Making Up Lost Time

ENTERPRISING MINDS

Undergraduates are creating successful new products and companies as the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship acts as incubator.

Amélie-Sophie Vavrovsky ’18 started Formally to fix a policy problem. Her company, through its website (r), helps people navigate immigration forms.

COURTESY VAVROVSKY

COURTESY VAVROVSKY rowing up in Austria, Amélie-Sophie Vavrovsky ’18 witnessed firsthand the parallel rise of immigration and xenophobia across Europe. To counter the hatred, she began volunteering with refugees while learning all she could about immigration and refugee policies. Pursuing those efforts at Brown, she was surprised to learn that in the United States, immigra-GBY SARAH C. BALDWIN ’87 tion forms themselves can constitute a barrier to asylum, as they are difficult to understand and available only in English. What’s more, applicants are not provided lawyers—despite a 1951 United Nations Convention protecting a person’s right to seek asylum. “That struck me as a gross human rights violation,” Vavrovsky said. Armed with an idea that would tackle the situation, the international relations concentrator signed up for the annual 24-hour software-design marathon Hack@Brown. By the end of that weekend in 2018, she and her team of four had produced the prototype for Formally, a software program with an intuitive interface that translates legalese into simple English and other languages. It guides users through immigration forms and fills them out as they go. This drive to solve a “consequential problem” typifies many would-be entrepreneurs at Brown, says Danny Warshay ’87, director of the Nelson Center