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Fourth-year and second-year students and are the new faces of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. With their heavy student involvement and enthusiastic personalities, they’re looking to help influence a brighter future for the center.

Between the two of them, they already bring experience to the table. O’Grady has been heavily involved with the entrepreneurship space in Boulder through a co-founding role with Get Seed Funding, an Innovation and Entrepreneurship initiative, and a marketing leadership position on a Techstars-backed accessibility startup.��

Le has spent her time at Leeds getting just as immersed, pursuing a dual emphasis in finance and business analytics alongside a minor in writing and public engagement. She's stayed active on campus too, with her work in community council and on the university's Mock Trial team, where she's taken on cases as an attorney conducting direct and cross examinations. She's also served as a Journey Leader, guiding incoming first-year students through orientation and connecting them with campus resources.

Now, as ambassadors, they're bringing that mix of business and startup fluency back to a center that feels like a community.

Chaya O’Grady

O’Grady is heading into her final year with more than a full plate. Studying finance, business analytics, and entrepreneurship, it’s a course load that traces back years to her curly hair brand. That idea never turned into a company, but it gave her a first taste of building something from scratch, and it stuck.��

Since then, she's built a real resume in the startup world. As VP of marketing for a startup building assistive technology for blind and low vision users, she helped the company make it to Techstars and the Consumer Electronics Show, where she pitched to Stevie Wonder. The team also placed second for the Coolest Thing in Colorado award along the way. She was also a founding member of Get Seed Funding, working alongside fellow students to help launch the program from the ground up.��

O'Grady found her way to the Deming Center almost by accident, sitting in on a presentation from Erick Mueller, Executive Director of the Deming Center, during a DYL (Design Your Leeds) session and walking away determined to learn more. But what kept her coming back was the culture and her “give first” mentality.

"To be an entrepreneur is to be innovative, to try and solve a problem that nobody else has solved before. To try and give back to your community. Give first is so instrumental to being an entrepreneur. You just give because that's the right thing to do, and it always comes back around."

Linh Le

As a second-year student in Leeds, Le has already hit the ground running. She's studying finance with an eye toward adding a second emphasis in marketing or business analytics, plus a minor in writing and public engagement, all on a three-year plan. Originally from Aurora, she was born in Vietnam and has lived in Colorado since she was four, making her a first-generation immigrant.

Her introduction to entrepreneurship came from home. Her parents immigrated to the United States, built their own business, and her father later taught himself day trading. Le never ran a company herself, but growing up around that kind of self-direction shaped how she thinks about work and independence.

She found the Deming Center almost by chance, through a Spark application email that linked over to the Deming Ambassador one. What sold her was how the application was written. The Deming Center takes pride in fun and engaging applications, with questions like “If you had a million dollars, what would you do with it?” It stood out from every other listing she'd filled out, and it was enough to pull her in.

"Entrepreneurship is autonomy to take your life and your business and the things that you do and do what you want with it. It's not just about when you start a company or start anything, it comes from you, it's coming from your passions, your goals, and your experiences that craft it."

Charting Deming's Next Move

Both O'Grady and Le are walking into their roles with clear ideas of what they want to build, even if their focus points look different.

For O'Grady, the goal comes straight out of her own startup experience. Having worked alongside engineers throughout her time building assistive technology, she's seen firsthand how much stronger a startup gets when business minds and technical minds are in the same room early. This year, she wants to make those connections easier to find, linking entrepreneurship students with engineers across campus so ideas stop stalling out.

"What excites me the most is meeting all of the entrepreneurship community, all of the new entrepreneurs that are coming in going, what's going on here? That's really exciting for me, to help them, give them the resources, and help them build their company and their ideas and help them innovate."

Le's focus is more about the role she wants to play inside the community itself. She sees herself as a liaison of sorts, someone who helps other students find their footing in entrepreneurship the same way she's still finding her own. With an eye toward a marketing emphasis, she's also hoping to help the Deming Center gain more traction around campus, especially among students who, like her, didn't know it existed until someone pointed them toward it.

Building the Center's Next Chapter

O'Grady and Le are part of a growing list of students shaping what the Deming Center looks like this year. Together, they also capture something bigger about where the center is headed.

A senior with startup experience and a sophomore just beginning to find her footing both chose to spend their time here, not because they had to, but because the community pulled them in. One brings the lessons of pitching at CES and building a team from scratch. The other brings the curiosity of someone still figuring out what entrepreneurship even means to her, and the drive to chase that answer down.

If that's any indication, the center's next chapter is going to be built by students who show up not just to learn entrepreneurship, but to live inside it.