Photo: Gil Riego Jr.FREEZE! ICE CREAM NOW
While in business school, Robyn Sue (Goldman) Fisher, GSB '07, had a delicious daydream: a liquid nitrogen mixer that could craft perfectly creamy ice cream on the spot. By 2009 she had a prototype and, eventually, four patents on her bespoke Brrr machine. At first she mounted Brrr on a Radio Flyer wagon and roamed San Francisco just as the modern food truck movement was gathering steam. She opened her first stationary shop in 2011 in a container set alongside a park in the Hayes Valley neighborhood. Lately her innovative ice cream company, Smitten, seems to be hitting its stride, expanding to four new Bay Area locations—Los Altos, Rockridge, Lafayette and San Francisco's Pacific Heights—and making plans for expansion farther afield. It's even got its own ice cream "truck" (Fisher calls it the Smitten Joy Ride) thanks to a collaboration with Kia Motors.
Photo: Courtesy Eva St. ClairA CHANGE OF CLOTHES
The idea of putting images of dinosaurs, robots and trains on dresses apparently "touched a nerve," according to Eva St. Clair, '03, who co-founded the girls' clothing company Princess Awesome with friend and teacher Rebecca Melsky in 2013. Working at first on a 1948 Singer sewing machine in St. Clair's basement, the women couldn't fill demand for their dresses fast enough. In a February Kickstarter campaign, the start-up raised more than $200,000, six times its original fundraising goal. "It basically pushed us five years forward," St. Clair said. With widespread media coverage at their backs and calls coming in from boutiques in Australia, Singapore and Europe, Melsky and St. Clair plan to start factory production and launch three dress lines in the coming year.
Photo: Image of SportFAST FINISHERS
For the third year in a row, Chris Derrick, '12, won the U.S. Cross Country Championship, completing the 12K race in mile-high Boulder, Colo., at a blistering 4:52 mile pace. "I haven't run away from fields like that since high school," he told Competitor Magazine after the February race—he finished a full 30 seconds faster than the runner-up with a time of 36 minutes, 18 seconds. The following month, he competed in the World Cross Country Championships in Guiyang, China, placing 24th as the first U.S. finisher. Maksim Korolev, a master's student who races on the cross-country team as a fifth-year senior, placed sixth in the U.S. meet and 57th at the world meet. Sara Bei Hall, '05, notched 20th in the women's world championship, the first among U.S. racers.
