The second annual Pitch Johnny competition was held on Saturday, Nov. 10 and the two winners are Magdelene Barjolo, a junior majoring in health and human Services and Alexandria Ligon, a junior majoring in psychology, with their idea “Sending Her Essentials” (SHE).
The competition featured 22 teams composed of 31 students who delivered presentations on their original start-up ideas. The winner(s) received $1000 and a chance to compete next spring in a new startup challenge.
Students were given the opportunity to talk to and receive feedback from the guest judges, many of whom were St. John’s alumni and represented wide variety of professions, including: accounting, advertising, business, communications, entrepreneurship, finance, law and television.
Contestants were allowed two to three minutes to make their presentations and were evaluated by the judges, who choose Barjolo and Ligon to receive the first place prize of $1000.
SHE is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to supplying young women nationally and internationally with necessities for womanhood. They send feminine hygiene products to women between the ages of 10-18 to ensure that they have the necessities they need in order to avoid missing days of school and work because of a lack of these products.
Barjolo and Ligon plan to hold workshops here in New York where they hope to teach young women about feminine hygiene, personal development, self esteem and career guidance.
Once they’ve established themselves in New York, they hope to expand into other states. They also aim to be a strong social and political voice for more issues that affect women while being able to donate products to women on a broader platform.
They entered into the Pitch Johnny competition hoping to spread the message of their mission and gain practice in communicating about their organization. “We were a little bit nervous,” Barjolo said. “But because we both have strong faith we knew that whatever the outcome was that something great would be taken from this experience.”
Now that they’ve won, they plan to use the money to help establish themselves as a nonprofit, secure a logo and for any other fundamental business purposes that they have.
“I felt extremely encouraged and optimistic that we could truly start to take our work with SHE more seriously since we now have the money to start officially operating as a registered nonprofit” Ligon said.
Ligon explained that prior to winning SHE was important to her, but wasn’t “at the forefront of her mind,” After winning the money, SHE has become her top priority.
Both winners had their own personal reasons for starting this company. For Barjolo it was the passing of her cousin Princess Yates last summer. “I felt as if I needed to add purpose to my life and start serving as I believe that is my purpose/calling,” said Barjolo, “The passing of my cousin was definitely a huge motivating factor (for starting SHE).”
Barjolo and Ligon are both enthusiastic to begin the work to establish themselves in New York and spread the positivity of SHE.
“I’m grateful that we could have the opportunity to practice our presentation skills and get such great encouragement from the judges” Ligon said, “[they] reaffirmed our confidence in our mission, our brand and our goals.”
