Mikaela Arey

Mikaela Arey is a freshman at Emory University pursuing a major in Business Analytics and a minor in Entrepreneurship while competing on the soccer team. She founded pitchcompanies.com, a startup community platform that has been operational for three months. The platform allows users to post ideas or recommendations for companies, enabling others to comment and vote on them, with an area to suggest alternative companies to create competition and encourage implementation by businesses. Her typical day includes early gym workouts, dedicated startup work on advertising, traffic, and technical improvements for user-friendliness during lunch breaks, followed by classes and athletic practices. Previously, in her sophomore year, she started a social media page interviewing professional athletes including an NWSL soccer player and a tennis player who competed at Wimbledon. She is inspired by her mother, Suchi Shaw, who provides resources and advice for scaling the startup, and she volunteers with Special Olympics as an athlete herself.