Each member of b’s third 10 to Watch Under 30 edition has excelled in their respective fields: from the football player to the fundraiser to the businessman. But what really sets them apart is an unending drive to not only better themselves but impact others. They’re always looking toward the future -- the next project, big or small. They don’t quit; they keep moving. And we’re all better for it. Here’s our 10 to watch class of 2012. -- Jordan Bartel, B
Four years ago, when Jason Jannati and his greeNEWit business partners, Josh Notes, 27, and Matej Harangozo, 28, started their energy-efficiency company, they were always asked the same question: “Is this just a fad?”
“We hear everyone agreeing that [energy efficiency] needs to happen, and now it’s just a matter of how,” said Jannati. “We want greeNEWit to have an essential role in that how.”
The Columbia-based company is off to a promising start. Through audits at homes, businesses and condos, greeNEWit has provided energy upgrades -- everything from installing high-efficiency air conditioning to compact fluorescent light bulbs -- to about 5,500 multi-family units and 1,000 single family homes.
“We’re genuinely interested in helping people and that’s why we’ve been so successful,” said Jannati. “If you’re getting into a business just for money, you’ll most likely fail.”
The company’s three founders met in 2007. Jannati was working in real estate at the time; Notes and Harangozo were investing in tax leins. They started off doing free energy audits for friends and family. Jannati said he has never been happier professionally, but he is particularly proud of the company’s outreach at schools through different programs to teach elementary school students about sustainability.
“We see our company as a platform,” he said. “The next generation is going to be the one who can step up and solve our energy problems.” -Jordan Bartel (Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun)
During her senior year of high school, Raevyn Jones’ mom told her that she wouldn’t be able to go to prom. She couldn’t afford it; she was saving up to send her daughter to college.
She was hurt, but accepted it. Eventually, her mom found a way to send her to prom, and now Jones is now ensuring that other girls won’t miss their big rite of passage.
Jones runs her own business, Ideal Publicity, a public relations and marketing company she launched last summer, and is working toward her MBA at Morgan State University. But she’s particularly passionate about the nonprofit she co-founded, Polished For Prom, which sends two girls each from Baltimore, Philadelphia and D.C. to their senior prom. It’s not just about making sure they go to a party.
“For women, a fabulous prom can be helpful. It can do a lot for your self-esteem,” said Jones.
In addition to paying for dresses, transportation, photography and make-up, Polished For Prom strives to empower young women personally and professionally. Through luncheons and other events, Polished For Prom finalists meet with mentors and talk about their futures. And Jones plans to widen the scope of Polished For Prom to include “Polished For College” initiatives, to talk to young women about everything from furthering their education to opening and maintaining a checking account.
“A lot of people don’t get that education or motivation at home,” said Jones. “They need that extra push.” -Jordan Bartel (Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun)
When Jordan Goodman walks into a room at Arlington Elementary/Middle School, he’s “the cool guy.” After all, he always has a drum with him.
For the past year, Goodman has interned as a mental health counselor at the Pimlico school while earning his masters in clinical psychology at Loyola University. Weekly, Goodman and the children sit, drum-circle style, and make music.
“In all my work, drumming is the metaphor,” he said. “I’ll talk about community and teamwork when we’re drumming together.”
Goodman, who is not a licensed music therapist, calls what he does “therapeutic drumming sessions.” In the classroom now -- and through what he hopes will be private lessons with parents who have children with ADHD or anxiety --Goodman sits down with groups of children to talk and play.
While drumming, children talk to him about their home lives, what they did during the weekend. They let it out -- verbally and on the drum.
“We’ll drum, but drum mindfully,” said Goodman, who plays drums in the indie-rock band the Dialogue. “It becomes a place to go when they’re stressed.”
Community centers and private and public schools have enlisted Goodman’s therapeutic drumming, but Goodman still bemoans the lack of daily music in the lives of the children he works with.
“One thing that pisses me off the most is the STEM paradigm,” said Goodman, referring to the dominance of science, technology, engineering and math at school. “It would be so easy to make it STEAM and add art in there. The leaders of the world, the changers, are artists -- fearless and creative. “If you cut art out of a child’s education, it cuts out any chance of individuality.” -Jordan Bartel (Gene Sweeney Jr./Baltimore Sun)
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Katharine Schildt was 16 when she was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that causes life-threatening lung infections. She was then told the average life expectancy at the time: 35 years old.
“My friends were talking about prom and college and I was thinking about how long I had to live,” she said. “I suddenly felt very different than everybody my age.”
Her life became treatment. There was the “vest,” a machine that pumped air into Schildt’s body to eliminate thick mucus clogged in her lungs. There were several inhaled medications, strong antibiotics to flush out the bacteria. In college, she would talk to few people about her CF -- and even stopped treating herself. Though she got another round of IV treatments senior year, she soon closed up again.
Now, Schildt is open. She was recruited by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to share her story at events and has raised about $20,000 for the organization. Schildt’s blog, from A to Pink (fromatopink.wordpress.com>), became a place where she shared her conflicted feelings about living with CF and talked with other people who have he disease. She’s an optimist but a realist. On her latest post, she writes about going back to the hospital for a two-week stint of IV treatments.
“For the first time in 10 years since my diagnosis, I feel like I’m staring down my future,” she said, “and it’s scary as hell.”
But CF fundraising will always be a priority -- she believes a cure can be found in her life. And besides working full time as the managing editor at Wall Street Daily, a financial publication providing market commentary, she’s getting married in October.
“The one big gift CF has given me is an appreciation of life,” she said. “Life is short, and not always exactly how we pictured. But it’s still beautiful.” -Jordan Bartel (Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun)
Tiras Lin spends hours pointing high-speed video cameras at painted lady butterflies, watching them flutter inside an aquarium at his lab.
The goal for Lin, a junior mechanical engineering major at Johns Hopkins University, is to capture the insect’s flight dynamics, the way it quickly twists and turns. The cameras are capable of recording 3,000 one-megapixel images a second -- helpful, since butteries flap their wings about 25 times per second, Lin said.
The research helps further the development and programming of bug-sized micro aerial vehicles, or MAVs, which could help military search-and-rescue missions in tight and dangerous environments without risking human lives.
“We study insects because they’re the ultimate MAV that nature has designed,” said Lin, who’s originally from San Rafael, Calif. Lin first learned of the project in 2009, applied and started videoing the insects the following year.
“It’s a kind of exciting project to work out on my own,” said Lin. “There’s just something that an undergraduate can learn from research that you can’t learn from a class setting.”
Lin, who has received multiple awards for his insect-flight research, hopes to go to graduate school to further pursue his interest in fluid dynamics. And he’s already begun to study how fruit flies land upside down on a ceiling. -Jordan Bartel (Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun)
Whether filled with trash or home to violent crime, vacant lots have long been a nuisance for city residents. But when Christine Kingston looks at a vacant lot in Sandtown or Harlem Park and Poppleton, she sees a possibility.
As the general services coordinator for the city-run Power in Dirt campaign, Kingston and three other coordinators have a tall order: Attempt to covert Baltimore’s estimated 14,000 vacant lots into green spaces, such as community gardens and small parks, owned by the communities that adopt and transform them.
Kingston moved to Baltimore from Detroit to work for Power in Dirt when the program started last August. She immediately began reaching out to people by attending community meetings.
“Vacant lots were always an issue,” Kingston said. “I heard residents time and time again talk about the drug activity and how they’ve turned into crime zones.”
The process to transform a lot is surprisingly simple. Community members or businesses tell Kingston they want to adopt a lot. Once they have a license agreement from the city, the adoptees talk to Kingston about their plans. A budget is agreed upon (anywhere from $1,000 to $25,000), grants are secured and work begins. At last count, Power in Dirt, which has a three-year term, has transformed 775 lots.
“It feels amazing to see the transformation, especially if it went from being a dumping zone to a garden,” Kingston said. The pride is contagious. Kingston said she recently heard from a lot adopter who requested city resources to help clean up more spaces in Westport after they were finished transforming one in the neighborhood.
“She told me that they destroyed places where drug dealers went,” Kingston said. “She actually said, ‘There is power in dirt.’” -Jordan Bartel (Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun)
When Hunter Barrington dropped out of Johns Hopkins University last year, he was angry at himself. Now he has no regrets.
A web developer for five years, Barrington launched FTW Development in January with business partner Tommy Reigel. Operating out of Baltimore’s Emerging Technology Center in Canton, FTW (it stands for “For the World”), works on everything from websites to web and mobile applications, from a sports trivia app to a social network for Magic Card players.
“I’m a dreamer. I’m a creative type, which you don’t often associate with the technology side,” said Barrington, who’s originally from West Grove, Pa. “I was always that kid building Legos.”
The company has recently started a partnership with the Digital Harbor Foundation to expose more high-school students in Baltimore to technology, offer internships and help host Web Slam, scheduled for May, in which students design and develop websites for nonprofits.
“Baltimore has had such growth as a technology community,” said Barrington. “One thing that’s cool to see is everyone helping raise up a generation of developers and programmers locally.” -Jordan Bartel (Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun)
