Page 24 - Laguna Blanca Magazine Summer 2018

For the past three years, Paul Chiment’s Entrepreneurship fledged reality once she partnered with Nakamura, and their
and Innovation class has taken students out of the classroom app HeyAbroad came to life.
and directly into real business scenarios by pairing them with “Our strengths lie in diffe ent areas, so by working
companies who have specific problems they wish to solve. together we are able to combine them and create a better
CONNECTING This year, his students are not just leaving the classroom— product,” de Pedro Sarasola says. “Kai programmed the
they’re leaving the country. At least, that’s the goal of the new app and I focused on the website, design, and marketing.”
STUDENTS app, HeyAbroad, created by Itziar de Pedro Sarasola ’19 De Pedro Sarasola and Nakamura presented their

and Kai Nakamura ’20. beta-phase app to their classmates this past spring to gain
TO THEIR De Pedro Sarasola was inspired by her past exchange insights and fine tune a final product. The current design,
program experiences in Europe and her current opportunity which includes many of their peer’s recommendations,
DREAMS as a Laguna student through ASSIST, a non-profit and highly features: the ability to filter by age, gender, and language
competitive scholarship program which provides students spoken (i.e. a sixteen-year-old girl living in Santa Barbara
Students create an app worldwide a chance to attend some of the finest American could use the filters to search for a sixteen-year-old-girl
to help kids study abroad private schools for a year. She was determined to find a way living in Spain who may be open to an exchange, etc.) The
to easily connect high school students across the globe to app will also include teacher recommendations and student
exchange programs, all while mitigating the usual high cost introduction videos to ensure safety of app users.
of working through exchange corporations, which can cost HeyAbroad is scheduled to hit the App Store in the next
tens of thousands of dollars. This dream grew into a full- few months.

“Ideas are just a dream until
you make them come true. So,
LAGUNA BLANCA MAGAZINE take initiative, be ambitious, and

believe in yourself.”

22 - Itziar de Pedro Sarasola ’19

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