Innovation, Impact, and Entrepreneurship on Display at the 2026 Thayer Pitch Competition

The 2026 Thayer Entrepreneurship Pitch Competition celebrated student innovation, creativity, and leadership through several distinguished awards recognizing projects that demonstrated exceptional impact and entrepreneurial spirit.

This year’s event also featured an inspiring keynote address from Sara Berkai, founder and CEO of Ambessa and TAVI. Berkai is an internationally recognized entrepreneur and advocate for hands-on STEM education who has been honored by Forbes 30 Under 30, BBC 100 Women, and the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union. Through her work, she encourages young people to build, create, and use entrepreneurship as a force for social impact.

The Global Citizen Prize was awarded to the team whose project best promotes the common good through either a humanitarian or environmental lens. This award recognizes a product or concept dedicated to making the world a better place. Congratulations to ArmaBag — Ryan Lally ’26, Alyssa Durant ’27, Malia Green ’27, and Adam Beltrami ’27 — for earning this honor.

The Design & Innovation Prize recognizes the team whose project demonstrated exceptional creativity, thoughtful problem-solving, and outstanding execution in design. The winning team showcased a meaningful and realistic approach to innovation while making a strong effort to develop a working prototype for the competition. Congratulations to Netra — Claire Summers ’28, Finn Moore ’28, and Emily Salisbury ’27 — for their impressive achievement.

Lastly, the Entrepreneurship Faculty Prize is awarded to students who, in the eyes of the entrepreneurship faculty, demonstrated an outstanding commitment to the entrepreneurship program throughout the year. These students consistently exhibited leadership, initiative, and engagement in Entrepreneurship I. Recipients of this award will receive a two-week course at MIT through the NuVu Summer Program. Congratulations to Theraplay — Tatiana Calvillo ’28 and Dhilan Rajan ’28 — and pHresh — Allie Mingolelli ’28, Laurel Fireman ’28, and Nigel Wilson ’28 — on this well-deserved recognition.

A special thank you goes to our expert panel of judges for sharing their time, insight, and expertise with our students: Sara Berkai, Gordon Pulsifer, Derek Hayden, Sarine Vosgueritchian, Jon Turnquist, Casey Cann, and Jasson Cohen. Their thoughtful feedback and support helped make this year’s competition an inspiring and meaningful experience for all participants.

The Thayer Entrepreneurship Program would also like to extend a special thank you to NuVu Innovation School for partnering with the program and supporting this year’s faculty prize experience. NuVu is an innovative, project-based school founded on the principles of design thinking, engineering, creativity, and hands-on learning. Through its immersive studio model and partnership programs at MIT, NuVu empowers students to become creative problem-solvers, entrepreneurs, and change makers prepared to tackle real-world challenges.

The competition highlighted the remarkable talent, innovation, and dedication of Thayer students as they worked to develop solutions with real-world impact.