August 2023:
Cameron Tolbert, alumnus was named to the Forbes Under 30 Local Leaders list in advance of the Forbest Under 30 Summit to be held in Cleveland in October of 2023. You can view the list on the Forbes site here and also on the Greater Cleveland Partnership site here.
Cameron launched his business, Native Ingredients after graduation, taking part in the inaugural Weston Ideation Lab Accelerator program, now the Weston Ideation Lab Accelerator Internship. Originally, he wanted to make a trendy and healthy snack for his family. In addition to his own dietary needs, one of his brothers is allergic to nuts and another brother is allergic to milk.
Native Ingredients was born. The company focuses on healthy snacks and beverage products and sells Sor’rel, a Jamaican drink, and T’pache, a Mexican drink. Native Ingredients products can be found in 14 stores across Cleveland, like Urban Bulk Foods and The Roaming Biscuit.
2022
In 2022, Cameron was a featured guest on the Entrepreneurial Learning initiative podcast. You can listen to his episode here.
Cameron Tolbert is a recent graduate (Summer 2021) with an Operations and Supply Chain Management major. Cameron started his entrepreneurial journey by visiting the Weston Ideation Lab and taking an introductory Entrepreneurship course.
Cameron then participated in the Entrepreneurship Education Consortium’s Entrepreneurship Immersion Week.
From that experience, Cameron became involved in the Entrepreneurship Club, eventually becoming Vice President.
He participated in Startup Vikes in 2018 and in 2019 led his team, Team Vol to be one of the teams selected to receive startup capital. The initial team included Cameron and fellow business students Ramon Clayton (Information Systems), Jibreel Gould (Marketing) and Asiri Samasdera (Marketing).
As a result of his experience with Startup Vikes and his participation in MGT 443/543 class (an entrepreneurship course taught by instructor Jay Schach), Team Vol then went on to participate in Erie Hack and was selected as one of the Northeast Ohio teams to go to the competition in Detroit. Although his team did not win, they made it to the semi-finals.
“Even though we did not win Erie Hack, our entire journey from Startup Vikes to making it to the semi-finals has been a wonderful experience,” said Cameron.
Cameron then went on to participate in the i-Corps program with the Cleveland State hBN Sunscreen team. The i-Corps award was awarded to Dr. Geyou Ao, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering for her research in “Macroscopic Assembly and Processing of Boron Nitride Nanotubes for Multifunctional Nanomaterials Applications”.
Cameron and three engineering undergraduate students (Brandon Heppe, Tanner Larson and Jacob Vitale) assisted in customer discovery and validation to determine the commercial viability of a novel sunscreen comprised of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) nanosheets in solvents at high concentrations. The nanosheets have many benefits that they also surveyed potential customers about including biocompatibility, material costs and environmental friendliness as compared to current products.
In addition to his entrepreneurial activities, Cameron served as a Senator in the Student Government Association and was a member of the OSM Student Organization. He also served as a Supply Chain Intern for Metaloy worked as a part-time Sales Assistant for the Diversity Crew. He earned the Chia Fan Scholarship in Spring of 2021 and is currently working as a Product Management intern/co-op for GE Lighting. He graduated in Summer of 2021.