Henry W. Bloch School of Management

UMKC celebrates Maria Meyers for driving social entrepreneurship, ecosystem building in KC

Kansas City’s most tenacious advocate, Maria Meyers has built far more than a legacy for herself, proclaimed Mary Bloch. “I first met Maria Meyers in the mid-90s when we were both involved in the renovation of Union Station,” Bloch, civic leader and daughter-in-law of H&R Bloch founder Henry W. Bloch, said as she recognized Meyers,…

Entrepreneur of the Year: Michael Rea says building a startup takes a ‘strong stomach’

The road to startup success isn’t a clear path for anyone, acknowledged Michael Rea, and it takes a founder’s persistence to reach his or her desired destination. “Many people set out on an entrepreneurial journey, but few complete it,” Rea, founder and CEO of Rx Savings Solutions, told a crowd gathered Friday night for the…

Carolyne Gakuria, ScheduleMe

Tired of waiting at the barber shop? An AI-infused platform grown at UMKC could trim time

Born in the barber’s chair, Kansas City-based ScheduleMe could take more than a little off the top for service-based retailers. The startup plans to use artificial intelligence to groom the haphazard scheduling process entirely, its co-founders said. “We discovered that [our barbershop] was having issues with scheduling. What we wanted to do was try to…

DeepLens mobile view

UMKC-powered tech could help visually-impaired Kansas Citians see via artificial intelligence

Gharib Gharibi is driven to succeed by a desire to pay it forward, he said, riding a high from his startup’s first-place, $20,000 win at UMKC’s Regnier Institute Venture Creation Challenge. “They helped us transform our technology from the computer lab to the real world,” Gharibi, founder of DeepLens and a UMKC PhD student, said…

Phillip Gonsher, University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Jennifer Niehouse-Fox, It’s So U

UMKC experts: Self-disruption challenges a modern fashion industry in flux

Editor’s note: This article is sponsored by the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Regnier Institute. The opinions expressed in this commentary are the authors’ alone. When thinking of the fashion industry, the first thing that (rightfully) comes to most people’s minds is the final garment on the shelf. However, there are a tremendous number of challenges…