Taking Entrepreneurship from the Classroom to the Conference Stage

Brooke Richards still remembers every detail of the moment she stood in a Los Angeles conference room, waiting for her turn to pitch to King’s Hawaiian with her classmates in the Innovation District’s Industry Fellows Program.  

Richards, a junior mechanical engineering major at the University of Georgia, had always been the type to observe first and speak second. But standing in a roomful of executives with her team’s market strategy proposal in hand, she realized she was ready for this. 

That moment, she says now, captures the unexpected shift she’s experienced since discovering UGA’s Innovation District ecosystem. “I came to college thinking I’d be behind the scenes,” Richards says. “I never expected to enjoy pitching or entrepreneurship. But once I jumped in, I realized how much I loved figuring things out.” 

Her path into the world of innovation started almost by chance. A friend mentioned the Innovation District’s CREATE Labs, a prototyping and design lab run by Kevin Wu. Then she heard about the IDEA 4000: Innovation Catalyst and Design course taught by Don Chambers and Andrew Potter. She approached Potter after a presentation, asked for his recommendation, and he pointed her directly to the class. 

She enrolled without knowing much about it and ended up discovering her favorite course at UGA. 

IDEA 4000 serves as a gateway to the Innovation District’s broader ecosystem, including the Student Industry Fellows Program, which connects students with real companies facing real problems. Richards entered the course expecting a design class. Instead, she encountered something much broader. Human-centered design, rapid iteration, cross-disciplinary teamwork, and the expectation that students would get up and pitch frequently. 

For someone who preferred to stay quiet at the edge of the room, it was a shock to the system. “I’d come into class stressed about the pitches,” Richards says. “It wasn’t the entrepreneurship that made me nervous…It was the pressure of standing up and presenting.” 

“By the end, I still had butterflies,” Richards recalls. “But I could see the progress.”  

Her most recent pitch was also her most personal. Richards grew up around property development and had watched how hard it was for builders to preserve existing trees on a job site. She also knew that environmental incentives and steep municipal fines were making preservation more important than ever. 

Canopy is Richards’ startup that uses ground-penetrating radar to map the critical root systems of trees, so contractors can plan construction around them rather than default to removal. “It’s absolutely possible to save more trees,” Richards explains. “But you have to know where the roots are, how far they extend, and where the no-go zones really are. The tech already exists, we just need to apply it.” 

Her pitch for Canopy advanced to the finals of the FABricate entrepreneurial pitch contest and earned one of the top awards. More importantly, it validated the idea’s real-world potential.  

The radar technology can be retrofitted, and the software will require dashboards and interfaces she hopes to build with fellow students. The product won’t be simple, but she believes it’s within reach.  

With a year and a half left at UGA, Richards isn’t sure what comes next. Grad school, industry experience, or a startup path are all possibilities. 

This fall, she’ll speak at the Swiss Smart Tech Conference about Canopy and her role within UGA’s innovation ecosystem. It’s a moment that would have intimidated her a year ago. Now, she welcomes it. 

One of the biggest lessons she’s learned so far also happens to be the advice she gives other students, “You don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to start doing it.”  

“Time is your most important resource. Don’t say no because you’re not ready, just say yes and show up.” 

For Richards, that simple shift from waiting until she felt prepared, to stepping in even when she had made all the difference. It’s what led her into IDEA 4000, into the Smart City Expo, onto the pitch stage in Los Angeles, and now into building a startup she hopes will help reshape how communities grow. 

Richards sets the standard for the kind of student entrepreneur the Innovation District was built to support.