots photos and videos for the company’s social media channels while also taking the lead on communication with the residents of the facilities. “I try to build relationships with the seniors,” Tracy said. “I’m more of an emotional person, so I like to come in and see how they’re doing, how their day is going while he’s getting everything set up. I’d say he’s the brains of the operation, and I’m maybe more heart. “Although,” she added with a smile, “he does have heart.” Most of Lightning Tours’ clients value its service so much that they have booked standing monthly experiences. Each time, the tour is to a different country or region of the world – with rare exceptions, the destinations are places that the seniors are incapable of traveling to at this point in their lives. The effect can be powerful. Jeremy recalls a woman at a facility in Irvine who was initially reluctant to participate before he convinced her to give it a try. She agreed and sat quietly for the whole hour, turning her head in every direction. After the tour of Paris ended and Jeremy removed her headset, he saw that she was crying. When he asked her what was wrong, she related that her husband had died a few months earlier and that the sights during the tour brought back exhilarating memories of their frequent trips to the City of Light as a couple. “It was a moment that will stick out forever in terms of being able to provide that to her,” Jeremy said. “We want to bring joy to people, connect them to something that they might not otherwise be able to connect with, whether it’s the technology or whether it's the location.” Residents have been known to clap when the Fords enter the facility each month and to cheer after the experience. Some sites have introduced passport books, with seniors receiving stamps when they visit a new country. Olah Tupuola, the resident program director at Bayshire Carlsbad, said Lightning Tours has been a “transformative program” since the Fords first came to the center last September. “Their professionalism and kindness have made a significant impact on our community,” Tupuola said. “With Lightning Tours, the concept of a vacation is redefined, as residents can explore the world virtually, often while reliving cherished memories.” Jeremy and Tracy Ford are accidental entrepreneurs in more ways than one. A San Marcos native who’s the son of a Marine, Jeremy transferred to CSUSM from Palomar College and played on the first men’s basketball team in university history, coached by Jim Saia. He aspired to go to law school after graduation but ended up working in sales, first for a law firm and then for two large national life insurance companies. Tracy grew up in Oceanside and hoped to parlay her criminology degree into a career in law enforcement. But she graduated into a poor labor market caused by the 2007 recession and instead took a job in finance for 24 Hour Fitness. Unfulfilled by it, she transitioned into a role as a personal trainer for the same business. In fact, Tracy and Jeremy met at a 24 Hour Fitness gym, and they got married seven years ago. Both feeling boxed in by their corporate environments, they tried to turn a couple of their other late-night brainstorms into businesses, but nothing took off. Then came the fateful visit to Best Buy. Not that the birth of Lightning Tours came without hurdles. For the first 10 months of the company’s existence, Jeremy kept his full-time position at Ethos Life Insurance. “But there came a point where my wife was driving me to tours and I was working in the passenger seat, trying to do both jobs,” Jeremy said. “It was like, ‘OK, this isn’t sustainable. We’ve got to figure something out.’ ” That something was his decision to leave Ethos and dedicate himself fully to the startup in August 2023, which was accompanied by a different challenge in terms of the loss of his monthly paycheck. Jeremy called it a big leap of faith that makes him anxiety-ridden just by thinking about it. “They say it’s not easy to start a business, and they weren’t lying,” Tracy said. “But now we know exactly what to tell future entrepreneurs: If you think you’re ready to quit your job, wait at least six months, then do it.” Almost all of Lightning Tours’ clients are assisted living facilities, but the Fords have dipped their toes into other waters as well. They have brought their VR experiences to a few different daycare and after-school programs in the region, allowing children the same opportunity to see distant lands as the seniors get. This summer, they introduced a travel tour called “Around the World in Five Weeks” to the Boys & Girls Club of the South Coast Area in San Clemente, with passports and stamps for the kids to document their adventures. They also are in the process of getting approved by the San Marcos Unified School District to offer tours in local schools. Some of the sessions don’t even involve virtual travel. Lightning Tours has conducted some guided meditation experiences for the sales departments of businesses or for employees of high-stress jobs, such as firefighters and police officers. “Brick by brick, we’re building those partnerships,” Jeremy said. Yet the senior population remains the Fords’ primary focus, which makes sense given that there are more than 50,000 facilities for assisted living and memory care in California and they have been to only about 50 of them. The company’s growth continues apace. Lightning Tours has two other partial owners (unpaid for now) specializing in partnerships and strategic innovation, and it’s on the verge of hiring an employee to run some of the tours and free Jeremy up to source more business. Last spring, the Fords bought 20 more Quest 2 headsets (the company is now owned by Meta, Facebook’s parent), doubling their inventory, and deployed them in the Inland Empire through a licensing agreement with a couple who lives there. “I think this will go as far as we can take it,” Jeremy said. “We’ve done things strategically because if we grow too fast, the base can be flimsy and it can all fall apart. But thinking big picture, Lightning Tours could be national, it could be in every state, every big city. “Where we are now is trying to put the pieces together, get this technology out there and in the hands of as many seniors as possible. We want to provide high-quality experiences and the joy of travel, get them outside of those four walls that they’re in daily.” Jeremy and Tracy Ford Major at CSUSM: Jeremy, sociology; Tracy, criminology and justice studies Graduation year: Tracy, 2007; Jeremy, 2015 Company: Lightning Tours Website: lightningtours.co Founded: 2022 Number of employees: Four Talking Business With Jeremy Ford What's the best advice you received about starting a business? Have goals. Having goals gives you strategic direction, and if you don't have them, you'll be spinning your wheels. When you have those goals, it enables you to focus on the main categories that will be the catalyst for your business moving forward. What advice would you give budding entrepreneurs? Be prepared for long hours, a lot of late nights. On those late nights, it can seem like you're on an island by yourself. What we learned the hard way is that having a team is very important – bringing others in to help support certain aspects of the business. Your reach expands when you let other people in to help. What's the greatest challenge in starting your own business? If you already have a full-time job, it can be difficult to decipher when it's time to quit and give your business the full attention. Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently? I would have waited longer to quit my full-time job. And I would have focused more heavily on the revenue-producing aspects of the business. Even though we do have quite a robust product now, there were times when we were building it up where the churn was at a higher rate than the income that was coming in. What are the qualities of a good entrepreneur? I can sum that up in one word: perseverance. If you do not have perseverance, you will not be an entrepreneur; you will go back into the workforce within months. If you have the ability to persevere, the ability to plan things out and execute that plan, you have a much better chance of being an entrepreneur for longer than just a few months. Media Contact Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Scoop Dreams: Alumna Turns Childhood Memories Into Business

For Juliana Ortiz, ice cream is more than just a dessert. Ortiz still gets nostalgic recalling childhood trips to Rite Aid to grab Thrifty’s ice cream with her parents. Her go-to flavor was chocolate, and it brought her comfort every time she ate it. Ortiz cherished the little things. Going for chocolate ice cream with her mom and dad may have seemed ordinary to others. But for her, growing up in a low-income family, it was always a special moment. “Ice cream was always a reward,” Ortiz said. “I had to do something good to get it. Every time I had ice cream, it was always that sense of accomplishing something, even if it was something small.” Now, as a business owner, Ortiz looks for special moments like these through customers at her own ice cream shop. Entrepreneurship was never something on her radar, but that changed at Cal State San Marcos. It was a combination of fond memories of eating ice cream with her family and realizing that ice cream shops have the happiest clientele. “No one goes to an ice cream shop angry, right?” Ortiz said. “Customers are either really happy because they're with family or friends or they've had a really bad day and they want a pick-me-up.” Since graduating from CSUSM in 2018 with a degree in marketing, Ortiz has launched a successful ice cream business, Cali Cream, with her husband, Ken Schulenburg. Ortiz has helped craft 55 different flavors, including her childhood favorite, chocolate. Quality is paramount. Cali Cream ice cream is made with 16% butterfat, compared with an average of 12% for most ice cream companies. “We get it shipped from the farm to us within seven days,” Ortiz said. “It's only seven days from cow to cone.” Since opening steps from Moonlight Beach in Encinitas in 2016, Cali Cream has expanded to include a bakery and a second ice cream location in San Diego’s downtown Gaslamp Quarter. Cali Cream also has been featured at special events like Comic-Con International and concerts at the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park. “I don't know if there was ever a moment where the lightbulb went off,” Ortiz said, “but I think there are times where you're in a place in your life where you just say, ‘Hey, I want to do something different.’ ” Ortiz came to CSUSM looking for a change, intending to create a better life for her daughter, Leslie. When she was 16, Ortiz learned that she was pregnant. Telling her parents was difficult, and she didn’t want them to be disappointed in her or think it would keep her from having a successful future. “It was extremely hard,” she said. “You never want to disappoint your parents. And you never want to do anything that they think might hold you back. Sometimes kids make mistakes. I've learned from it, but I think I've turned it around. I also believe that there are certain things that just kind of happen for a reason, and I feel like she's my biggest motivator. We’ve grown up together.” Leslie was born prematurely, weighing just 4 pounds. Ortiz was facing adult responsibilities at a young age, but Leslie was a constant source of inspiration and motivation. “At that time, it was so difficult to try to navigate everything,” Ortiz said. “But I ended up just striving forward again. I'm not going to be a statistic. I'm not going to let something like that hold me back. I needed to give my family – and I needed to give my daughter – a good example.” When Ortiz was introduced to Rebeca Perren, a CSUSM marketing professor and former faculty mentor in the College of Business Administration’s mentorship program, she was clear that going back to school at age 30 was all for Leslie. And Perren was excited by the possibility of helping Latina students because when she was a student, she rarely saw people like her in the classroom. “I wanted to help students who were like me,” Perren said. “And just by chance, Juliana was the student who was assigned to me. I got to know Juliana and her story, not just as a first-generation college student, but as a mother. She had a teenage daughter and she wanted to get her degree before her daughter went off to college. I had children myself, and we connected on so many different levels.” Perren and Ortiz would meet to discuss class assignments and the struggles of being Latina in higher education. Ortiz saw that Perren regularly met with other business students, and she suggested that they all come together and start gathering as a group. Perren invited Josefina Espino and Chris Santos to join, and they all bonded instantly. They met twice a month, usually at the campus Starbucks, and talked about how they pictured their lives after college. The mentor group evolved into CoBA’s Latino Business Student Association, with Perren serving as the faculty adviser for seven years. Espino remembers when Ortiz revealed to the group that she was interested in entrepreneurship and wanted to start an ice cream business. Ortiz and Espino even used her business idea for a research project in a marketing class taught by professor Kristin Stewart. Starting a path to entrepreneurship was exciting, but also nerve-racking for Ortiz. She didn’t know how she would balance being a student and mother while quitting her job as a marketing coordinator at Pacific Records, Inc. in San Diego. “I remember one of the most important conversations I had to have with Juliana was about being generous to herself,” Perren said. “She, of course, had so much to offer, and one of the most difficult decisions she had to make was investing in herself. She is such a generous and loyal person. It felt difficult to let go of some of her commitments and give back to herself.” Now, as an entrepreneur, Ortiz shows her generosity in the creative ways she connects with her customers and employees. When a customer comes into Cali Cream and talks about an ice cream flavor that holds significance for them, Ortiz goes out of her way to make it. “Ice cream is such an emotional product,” Ortiz said. “We've made special request ice cream orders, because maybe it's a birthday present or it’s their parents' favorite. It’s so cool because I get to be the decision-maker. I can say yes or no, but if someone were to ask any other ice cream company, the answer is always going to be no. But my goal is to always make people happy.” One of the most rewarding parts of Ortiz’s job is supporting her employees through college. It’s her way of giving back. A photo wall in the Encinitas location displays the logos of the colleges that her employees are attending. Ortiz even established a rule that if an employee performs well during the summer, they are guaranteed a job when they come home from college. “I remember going to Cali Cream and seeing that the tip jar said ‘college fund’ on it,” Perren said. “It’s really awesome to see how college is built into the company culture. It's great when you see our alumni not only make a difference in their own life, but also how she can inspire and create social mobility in her family and in our community.” Juliana Ortiz Major at CSUSM: Business marketing Graduation year: 2018 Company: Cali Cream Website: calicreamicecream.com Founded: 2016 Number of employees: 35-80 (depending on the season) Talking Business With Juliana Ortiz What’s the best advice you received about starting a business? Do what feels right for you and don’t be afraid to take risks. Not every risk is going to be successful, but there's certain risks that are very rewarding. I think if you do your work and research time, then it minimizes the damage. What advice would you give budding entrepreneurs? I would say go for it. I think you never want to regret not making a decision because of the fear of failure. What’s the greatest challenge in starting your own business? The greatest challenge for me was trying to understand the process for getting health permits. Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently? For us, it's a weather-based ice business. I have to look at weather for the next week and for the next couple of days to see how it impacts our business. That’s something that most people don't think about. I would also make sure to work with a team and ensure that if there's a new product, we have to educate them. If your team's not good and if they're not educated, it falls back on you. They also don't want to be put in a position where they don't know how to communicate to their guests. What are the qualities of a good entrepreneur? With changes in just about anything, whether it’s regulation or COVID, you have to be able to adapt and you have to be able to transition. Media Contact Bri Phillips, Communications Specialist bphillips@csusm.edu

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