4/6/2023 William Gillespie
Allison Landis's new venture wins Chicago Booth's entepreneurship competition
Written by William Gillespie
The winner of this year's College New Venture Challenge is Top Tier Lessons, a student-run start-up that aims to follow up on June 2021's NIL bill and turn student athletes into teachers by connecting them to young learners in their community.
Allison Landis, one of the founders of Top Tier Lessons, is a junior in Industrial Engineering with a Track Option of Supply Chain, Manufacturing, and Logistics.
Landis chose ISE as an engineering degree that would "open many doors for me without tunneling me into one specific thing. I have always enjoyed the STEM subjects, problem solving, and business and ISE really is the culmination of those branches."
As Chief of Operations and Outreach for Top Tier Lessons, she takes care of a number of responsibilities, as must every person in a small start-up. She describes Top Tier Lessons as a "very collaborative environment."
About how her ISE experience prepared her for entrepreneurship, she says, "I would say that ISE department does an amazing job at fostering creative thinkers, problem solvers, and people who can look at the big picture and think holistically. I wanted to be a well-rounded engineer with an understanding in many different STEM related fields. I think without being in the ISE department I would have never been brave enough to take on such a different role of trying to help build a business from the ground up with Top Tier Lessons, and I surely would not have been as successful in the role without all that I have learned from my department."
Congratulations, Top Tier, and our best to you, Allison!
The College New Venture Challenge (CNVC) is the dedicated track of the Polsky Center’s nationally-ranked New Venture Challenge program. It supports University of Chicago College students who are interested in launching a startup. All teams accepted into the CNVC Phase II are eligible to enroll in the CNVC class, which is offered in the Winter quarter through Chicago Booth.