This post originally appeared on Forbes.com. – Samer Hamadeh started hustling the good ole’ fashion way by finding a problem and fixing it. A few years later he would apply those same principles to his other ventures, most notable of which is Vault.com. Now Samer is on to an entirely new business but this time it’s in a new industry: healthcare.

David Lloyd decided to forgo a potentially lucrative career in banking to start his own company in South America and in less than two years, his company is doing a few million in revenue. The business? He places talented individuals with international internship programs in London, Madrid & Latin America where they go to work for leading companies, NGOs & National Governments and live a cultural immersion in a new, fascinating country.

Scout raised almost $180,000 with their own crowdfunding campaign in order to improve home security systems.

De Ja Vu. Another trip to the Rose Bowl and another loss by Wisconsin. That’s how 2013 started for me but you can’t win em all, right?

Like all new years, I try to take some time to reflect on the past year. I think it’s a healthy and worthwhile thing to do (Here is last year’s review). It also helps to put things in perspective when thinking about the year ahead. So let’s see how this year went.

I mentioned it earlier but this January started off like last January. Wisconsin lost in the Rose Bowl. Shocking. Last year however I wasn’t in Los Angeles for the game. I think it was because I was looking forward to a much bigger game that would take place the next month.

(Indianapolis – Left to Right: My sister, brother, me.)

February. They did it! The Giants … Read More »

I just finished up my National Ski Patrol refresher over the weekend. This is the 12th year I’ll be volunteering as a patroller at Mount Snow Vermont. For those of you that don’t know what ski patrol is or what we do, you can think of it as an EMT on skis or in my case a snowboard that is primarily responsible for the immediate response, rescue, stabilization, and transport of a patient off of the mountain and to a primary care resource such as a doctor or hospital.

Hurricane Sandy has made everyone aware of the importance of good preparedness and immediate rescue in emergency situations. With that in mind, I wanted to share a few tips that you could use in times of an emergency.

Hands-Only CPR. In times of an emergency or a disaster, it is likely that people around … Read More »

There were at least 30 of them just standing there, listening to the tour guide talk about the room they were about to walk into.

Some of them looked between 60 and 70. Some of them looked much older. All of them however were speaking very heavy German. I’ve been to Germany before but this was a sort of different German. It was the type of old, rustic, 2 generations ago German that I’ve only heard a few times in my life. One time when my grandparents said a few words in the language and another time when I was visiting Frankfurt Germany for the 2006 world cup.

This group was about to walk into the room that I had just left. A room that left me with a sharp pain in my throat and no matter how many times I would … Read More »

Ten years later: remembering the man who led over 12 people to safety after terrorists struck the World Trade Center on September 11th – a former Boston College lacrosse player whose trademark was a red bandanna

This post originally appeared on Harvard Business Review.

Mark Zuckerberg reinvigorated an entire generation when he added nine zeroes to the end of his bank account before he was 30 years old. He made start-ups great again. He showed the world that youth is not a preventative factor of success and that work can actually be fun. This theme of wealth creation while doing something you love is why an increasingly large percentage of graduates are turning to start-ups over more traditional jobs. It might also be why people are quitting their consulting gigs and investment banking positions to pursue a career in start-up land. Just yesterday I ran into a recent Harvard Business School graduate who quit her consulting gig in order to follow her dream at a new start-up.

Unlike big, established corporations or what we might classify as a “steady job,” start-ups present more inherent … Read More »

Let me guess. You looked at the recent Top Colleges List published by Michael Noer and suspiciously thought, “this doesn’t seem right.” I know that’s what went through my mind when I first looked at the list and found that my school, the University of Wisconsin – Madison, was number 147 on the list.

I’m in the process of redesigning this site so that it works more seamlessly with mobile devices. In a few short years, I think we’ll see that all web applications will be natively designed for a mobile experience. I think we’ll see that the way we interact with our phones and iPads will be the same way we interact with our desktop computers or laptops. The screens and inputs will be different but the experience will be the same.

Therefore, I needed to make my site mobile friendly and as always I figured I’d learn a thing or two along the way.

To do this, I downloaded a new responsive wordpress theme from themeforest.net called “Reaction WP: Responsive, Rugged, Bold.” You can get it here. I used the admin interface and firebug to make some styling adjustments and also had to make some … Read More »