Kylie Rosenau, right, of Blue Earth, poses with two of her fellow team members at SDSU.

This is shaping up to be quite a summer for 2022 Blue Earth Area graduate, and current South Dakota State University student, Kylie Rosenau.

Rosenau will board an airplane on June 4 and head to Nairobi, Kenya, where, in addition to doing something fun like going on a safari, she will also be one quarter of a group competing for a $1 million prize.

OK, full disclosure, should her group win the competition, Rosenau will not see her bank account increase by $250,000. No, if her group wins, the $1 million award will be used to help invest in a proposal to manufacture biodegradable, single-use bags out of soybean hulls.

Rosenau’s three partners in developing the business plan for producing the bags are Nicole Schilling of St. Peter, Hunter Eide of Gettysburg, South Dakota, and Samuel Hadacek of Mount Solon, Virginia.

The four SDSU students met at an honors class they all took last fall, The Justice Challenge.

The Justice Challenge is a national, year-long honors experience designed to empower participants with skills in addressing the world’s most wicked problems using systems thinking.

“It was while we were taking the honors course that we heard about this contest,” Rosenau says. “We all get along real well and made the decision to enter the competition.”

The team of SDSU students is one of 360 teams that advanced out of 10,000 teams entered in the global Hult Prize competition, which is considered the Nobel Prize for college students, according to team member Eide.

“That first step required us to submit a video and a five-page business proposal,” Rosenau mentions.

The competition draws more than 100,000 young people from more than 100 countries.

Nairobi is one of seven cities that will be hosting a summit during the 2024 Hult Prize contest. The other host cities are Mumbai, India; Monterrey, Mexico; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Lisbon, Portugal; Bangkok, Thailand; and Boston.

The summit in Nairobi is the second step on the journey to winning the $1 million prize. The winning team from each of the seven summits, along with four other startups selected through the Second Chance Round, will earn a spot at the Global Accelerator which takes place in July.

At the Global Accelerator, the semi-finalist teams will connect with Hult Prize mentors to refine their pitches and develop their businesses further. Six teams will advance from the Accelerator to the Global Finals.

Rosenau explained what her team will be doing at the Nairobi summit.

“We will have four minutes to make our presentation,” she shares. “Then there is a short time for a question-and-answer session.”

Though their presentation is only four minutes long, the SDSU team has spent many hours working to get it just right.

“We want to make sure the presentation is very polished, so we have been practicing and refining what we will doing for quite awhile,” Rosenau comments. “It has been difficult lately because one of the team members was gone on an intenrship and then another one was busy being a camp counselor.”

But, Rosenau says the team will be ready.

“It is a Power Point presentation with each member of the team speaking,” she notes. “We are fortunate to have a good support system at SDSU who have been helping us through this process.”

The SDSU students will be joined in Kenya by Srinivas Janaswamy, an associate professor in dairy and food science as well as agronomy, horticulture and plant science. He serves on the advisory board for the student’s proposed company, which they call Agri-Cycle Innovations. Janaswamy is the source for the product the students envision marketing.

While Janaswamy continues to focus on research and development of the technology, Rosenau and her teammates are working to create a successful business concept – one that would leverage the $1 million grand prize and venture capital.

Rosenau shares she feels fortunate to be a member of the team pursuing the Hult Prize.

“We all get along well, we are all honor students, hard working and dedicated,” she says. “We are focused and have a goal and it has come together nicely so far.”

Eide and Schilling are graduting seniors, Hadacek is an incoming senior and Rosenau is an incoming junior.

“Three of us are more science-experienced so being with people with more business experience has been very interesting,” Rosenau adds. “The help we have received from others has been so important to our success.”

Included in the group of those who are assisting the SDSU team are Rebecca Bott-Knutson, dean of the Van D. and Barbara B. Fishback Honors College.

“She arranged for our travel to Kenya,” Rosenau comments. “There are many other faculty members who have helped guide us on our way.”

She is also glad there will be time to go on a safari.

“We figured we should reward ourselves by doing something fun,” she says with a smile.

Win or lose, Rosenau feels just going through the process of being involved in the contest has been very rewarding,

“I think I have really grown as a person. Learning to work as a team and figuring out how to make things work have been wonderful learning experiences,” she concludes. “I have grown in my confidence and learned if we work together, we can make something powerful.”

Some information for this article was used with permission from an article published by the SDSU News Center.