Wednesday, October 7, 2015 // The Statement 
7B

optiMize: Saving the world, one idea at a time

E

rin Johnson had just moved into her dorm room at 
Bursley and found her way around campus when 
she saw a poster: “ ‘Why not me?’ Stop waiting 

for someone else to change the world.” The poster for the 
student organization optiMize would ultimately chart the 
course for her time at the University.

A year later Johnson, a sophomore studying business and 

international studies, is president of the organization. She 
said prior to joining optiMize she had minimal experience 
in entrepreneurship, but the passion and support from 
members of the organization inspired her.

“ ‘Stop waiting for someone else to change the world’ — 

seeing that phrase come to life, that’s probably why I got so 
involved,” she said.

Since 2012, optiMize has helped students with social 

innovation ideas make them a reality. The programs pairs 
student-entrepreneurs with experienced mentors, and 
offers $100,000 in prize money to the student groups that 
advocate for their ideas most successfully. The top five 
teams each win $5,000 in funding to create their design. The 
projects are funded primarily through donor money, but the 
group also receives funding from LSA

Mentors can come from all backgrounds: “near peer” 

mentors are students who have previously participated in 
the program, while older mentors from LSA, alumni, and 
entrepreneurs in the Ann Arbor community.

“Maybe someone has an idea but they have no idea how 

to get started, or no idea how to put it into action,” Johnson 
said. “Everyone has the soft skills; the mentors come in and 
really help them with the hard skills: how exactly are you 
going to implement this, how exactly are you going to take 
this idea and like what channel are you going to go through, 

who are you really going to market to?”

Last year ADAPT — a core team composed of Engineering 

junior Laura Murphey and Art & Design senior Sidney 
Krandall — won the competition by creating an umbrella 
attachment for wheelchairs.

The team met at an optiMize “speed dating” event, which 

pairs students interested in participating but do not have a 
partner or a clear idea yet with others in the same boat. One 
of members came up with their idea when she visited the 

Ann Arbor Veteran’s Association hospital and asked what 
the patients needed. It’s this kind of problem solving Erin 
loves.

“That’s the coolest thing I think about optiMize is that 

when people notice a problem, they can follow through, and 
we provide them with the resources to actually take that 
idea or the problem that they saw and help them along the 
solution,” she said. “Seeing people go and take real world 
experience and being like ‘I’m going to change that, that’s 
not that hard to change’ like making an accessory for a 
wheelchair — that improves so many people’s lives, that 
makes so much of a positive impact, but all you had to do 
was figure out how you’re going to attach an umbrella to a 
wheelchair.”

Since last year, ADAPT has used its winnings to expand 

and become a real company working on several other 
attachments for wheelchairs, and to improve disabled 
people’s lives.

For people like Johnson, it’s these success stories and 

the reach optiMize has that keeps her passionate about the 
organization.

“As soon as I got there I knew this was (a good fit for 

me), because I have a lot of experience with community 
service, and stuff like that, but it was always like a one on 
one basis — I tutored this person after school, I do this, I 
do this — but like I never felt like the work I was doing was 
making an impact on the community as a whole,” she said. 
“Being able to even help someone take their idea and even 
play the smallest part in helping them make that dream, that 
passion, into something real. That was the most rewarding 
thing for me.”

As president, Johnson hopes to share her positive 

experience with as many people as possible and spread 
optiMize’s message that there doesn’t have to be a tradeoff 
between work and life. She believes in this message so much 
that after graduation, Erin would like to work somewhere 
with the same principles as optiMize.

“People talk about concepts of work-life balance a lot, 

and what we want to show people is that just because you’re 
doing something to make a living doesn’t mean you can’t be 
passionate about it,” Johnson said. “Doing what you love 
and going to work everyday — they don’t have to be these 
two mutually exclusive things. The more overlap your life 
passions have with what you do on a daily basis — that’s 
what it should be.”

by Emma Kinery, Daily Staff Reporter

PHOTO BY LUNA ANNA ARCHEY

“Stop waiting for someone 
else to change the world.”