Inspire and build a better world.

Pomona Ventures Winter 2020 Recruitment

We are the oldest student entrepreneurship community at the Claremont Colleges, est. 2001.Join us if you are a self-starter who is passionate about changing the world with technology, business, and design.Read more below 👇

Tell us about yourself

Deadline 9pm EST October 26th

What we do

Every year, Pomona Ventures hosts Sparkathon, a design thinking case competition. Sparkathon was founded in 2017 because our members noticed that business case competitions were an effective learning environment, but many students were intimidated by companies hosting them, and did not realize they could be interdisciplinary.Today, over 500 students from all over Southern California come together every semester to start designing solutions to the world's most pressing problems: automation and reskilling, voter turnout and supression, misinformation in the news, and affordable housing. Winners are awarded with cash prizes, exclusive access to recruiters and mentorship, and an opportunity to implement their solutions by pitching at SageTank. The event has now scaled to over 5 other cities.

In addition to Sparkathon and SageTank, we give our members opportunities to develop and lead their own initiatives. Case in point, we are proud to have incubated Graphite Group in 2018, which has now grown large enough to become its own student organization on campus, working with local businesses and startups in Claremont and beyond. We love being the papa bear to smaller entrepreneurial clubs. Our mission is to show you the ropes to manifesting your ideas and becoming a strong team leader.

Hopefully you're starting to get the idea: the main reason we exist is community. One of the benefits of our community will be investing in opportunities for each other. We believe that the most important thing we can invest is quality time with quality people. Last Spring we went on our first team retreat to Silicon Valley and visited Growth VCs at Sequoia, the APMs at Google, and the CFO at GenenTech. Whoever and whatever your interests are, we'll make the right connections, together. The bonds that we form together will be ones that will last a lifetime after college.We are currently brainstorming great ideas for COVID-friendly retreats. An AirBnB in the middle of nowhere? Attending a virtual conference together? Join the conversation :)

Meet the leadership

Camilla Guo
Co-President
Pomona College '22Computer Science Studio Art

Camilla joined Pomona Ventures her freshman Winter, founded Sparkathon with some seniors, and made friends that gave her the inspiration to take a leave of absence and pursue a Product Management for a year at Drift, a tech startup designing AI chatbots.This past summer, she was the Head of Product at Y Combinator startup Arist, building a remote-education technology to help educators during the pandemic.Camilla is now part-time student, part-time product growth hacker at Block Party, fighting online harassment.

Nanea Haynes
Co-President
Pomona College '22Economics Studio Art

Nanea's interest in entrepreneurship began in high school when she founded a vegan dessert business in her home of Maui, Hawaii.Starting with Pomona Ventures in Fall 2019, she joined the Sage Tank 2020 team in coordinating and executing the virtual pitch competition, from logistical tasks to mentoring the winning team. Now as Co-President, she dedicates her time designing club curriculum and preparing for Sage Tank 2021. Due to the pandemic, Nanea decided to take this year off from school and instead pursue Commercial Banking with Bank of Hawaii in Honolulu.

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