Garett Awad
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LMU Student is a 'Diamond in the Rough'
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As a sophomore, Garett Awad won a university-sponsored business-planning prize that brought money and mentoring. Now, the senior has a new idea, a new company, and the same big dreams.
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When LMU senior Garett Awad was a freshman, he participated in the Southern California Entrepreneurship Academy.
Through the Academy – a regional non-profit networking and support organization – Awad spent his Saturdays in the company of CEOs, listening to the business leaders’ lectures, and then having the chance to question them.
"It was an absolutely incredible experience," says Awad, a business administrative management and finance major from La Cañada, CA. "But what it showed me was that not everybody has the opportunity to go and hear these types of speakers. And to hear these types of people speak is just incredibly valuable."
How valuable? How about $5,000? That was the amount of the financial stipend Awad received as the 2005 winner of LMU's Diamond in the Rough Distinguished Entrepreneurial Fellow Award.
The award, as the text on the trophy reads, was conceived for "honoring, mentoring and developing the top entrepreneurial leaders of the future." In addition to the money, winners also receive continuing professorial mentoring.
Awad's "Diamond" winning idea was to videotape interviews with successful entrepreneurs such as those he'd seen lecture, then turn the interviews into educational DVDs available for sale. To achieve this, he formed a company, Ignite Media Productions.
While Ignite's still a work-in-progress, Awad, like any true entrepreneur, has another creative iron in the fire. "Right now, I'm starting another company [with three fellow LMU students]," he says, "that I'm super, super passionate about."
That new business is a clothing company called Live Agape. "What agape means in Greek is 'unconditional love,'" Awad explains. "It means 'god's love,' but we're not going about it in the Christian sense, we're going about more in the secular world, basically trying to get people stoked on loving each other."
Following graduation, Awad says he might keep working at one or both of his companies, or he might pursue other dreams, such as joining a financial firm or traveling the world in search of business ideas. No matter what comes immediately next, though, this award-winning entrepreneur is certain about his life's path.
"I will definitely be earning a living off my own company one day," Awad says. "Whether it be now or then."