At Her Campus, we love to see women stepping up in the entrepreneurial world. We love it even more to see them creating things that aim to cultivate leadership and empowerment. We believe that this week’s Campus Celeb is doing just that.
Meet Kristen Newman. She is an 18-year-old sophomore from Westbury, NY, majoring in marketing and management information systems, and minoring in entrepreneurship. She is also the co-founder of the startup company, VirtuREAL. The company works to create software to assist students and business professionals in becoming better public speakers and communicators.
The fear of public speaking, also known in medical terms as glossophobia is the most common phobia according? to Brandon Gaille: Small Business Blog for Entrepreneurs. This includes the fear of spiders, heights, small spaces, and death (yes, death). Glossophobia has been, and continues to be a large problem in society. Unfortunately, it has silenced many voices that could not only potentially transform the individual lives of others, but could also transform the lives of others on a global scale.
“As a child I had numerous issues with speaking in front of a crowd,” Kristen said. “Specifically, I ran for my student government in 9th grade and froze up during my speech to my class. I thought, ‘What I would have done to have something to prepare myself for that speech.’ That’s where VirtuREAL essentially sprouted from.”
VirtuREAL software is designed to record the user’s speech, either through a mobile phone or computer. “It will then process the audio track to determine a score. The program will then provide specific user feedback based upon a set of rules and algorithms,” Kristen said.
Kristen said the best things about running her own business is the personal satisfaction of taking a concept that you thought of and developing it into a real thing. “You are able to say, ‘Hey, I worked hard and made this happen. I did this.’ That feeling is absolutely amazing,” she said. But there are some difficulties to being the boss. According to Kristen, the hardest thing is the stress and the risk. Running your own business is very demanding and requires making a lot of tough decisions, which include sometimes putting your personal life on hold, and giving up other opportunities to focus on your business. “You risk so much but that’s the only way you can be a successful entrepreneur in my opinion. Of course stress comes with it as well but you learn to control it,” Kristen said.
After Kristen graduates, she sees herself continuing to work on VirtuREAL and going into the marketing or management information systems industry. She said that VirtuREAL has definitely influenced her career path. “I didn’t really get involved with business until I started working on my startup,” Kristen said. “I had come from a family of entrepreneurs and salesmen but I had never seen myself going into that. VirtuREAL made me learn to love business in its entirety. I personally love conversing with people and public speaking, so I found what I loved.”
In addition to business, Kristen is also passionate about music. She plays four instruments, knows how to produce and record, and listens to all genres of music. She also loves biking, trying new cuisines, and traveling. We really love what Kristen is doing, and hope that VirtuREAL succeeds in creating great public speakers!
You can support VirtuREAL at www.virturealsoftware.com . You can also like their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VIRTU.2.0.REAL .