Female alumnae find entrepreneurial success

Lehigh’s Venture Lab, located in the Business Innovation Building, is a sub-program of the Office of Entrepreneurship open to students from all colleges who have an idea they want to bring to life. The lab allows students to take their ideas from the drawing board to the design process. 

Michael Rinkunas, ‘02, ‘08G, began his role as the director of the Ventures Lab in May to support students on their entrepreneurial journey. He said he thinks female students should feel empowered to consider a career in entrepreneurship.

Rinkunas works with students and alumni to support them through the different stages of entrepreneurship, including developing an idea, establishing a startup and running a company full-time. 

“Being able to give back is one of the biggest things for me,” Rinkunas said. “This is the best thing I can do to help Lehigh succeed.”

He said he wishes the program he currently runs had been available when he was a student. 

“I’m hoping to help people avoid mistakes I’ve made,” Rinkunas said. “They’re gonna make a whole other realm of mistakes, but we can help them move quicker and faster.”

Rinkunas said the entrepreneurial field is male-dominated, which makes it especially important to encourage women to enter the field.

Multiple successful female entrepreneurs have graduated from Lehigh’s entrepreneurial programs including Olivia Abrams, Sarah Mack, Ali Kaminetsky and Erin Talgo. 

(Courtesy of Olivia Abrams)

Olivia Abrams

Olivia Abrams, ‘21, is the CEO and co-founder of TiCK MiTT, a product that assists with preventing tick-borne diseases. She is listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 for 2025 Social Impact List.

Abrams said she always knew she wanted to be an entrepreneur.

“I grew up an only child in a family of entrepreneurs, so conversations at the dinner table were typically about branding and franchising,” Abrams said.

When touring colleges, Abrams said she fell in love with the feel of Lehigh’s campus and the entrepreneurship department. At Lehigh, Abrams participated in various organizations, including rising to news editor for The Brown and White.

During her senior year, Abrams presented a business proposal on her now-formed company TickMitt. 

“I needed to create a business plan to graduate, so I thought I might as well come up with an idea of how we would launch TickMitt and what our branding would look like, our logo, our fonts, who would be our target customers,” Abrams said. “And then I never really stopped thinking about it.”

In 2021, Abrams graduated with a degree in political science and minors in marketing and entrepreneurship. After completing a summer internship with Morgan Stanley, Abrams accepted a return offer to the company full-time after her graduation. 

About a year later, Abrams left the company to pursue her dream of making TiCK MiTT a reality. 

“I always wanted to have a job where I could help people but also make money,” Abrams said. “I felt like that was like the best way to do that would be to create products that keep people and their pets safe.”

TiCK MiTT is a chemical-free, reusable mitt that can be swiped on skin, clothes or a pet’s fur to find and remove ticks before they embed into skin and potentially transmit diseases. The company’s mission is to reduce cases of tick-borne diseases and make tick checks more efficient and easier for people to do. 

Abrams said TiCK MiTT’s long-term goal is to create other products to help keep people and pets safe from ticks.

While Abrams created the product for pets, TiCK MiTT has expanded its promotion to include an outdoor market of hikers, campers and hunters, as well as people who encounter ticks on the job, such as linemen, electricians, contractors, farmers and landscapers. 

“I’ve realized over time that the customer is a lot bigger than I thought it was, and thus, the market is a lot bigger than I thought it was,” Abrams said.

Abrams said graduating from Lehigh has opened doors for her that she doesn’t think would have been accessible if she had attended a different university. Through her Lehigh network, Abrams said she’s been able to get in touch with graphic designers, store owners and other entrepreneurs.

“The best thing about being a Lehigh alum is the other Lehigh alumni,” Abrams said.

Aside from the connections Abrams has made post-graduation, she remains in close contact with the Lehigh Ventures Lab program. In conjunction with the lab, Abrams has weekly sessions with current students and young alumni who have recently started businesses of their own.

(Courtesy of Sarah Mack)

Sarah Mack

Sarah Mack, ‘14, is the CEO and founder of Vinat, a European wine made by women for women. 

Mack graduated from Lehigh with degrees in finance and supply chain management and began working as a financial analyst after graduation.

In 2021, Mack enrolled in the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain, to complete her MBA. While in Spain, she learned about the role of wine in everyday life.

More notably, Mack said she realized most wine curators in Europe don’t understand what types of wine are popular among women in the US. 

“Most of the wine drinkers in the U.S. are women, but of the people picking out the wine, most are men,” Mack said. “You go to these wine fairs in France, and you’ve got men talking to winemakers saying, ‘This is what American women want to drink.’”

Inspired by her new discoveries and her love of wine, Mack decided to create a wine brand with her sister.

“A lot of people feel really intimidated by wine, so we wanted to make it really approachable,” Mack said. 

According to their website, Vinat’s wine is sourced from family-run vineyards that abide by strict EU quality standards. Vinat currently sells three types of wine — prosecco, red blends and white blends.

In addition to their clever names like “Skinny Dip” and “Out of office,” each bottle links to a Spotify playlist to accompany the wine.

“The wine industry is very stuffy, and I think there’s a lot of opportunity to make it more fun,” Mack said.

Vinat is currently shipping to 35 states across the country, including Washington D.C.

Mack said she credits her brand’s success to the lessons she learned through Lehigh’s entrepreneurial programs. One mistake she sees startup founders make is forgetting to protect their intellectual property

“The name and our logo, both are trademarked right now, and that’s directly because of Lehigh,” Mack said.

(Courtesy of Ali Kaminetsky)

Ali Kaminetsky

Ali Kaminetsky, ‘16, is the founder of Modern Picnic, a high-end, sustainable lunch bag company. 

Kaminetshy graduated from Lehigh with a degree in supply chain management and marketing and a minor in communications. Outside of the classroom, she was a reporter for The Brown and White and a tennis team member, where she served as captain her junior year.

She went through the college recruitment process for tennis, and Kaminetshy said she was drawn to Lehigh because of its academic reputation, beautiful campus and strong sense of community.

“I felt like it was a place where I could thrive both academically and personally,” Kaminetshy said in an email.

Kaminetshy came up with the idea for Modern Picnic when she was working in New York City. She said she struggled with finding a lunch bag that combined fashion and function. She decided to create a brand that she described as both functional and resonates with consumers.

Modern Picnic began with its “Luncher,” a lunch bag that the brand originally debuted on Shark Tank. Since then, the brand has expanded to include tote bags, pouches and other food storage solutions. 

“We believe that you should eat well, live well, and look well by combining fashion and function,” Kaminetshy wrote in an email to The Brown and White. 

Kaminetshy wrote that being a Lehigh alum has helped her tremendously in business development. Aside from the education, she said she was able to create strong relationships that she still leans on for support today. 

“My professors, coaches, and classmates instilled in me the value of resilience and the importance of asking for help when you need it,” Kaminetsky wrote.

(Courtesy of Erin Talgo)

Erin Talgo

Erin Talgo, ‘14, is the CEO and founder of Erin Talgo Trading, a sustainable rug business inspired by her travels. 

She graduated from Lehigh with a marketing degree and a global studies minor, and she said she was drawn to the university because of the variety of programs and the community feel. 

“It really checked all the boxes for me, but the academics and the business program specifically were what really cemented it,” Talgo said.

After graduating from Lehigh, Talgo joined the buying and merchandising team at Ross Stores, where she had interned the previous summer. After five years with Ross, she transitioned to the buying and merchandising team at Burlington. 

Two years ago, after working in corporate America for over a decade, Talgo quit her job and went on a trip to Morocco.

There, Talgo learned more about the rug industry and how men were selling women’s work. Following this time, she returned to Morocco numerous times to meet with these women directly and cut out the middlemen. 

Talgo began working with these women to create designs she describes as East Coast sophistication meets West Coast California cool. 

“They’re elegant and refined, but they have a little bit of that bohemian edge to them,” Talgo said. 

Talgo returned to Los Angeles and began selling the rugs door-to-door. She eventually brought them to two stores in the area and hosted her first trade show at the Pacific Design Center last month. 

“I got the idea from being curious and seeing the white space opportunity of these rugs that were a very specific aesthetic but weren’t being designed for a Western-looking home or color palette,” Talgo said. 

She said in addition to the academics and skills she gained from Lehigh, the connections she made allowed her to find success a decade after she graduated. 

“You are who you surround yourself with, and the vast majority of my best friends are from Lehigh,” Talgo said. “It’s really the community it’s given me, not just from a networking standpoint, but also these are the people that are in my corner.”