Innovation redux

Ohio Today introduced The Big Idea in summer 2009, profiling innovators—experimenters, creators, educators, and inventors—whose ideas took root or took off at Ohio University. Innovation, by definition, means change, so we decided to check in with Bobcats profiled in the issue for an update. Marie Braasch Chelberg went from performing traditional experiments as a graduate student in social and health psychology to experimenting for user-experience companies in Silicon Valley; Jessica Hagy creates diagrams for her popular blog that have been featured in books and articles far and wide; Angelic Pinckney’s time at OHIO gave her space to think about community and giving back through education; and Jesse Yun and Fiona Mitchell Yun are inventing an entirely new kind of transportation business—one that aims to go carbon neutral.

Life pivots

In 2009, Marie Braasch was unlike most 18-year-olds. Instead of entering OHIO's Honors Tutorial College, she was graduating from it. A dual degree in biological sciences and psychology set her path: a career in neuropsychology or cognitive neuroscience.

Braasch entered Stony Brook University’s social and health psychology doctoral program, studying romantic relationships. There was only one problem: She wasn’t happy.

“It was hard for me to admit that maybe this career path that I had been following for so long wasn’t actually what I wanted to do,” said the now Marie Chelberg, who married in 2011.

As a visiting student at the University of California, Berkeley, she saw psychology graduate students pursue private tech careers and decided to take the leap, too. “When you’re in Silicon Valley, it’s easy to transfer into tech because there are so many job opportunities,” Chelberg said. She is a user experience (UX) researcher, working initially for the online college course platform Coursera, and now for ZipRealty.com in California’s Bay Area. “If it turns out that this isn’t the path I want to stay on either, I’m hopeful that I will recognize that more quickly this time and pivot again.”

Psychologists like Chelberg are entering the still-emerging UX field in numbers. They bring their ability to conduct research and perform behavioral science testing for an applied setting. Psychologists typically know more than designers about memory, attention, and other ways the mind works, Chelberg explained.

“(Tech companies) need people to be able to find out, are our users able to use our product? Are they happy with it? Do they get confused? Are there parts that don’t make sense to them?” she questioned. Chelberg credits her graduate school education for developing the skills necessary for her unexpected career change. But graduate school taught her a far more important lesson, she realized: life goals 2.0. “You can change your mind.”

Nice ride

A couple of Bobcats sing the praises of sustainable synergy!

When Jesse Yun, BBA ’03, and a friend decided to launch a green airport shuttle business in Portland, Oregon, Yun asked his best friend from college, Fiona Mitchell, BFA ’06, to help with marketing. “I called the Waterfront Blues Festival (organizers) maybe a week or so before the festival started and asked if we could have a booth,” Mitchell recalls. “And they said, ‘Why don’t you provide transportation for the bands?’ So we went out and bought a van.” With that, ecoShuttle began.

That was 2006, and since then, ecoShuttle has grown to 27 vehicles and 40 employees. The vehicles all run on biodiesel, and a new electric vehicle recently joined the fleet.

But their commitment to sustainability doesn’t end with fuel choices. ecoShuttle, now with just Yun and Mitchell at the helm, has a goal to become completely carbon neutral. “We’re becoming good enough where I can purchase some carbon credits to offset our energy usage, so it’s not out of the question,” Yun says. Their office, which is nearly paper free, is powered 100 percent with wind energy.

Mitchell says she wanted to change the world politically when she was in college, but now believes she has made a bigger impact through owning a business. “Coming right out of college and starting a company in an industry we knew nothing about—it was the best way to innovate,” she says. “I don’t think we would have been able to do that had we had 15 years of experience in the bus industry. I think we would have been stuck in a box.”

As the business grew, so did the relationship between the college best friends. They got married in 2011, and now the Yuns have two children, ages four and one.

Appetite for creativity

When Ohio Today caught up with Jessica Hagy, BSJ ’99, in 2009, her webcomic Indexed already counted some 20,000 followers and led to a book, also titled Indexed, of images drawn, yes, by hand on index cards. The drawings read like punch lines on X-Y axes or Venn diagrams. One popular image shows a small circle identified as “Your comfort zone” and, separate from it, a large circle identified as “Where the magic happens.”

When the webcomic won the 2010 Webby Award for personal blog/website, things really took off for the Seattle-based Hagy. Now some 100,000 people view her work monthly via the blog, social media, and publications that commission her. A 2011 piece for Forbes, “How to Be More Interesting (In 10 Simple Steps),” includes 10 diagrams with titles such as “Go exploring” and “Do something. Anything.” It led to another book of collected images, How to Be Interesting (In 10 Simple Steps).

“That’s probably my favorite piece because I got to do a book (of) happy philosophy,” Hagy says.

Her philosophy about creativity remains a standby. “I think it’s sort of the garbage in, garbage out theory,” she says. “If your creative metabolism is fed with good stuff … you’re going to be able to put out more good stuff.”

Hagy reads widely, accordingly—Australian artist communities, NASA Twitter feeds, and the ancient Chinese military treatise, The Art of War by Sun Tzu. The last inspired Hagy’s sixth book, The Art of War Visualized: The Sun Tzu Classic in Charts and Graphs.

Hagy’s most recent credit? Supplying the illustrations for The Hustle Economy: Transforming Your Creativity into a Career, a collection of essays by self-made professionals in the creative economy, edited by Jason Oberholtzer and published in April. “Being part of that niche … is probably the thing I’m most proud of,” she says. “I can look at my network and think, ‘I’m really one of THOSE people.’”

Lead by example

Angelic Pinckney doesn’t think she would have been able to go to college without OHIO's Urban Scholars program, which paid tuition costs for four years. “I’m so thankful that OU took that risk (on me) through the Urban Scholars program,” says Pinckney, who graduated in 1999 with a bachelor’s degree in English.

Though finances weren’t a worry, the academic transition to college proved difficult for Pinckney, despite having graduated near the top of her class from her inner-city Columbus high school.

Today Pinckney is back in her hometown, paying it forward by preparing others to further their education. She works for Community Properties of Ohio Management Services, which provides affordable housing and other resources for its residents. Pinckney oversees a program that provides scholarships for parents who complete their GED. The program additionally supports these parents by providing lessons on how to read effectively to their preschool-aged children at home, in conjunction with the public library. She also manages the organization’s AmeriCorps program. Recently, she was selected for United Way’s competitive Project Diversity, a leadership program for people of color.

Outside of work, Pinckney volunteers as an assistant coach for her high school marching band and started a marching band alumni association. Pinckney also is on the executive board of the new Columbus chapter of the Ebony Bobcat Network, which raises money for the Urban Scholars program. These efforts showcase her leadership skills—which she has been honing since she was a resident assistant at OHIO—and her commitment to helping others achieve their educational goals, much like the Urban Scholars program facilitated hers.

“Education has been key to my life,” Pinckney says, “That is why I think my career path has been education.”

To that point, at home, Pinckney reads to her 10-month-old daughter. "I would love for her to be a Bobcat," says the OHIO mom and education advocate.

Mary Reed, BSJ ’90, MA ’93, is a freelance writer based in Athens. Her most recent book is Best Easy Day Hikes Fort Collins.

Feature illustration by Jeremy Blazer, BFA '09