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Faculty of Business & Government
Willes Center for International Entrepreneurship

Empower Your Dreams 2022 Winners

Revenue
Pre-Revenue
Social Impact

First Place

Briggs Amazon

First place at the Empower Your Dreams competition in the revenue category
Photo by BYUH Photography

Team member: Briggs Helser

Briggs Amazon runs an Amazon-based business that improves everyday products by solving real customer pain points. I started by identifying flaws in popular items and offering better alternatives. Now I handle sourcing, branding, marketing, and logistics—from manufacturing to customer care. My focus is on creating value through smart design and building trust with thoughtful engagement.

Second Place:

Ohana Surf School

Second place at the Empower Your Dreams competition in the Revenue category
Photo by BYUH Photography

Team member: John Warne

Ohana Surf School provides affordable, personalized surf lessons for locals and students on Oʻahu. Founded by John Warren, the school offers safety training, skill-based location selection, and a unique step-by-step “Mako Method.” With over 300 lessons taught in six months, it aims to make surfing more accessible and effective for the community.

Third Place:

Ruby Amani Photography LLC

Third place at the Empower Your Dreams in the Revenue category
Photo by BYUH Photography

Team member: Ruby Bolton

A photography business helping non-profits and social impact brands stand out with powerful images. Plans include growing the portfolio, finishing degrees, and working full-time with clients to support causes like One Percent for the Planet. The goal is to boost clients’ online presence and create a positive impact.

First Place:

Conversion Marketing

First place at the Empower Your Dreams in the Pre-revenue category
Photo by BYUH Photography

Team members: Karizza Nadean Llanera

Convrsion Marketing helps mom-and-pop shops grow online by building e-commerce stores, creating product photos/videos, managing digital marketing, and supporting sales. After COVID-19, many small shops struggled to go digital. We’re already assisting a local Oahu shop and aim to help more businesses combine physical and online sales.

Second Place:

Simply Scrubs

Second place at the Empower Your Dreams in the Pre-revenue category
Photo by BYUH Photography

Team member: Aurora Hays

Simply Scrubs makes stylish, patterned scrub tops for medical professionals. After market research and prototyping, they partnered with a manufacturer to cut costs. They’re finalizing a deal with a medical spa for promotional sales, targeting fashionable women aged 20-40 in healthcare.

Third Place:


H2ydrOla

Third place at the Empower Your Dreams in the Pre-revenue category
Photo by BYUH Photography

Team members: Taffie, Joy Tang, Ezra Magno, Daisia McEwen, Gerome Mamaradlo Romero

Hydrola offers a ready-to-use automated hydroponic system that simplifies home gardening. Unlike other products, theirs is pre-assembled with advanced features like sensors for pH, humidity, and light. Their larger models are more efficient and affordable, and for every 24 units sold, one is donated to schools. They focus on social impact while providing high-quality products.

First Place:

Environmental Traction

First place at the Empower Your Dreams in the Social Impact category
Photo by BYUH Photography

Team member: Braxton Nye

This pitch proposes replacing corrosive road salt with biodegradable wood chips coated in magnesium chloride—a safer, eco-friendly alternative already used in parts of Europe and Canada. The speaker plans to start U.S. production using their family’s tree removal business, which supplies wood chips and screening equipment, and already has interested customers. The product offers better traction, reduced infrastructure damage, and no environmental harm.

Second Place:

Ocean Seeds

Second place at the Empower Your Dreams in the Social Impact category
Photo by BYUH Photography

Name: Lauren Vance, Makaiah Gorham, Briggs Helser

Ocean Seeds is a three-phase agricultural solution designed to combat Kiribati’s reliance on imported, plastic-packaged food by transforming unproductive sandy land into fertile soil. The project improves soil with nitrogen-fixing cover crops, enriches it through mobile pig pens, and sustains it via a 20,000-gallon water collection system for drip irrigation. By training local farmers and providing affordable tools and materials, the initiative aims to reduce ocean plastic pollution and boost local food production.

Third Place:

TradeMother

Team member: John Zenger

Tradesmother is a social enterprise that connects low-income single mothers with trade job opportunities by partnering with firms in need of apprentices. The company matches prepared candidates with employers for a fee equivalent to one month of the worker’s salary, offering a scalable solution to both poverty and the skilled labor shortage. With access to billions in government funding for women in trades, Tradesmother aims to reduce dependency on aid while filling critical labor gaps nationwide.