Dear Student Leaders and Entrepreneurs,

Thank you for joining the 10th cycle of the CUNY IVE Leadership and Social Entrepreneurship Program. This semester we’ll be operating under the umbrella of SmartPitch Challenge with the support of Baruch College's Field Center for Entrepreneurship, IBM and Sunshine Suites. The challenge will connect participating students from NYC colleges on this social networking site. This way we’ll be able to share our program ideas, draw new members to your teams, connect with mentors, or help others who have a question or problem. Let me give you a brief idea about the milestones that we will be facing over the next couple of months:

o Attendance at the SmartPitch Kick-Off Event will be Friday, February 3rd, 2012 at Baruch College’s The William & Anita Newman Conference Center, 1, Room 750 New York, NY 10010.
o Working in a Team of 2 - 10 Students
o Milestone 1: Posting of 30 seconds Youtube pitch (posted on group pages by March 25th, 2012)
o Ongoing Coaching through Mentor Lounge (start March 25th, 2012)
o Milestone 2: Posting of Executive Summary (posted on your group page on this site by April 23rd, 2012)
o Milestone 3: Posting of Slide Deck (posted on your group page on this site by May 20th, 2012)
o Participation in SmartPitch Finals June  6th, 2012 from 6-8pm in the IBM building at 590 Madison Avenue, Room 1219, 12th Floor. (Corner of 57th Street and Madison Avenue.)
o Voluntary Participation in Workshops and Roundtables
o 5 Winners will participate in Virtual Business Incubator at Sunshine Bronx, IBM, Institute for Virtual Enterprise and Lawrence N. Field Center for Entrepreneurship.

Good luck this semester and I am looking forward to working with you!

Your CUNY IVE Team