DREW AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP: A TIMELINE
Through the years, Drew has been
a thread connecting a wide range of
successful entrepreneurial venturers.
Here, just a few.
Katherine Knotts C’01, a resident
of England whose consultancy
works with microfinance organizations worldwide, co-authors
The Business of Doing Good.
Niamh Hamill G’15
founds Institute of
Study Abroad Ireland,
a company that leads
educational and cultural
trips to the Emerald Isle.
Jack Harding C’77
founds eSilicon
Corporation, a
privately held
company that designs
and manufactures
custom computer
chips. Today Harding
serves as president
and CEO.
New York lawyers Leonard D.
and Arthur J. Baldwin, who
would later donate $1.5 million
to build a college of liberal
arts on the campus of Drew
Theological Seminary, team with
former New Jersey Governor
John W. Griggs to form a new law
firm, Griggs, Baldwin & Baldwin.
Crain’s New York Business
names Peppercomm, cofounded by Ed Moed C’89, a
Drew trustee, the “Best Place
to Work” in New York City.
“We’re the only company in
the world with a chief comedy
officer,” Moed says.
Wall Street financier Daniel
Drew, who built his fortune
despite little formal schooling,
gives $500,000 toward the
founding of Drew Theological
Seminary.
1885
1970
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1902
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1996
Author, historian and Emmy Award winner
John Cunningham C’38 founds Afton
Press (now Afton Publishing) in Florham
Park, New Jersey. Cunningham, who died in
2012, wrote more than 50 books, including
University in the Forest, a history of Drew.
12 Drew Magazine I Drew and Entrepreneurship
2009
2000
Drew, Appenzellers, Baldwins, Cunningham: University Archives. Hamill: Lynne DeLade. Dee: Bill Cardoni.
2013
2012
2015
2014
The Thread
Continues >
The Rev. William J. Barber II
T’03, president of the North
Carolina NAACP, organizes Moral
Mondays, a protest movement
aimed at the state’s moves to
restrict voting rights and cut
education spending.
Michael Dee G’05
takes a break from his
entrepreneurial duties as
co-owner of the Smarties
Candy Co. to study
evolutionary science.
Ella and Henry
Appenzeller T’1885
embark on a gamechanging mission
to bring Protestant
Christianity to Korea.
Yasin Abbak C’09 and
Stacy Sailer C’10 co-found
Paired Media, an advertising
agency focused on the
restaurant industry.
ABC News calls Omar Rodriguez-Graham C’02
one of Mexico’s “up-and-coming painters,” carrying
on the tradition of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
Five years later Rodriguez-Graham is listed in
100 Painters of Tomorrow (Thames & Hudson).
Harding: courtesy of eSilicon. Rodriguez-Graham: Rodrigo Ceballos. Moed, Ingrao: Deborah Feingold.
Barber: Justin Cook. Abbak, Sailer: courtesy of Paired Media. Knotts: courtesy of Katherine Knotts.
Architectural Digest gushes over
a Time Warner Center penthouse
apartment that Tony Ingrao C’78
designed for real estate titan
Stephen Ross. To wit: “The entry,
extravagantly inlaid with different
kinds of stone, sets the tone for the
residence, but the blend of exotic
materials doesn’t stop there.”
Summer 2015 13
ENTREPRENEURS
Pastor/Entrepreneur
2006
From the pulpit of his New Jersey church, De’Andre Salter C’92
preaches the power of the purse.
“The whole Bible
is full of enterprises,
It says a lot about De’Andre Salter that
one of his first priorities upon becoming
senior pastor of Tabernacle Church in
South Plainfield, New Jersey, nine years
ago was to buy a master franchise license
from a commercial cleaning service chain.
Salter used that investment to help
shepherd 55 unemployed members of his
flock through the process of starting their
own cleaning businesses. The graduates
of Salter’s biblically based entrepreneurial
boot camp saw their lives transformed. Today, he says, some earn incomes in excess
of $100,000 a year.
Making money isn’t a taboo topic at
Tabernacle. Far from it. That’s made clear
by the church’s stated mission: “to train
people to intentionally use their time,
talent and money to make a Christ impact
in the world.”
The irony? Salter himself isn’t on salary.
A Newark native, Salter, 43, left a suc-
startups and ventures.”
2010
De’Andre Salter C’92
cessful corporate career to start his own
insurance brokerage in 2001. Today the
firm has offices in New Jersey, Maryland
and Florida.
So Salter volunteers his time at Tabernacle, where his mother, Emma, preceded
him as pastor. “I believe all that I have has
been given to me for the purpose of being
pastor of Tabernacle Church,” says Salter, a
father of four and the husband of novelist
Terri Jones ­Salter.
Recently elected as one of the College
Alumni Association’s representatives
on the university’s Board of ­Trustees,
Salter may be a prosperous minister, but
don’t call him a prosperity preacher. His
experience as an entrepreneur and angel
investor has taught him there’s more to
achieving wealth than simply believing
riches will come, as some proponents of
“prosperity theology” maintain.
His recently published book, Seven
Wealth Building Secrets: Your Guide to
Money and Meaning (LifeBridge Books,
2015), distills those life lessons into a 176page guide to merging faith and finances.
The book draws from a higher authority
than Harvard Business School—namely,
the Bible. Salter says the scriptures contain
no fewer than 2,300 verses dealing with
wealth and money management. Clearly
the Lord has opinions on the ­matter.
If “Blessed are the poor” is the passage
that springs to mind, Salter says, it bears
noting that Jesus was referring to the
simple-hearted, not the materially disadvantaged. “Poverty,” he says, “is no badge
of honor.” While he’s been at Tabernacle,
unemployment among Salter’s predominantly African-American congregation has
never risen above 6.5 percent, Salter notes,
even at the height of the Great Recession,
when the nationwide jobless rate for blacks
was 14 percent.
Among the book’s surprises is Salter’s
contention that Jesus wasn’t poor.
Consider the evidence. His parents,
­Joseph and Mary, had the means to travel to Bethlehem prior to his birth and stay
in an inn (had a room been available).
They also made the annual trek from
their home in Nazareth to Jerusalem to
celebrate Passover, a vacation of sorts
that many Jews of his day couldn’t afford.
And as a carpenter by trade, Salter
argues, Joseph likely would have earned
enough money to leave his son at least a
small inheritance.
“Now, he wasn’t rich,” Salter notes, “but
he definitely wasn’t poor.”
God wants Christians to prosper
financially so they’ll have the resources
to “solve the planet’s problems,” Salter
writes. “The whole Bible is full of
enterprises, startups and ­ventures.”
                Shannon Mullen
Making Her Way
Bill Cardoni. Opposite: Courtesy of Emily Blitz.
Emily (Knox) Blitz C’96 put
her experience to work when
she started her own consultancy in Switzerland.
Emily Blitz had nearly a decade of experience with a Geneva-based AIDS
organization under her belt when, in
2010, she found herself rather abruptly
unemployed.
What to do? Blitz packed up her
experience planning large-scale global
health conferences and high-level
meetings for international HIV organizations and went out on her own as
a consultant. The decision matched
perfectly her expertise with her ambitions. “I like the magic of being part of
something big,” she says.
These days Blitz keeps pushing
herself into new roles, thanks in part to
skills she learned as a theatre arts major at Drew, where she got to “try a little
bit of everything. I was props designer,
stage manager, onstage, backstage.”
Drew also gave Blitz a passion for
helping others around the world. As
a sophomore she spent a semester in
Thailand, her first visit to a developing
country. “It was my first experience in
really seeing how people lived with
much less than I did, and opening that
door for me clicked,” Blitz says. After
graduation, she joined the Peace Corps.
To expand her client options, last
year Blitz signed up for humanitarian
operations training run by Save the
Children. “We had to turn in our com-
puters and phones and live and work
in tents for a week of scenario-based
learning,” she says. “It was emotionally
hard, freezing cold, incredibly frustrating
and I absolutely loved it.” The experience
helped her secure her current contract
with UNICEF.
Self-employment suits Blitz. “I have
done so many things I never would
have done if I stayed where I was,” she
says. “I have a lot more confidence in my
adaptability and flexibility than I did five
years ago.”           Jenna Schnuer
Summer 2015 15
ENTREPRENEURS
ILLUSTRATION BY JOE CARDIELLO
2008
If Kitchen a la Mode in South Orange, New Jersey, doesn’t stock
it, your kitchen doesn’t need it. Ben Salmon C’03 opened his
1,000-square-foot shop (which stocks 6,000 items) in 2008. “We
have a really great community of customers, much like the great
community at Drew,” he says. “I’m drawn to great communities, and
I always seem to end up in the middle of one.”
2010
For Alain Farrelly C’99 and his two brothers, sitting around drinking
coffee isn’t slacking off—it’s their business. The trio launched
Brewklyn Grind, their artisan coffee roaster and café, in 2010. After
Hurricane Sandy wiped out their shop in Red Hook, they relaunched
on higher ground in Clinton Hill. “We are three boys from Brooklyn,”
Farrelly says, “so we are scrappy, street smart and like a good fight.”
2012
When one of Brandon Michael Arrington’s [C’99] catering bosses
found out the former drama student could spin magic from sugar
and flour, a baking star was born. Arrington’s business, Danta Bonnier,
specializes in a French almond cookie known as a “croquet bordelais.”
His cooking career began beside his Grandma Mary. “In the end,”
Arrington says, “it turned into doing a 300-person dessert party for
the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.”
2013
Bread fanatics on California’s central coast beat a path to Kirsten
Finberg Frazier’s [C’00] Little Red Hen Bread, where they indulge in
loaves of potato rosemary and jalapeño cheddar bread, among other
delights. “We kind of live in a fast-paced world,” she says, “and this is
something that takes a good deal of time and skill to accomplish.”
                       Jenna Schnuer
16 Drew Magazine I Drew and Entrepreneurship
Summer 2015 17
ENTREPRENEURS
Media Magnate
2008
On the strength of her magazine on Muslim culture,
Moniza Khokhar C’05 takes on television.
Moniza Khokhar
can trace her path to
a career as a media
entrepreneur to a
specific date—
September 11, 2001.
   She was just a
week into her first
year at Drew when
Islamic terrorists killed
nearly 3,000 innocent
Americans, plunging
the country into war.
Khokhar, who was
born in Saudi Arabia to Pakistani parents and who moved with
her family to Basking Ridge, New Jersey, when she was a baby,
says the questions she wrestled with after 9/11 led her to examine
her own cultural and religious roots.
“The more I discovered about the rich history of the Middle
East and South Asia, its people and their accomplishments,” she
says, “the more I realized it was a major part of who I am.”
Her journey of self-discovery led to freelance writing jobs for
Muslim periodicals and eventually a master’s degree in Islamic
Cultural Studies from Columbia University. In 2008 she started
The Undergrad and the App
“Readers say they love
reading elan first thing in the
morning because it uplifts
and inspires them.”
Moniza Khokhar C’05
elan, a magazine focused on global Muslim culture. Elan means
“announcement” in Arabic, Urdu and Farsi.
Seven years later, elan has moved online and reaches some
3 million readers worldwide. But these days Khokhar has an even
bigger vision. She recently partnered with veteran TV producer John
Miller on a new media venture called Locomojo. They plan to produce television shows around the globe and create a brand that will
resonate with young Muslims worldwide. The positive feedback she’s
received from elan’s loyal readers tells her she’s on the right track.
“Elan’s platform helped us have ownership over our community’s
narrative,” she explains. “We counteracted the oftentimes negative
coverage in mainstream press. We’ve gotten letters from readers
that say they love reading elan first thing in the morning because
it uplifts and inspires them.”
And that, she says, “is all I need to know to keep going.”
                                    Shannon Mullen
the father at different times, and then
I train their three kids at another time
during the week. I train two 84-year-old
women, so I go from actually training a
4-year-old to training an 84-year-old
the same day. I love it.
Steiner says Drew introduced him to
like-minded entrepreneurial students and
supportive professors who motivated
him to follow his dream of starting the
next big tech company. These days he’s
studying for his MBA at Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh, where he’s learning to code apps himself. He says he has
a “few ideas kicking around” for new ones.
                   Gwen Moran
because I was planning on opening my
own business. When I was at Drew, I had
a couple jobs.
Given you played sports and majored
in business, how do you feel Drew prepared you for what you’re doing now?
If I didn’t major in business, I would just
Did you finance the business out of
understand all the athletics of personal
your own pocket? I didn’t have any
help financially from my parents or the training. But because I majored in busibank or anything. I had to invest money ness, it gave me the opportunity to actufor my marketing, for my website, social ally have my own company. And playing
sports in college obviously helped me
media, clothing, merchandise. But I’d
been saving for that throughout college with the personal training side.
Brooke Gagliano C’14
Karen Mancinelli; Neil Steiner. Opposite: Bill Cardoni.
18 Drew Magazine I Drew and Entrepreneurship
You graduated in 2014. What are you
doing now? I have my own personal
training business. I travel to clients’
houses or they travel to me. I’ll basically
train them in a personal training 101
session or we do group training sessions
from two to five people. I do sports-­
specific training in field hockey, lacrosse
and softball, which I played in college.
“Drew gave me a jumpstart
to what I need to
do to prepare myself
for the real world.”
2013
Semester. Marc Tomljanovich, an
associate professor of economics and
the program’s co-director, says students
in the program used Class Chat to communicate throughout the semester. It
has since been used for both the spring
Wall Street Semester and the Wall Street
Summer Program.
Steiner and his coding partner also
developed Glimpse Messenger, which
allows users to send “self-destructing”
messages in a secure way, much like
SnapChat allows people to send photos
that “disappear.” Developing the apps,
Steiner says, taught him about the
challenges of getting users to adopt new
applications. Some students were enthusiastic, he says, others not so much. Class
Chat is no longer supported, but Glimpse
Messenger is available for iPhone.
2014
Brooke Gagliano C’14, a former All-American, on her personal training
business, her 84-year-old clients, and her favorite class at Drew.
When did you start the business?
About three months after I graduated.
Right now I have about 20 clients. I have
a kids group: I train the mother and
George Steiner C’14 facilitated discussions with a
little Class Chat.
Some of us cope with life’s annoyances—and some of us, like George
­
Steiner, solve them by building apps.
An economics major, Steiner says he
wanted to be able to talk with his classmates about lessons and homework
assignments “as if you’d all bumped into
each other in the library.”
In March 2013, Steiner conceived an
app that would enable his classmates
to do just that. With a programmer
partner, Steiner developed Class Chat,
a platform for dedicated classroom chat
rooms. Students who signed up for the
app could post questions and engage in
text-based exchanges without having to
track down classmates’ phone numbers
or connect on social media.
Steiner had just finished the app
when he began the Wall Street
Q&A With a Crossfit Queen
Was there any particular experience at
Drew that stoked your entrepreneurial
spirit? “Management,” with Professor
[Jennifer] Kohn. We had to do projects,
and our project was to open your own
business. I was like, “Perfect.” I knew from
the start I wanted to have my own facility, and I said, “There’s no better class
than this one.” Professor Kohn kept saying, “Why this? Why that? Change this.
Try this.” And that really helped me with
my business today because Drew gave
me a jumpstart to what I need to do to
prepare myself for the real world.                  Dustin Racioppi