Blaise Delfino, a graduate student at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania who developed \u201cFader Plugs,\u201d designed to protect the wearer from harmful noise, won the $10,000 first place prize in the fifth annual Student Business Plan Competition sponsored by Pennsylvania\u2019s State System of Higher Education. This is the second time that ESU won first place in the competition with Jonathan Weber \u201915, winning $10,000 in 2011 for eDentified. In 2012, Thomas Rounsville M\u201912, won the $5,000 second place prize for his company Wildlife Integrative Forensics.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe faculty and staff at ESU have displayed great support, compassion and excitement as I embark on my journey of founding Fader Plugs, LLC,\u201d said Delfino. \u201cI consider myself both lucky and blessed to be a student at East Stroudsburg University. The faculty members and the staff tied to the University\u2019s business accelerator and entrepreneurial leadership center truly care about the success of their students and they want to see them succeed; they are willing to go the extra mile.\u00a0 Words just can\u2019t express how thankful I am for their continued support and belief in me as a student, an entrepreneur and CEO of Fader Plugs LLC.\u201d<\/p>\n
Delfino, a licensed hearing aid dispenser and audio engineer, is a graduate student studying speech-language pathology at ESU, where also earned his bachelor\u2019s degree in speech-language pathology in 2014. His winning entry in the competition, Fader Plugs, are designed to provide for \u201ccontrolled decibel reduction in a highly functional and fashionable design.\u201d Delfino\u2019s winning business plan included a blueprint for research and development followed by commercialization of the product. For the complete story on Blaise, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n A total of 223 students\/student teams submitted their intent to compete in the competition last fall including 27 from ESU. Of those, 109 made it through the first round of judging, from which 17 entrants were selected as semi-finalists. Ten teams were selected as finalists, three of them from ESU:<\/p>\n \u201cI believe the name of our strategic plan, Students First: Innovate ESU, sets the tone for faculty and student involvement in programs such as the Business Plan Competition,\u201d said President Marcia G. Welsh, Ph.D. \u201cStudents working collaboratively with faculty from various disciplines as well as the staff of our business accelerator program and entrepreneurial center really help to prepare learners like Blaise, Edmond and Tammy for a professional future in a constantly growing and evolving world.\u00a0These students represent ESU at its finest.\u201d<\/p>\n Delfino and Hawi also received top recognition for the Student Choice Award portion of the competition. Delfino took first place honors having the most viewed YouTube video with 4,250 hits and Hawi took second place for the best poster depicting his business model for Failure 2Fail.<\/p>\n The annual Business Plan Competition is designed to provide student entrepreneurs a real-world opportunity to pitch their original business plans and to win funds to assist in the start-up of their businesses. Students from the 14 State System universities are invited to participate in the competition each year. The first-place prize was donated by the Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union, the event\u2019s platinum sponsor.<\/p>\n Second place in the competition went to David Tini, a student at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, who developed \u201cHot Lips,\u201d an attachment to the mouthpiece of brass musical instruments.\u00a0 The third-place prize went to Brendan Shepherd of Clarion University of Pennsylvania, who developed a plan to establish a home remodeling business. Growth of the company will be into residential rental properties and real estate development. The second- and third-place winners received $5,000 and $2,500 respectively, to be used to assist in the further development of their proposed business ventures. The runners-up awards were donated by PNC Bank and J.P. Morgan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Blaise Delfino, a graduate student at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania who developed \u201cFader Plugs,\u201d designed to protect the wearer from harmful noise, won the $10,000 first place prize in the fifth annual Student Business Plan Competition sponsored by Pennsylvania\u2019s State System of Higher Education. This is the second time that ESU won first place in the competition with Jonathan Weber \u201915, winning $10,000 in 2011 for eDentified. In 2012, Thomas Rounsville M\u201912, won the $5,000 second place prize for his company Wildlife Integrative Forensics.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe faculty and staff at ESU have displayed great support, compassion and excitement as I embark on my journey of founding Fader Plugs, LLC,\u201d said Delfino. \u201cI consider myself both lucky and blessed to be a student at East Stroudsburg University. The faculty members and the staff tied to the University\u2019s business accelerator and entrepreneurial leadership center truly care about the success of their students and they want to see them succeed; they are willing to go the extra mile.\u00a0 Words just can\u2019t express how thankful I am for their continued support and belief in me as a student, an entrepreneur and CEO of Fader Plugs LLC.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[143,42,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-news-release","category-slider"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13983"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13983"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14400,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13983\/revisions\/14400"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n