A Leg Up

A Leg Up

By Emily Daniels

Photo by Beth Wynn

If you have ever suffered a serious leg injury, you know the immense pain and the weeks of physical therapy treatments associated with the long road to recovery.

Junior marketing major Jordan Henderson knows all too well what the post-surgery recovery process is like for lower leg injuries. As a high school soccer athlete, she sustained an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear. Twice.

“The first time, I was a freshman in high school,” she recalls. “As you can probably imagine, it was really hard and embarrassing trying to navigate my way around my first year of high school having to wear a huge brace and crutches. The second time, I was a junior. I went back to class after my surgery, and people always asked me if I needed help or needed a chair to prop my leg on, because you have to keep your leg elevated for weeks after surgery to keep the swelling down and help with the healing process. It was uncomfortable having to move my desk around in all my classes just to elevate my leg.”

Henderson says that while her ACL injuries were the worst things she has ever had to endure, she is somewhat thankful that it gave her a great idea for a product that wasn’t available.

“Creating a successful product is about finding a void in the marketplace,” Henderson explains. “The average recovery time for ACL surgery is about six months, and you have to prop your leg up for around a month; for something like a knee replacement, you might need to elevate your leg for two, maybe three months. Right now, the only competition for Brace Buddy is a chair!”

Brace Buddy is a portable, telescopic and collapsible durable medical device for post-knee surgery patients to aid in increased elevation and recovery in any setting. Its telescopic feature is perfect for everyone, tall or short, because the support height can be adjusted. And since it’s collapsible, it can easily fit into a purse or backpack.

“In my senior year, I was involved in Hoover High School’s Business and Entrepreneurship Academy,” says the Birmingham, AL, native. “For your senior project, you have to develop a full business plan to submit to a state-wide competition called Junior Achievement of Alabama Business Plan Challenge. In April 2017, I submitted a plan for Brace Buddy, and I won scholarship money for college. The judges told me that this was definitely needed in the physical therapy field, and I should pursue its development. Luckily, I was headed to a school that could help me do it!”

Henderson was originally set on going to Auburn University, as it was an in-state school and she had liked it the many times she had visited. But her plan would soon change.

“All my family is from Mississippi, and my grandfather went to school at Mississippi State,” she says. “He called me up one day and said, ‘Why don’t you just go and tour, you might really like it!’ So I came, and he was right; I just felt at home, and everyone was so friendly. I even got a private tour of the business building with a recruiting counselor. I mentioned my idea for Brace Buddy to them, and they took me to the Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach [E-Center] right away so I met everyone in there. The E-Center is definitely what sold me, because I feel like not many schools in the Southeast have entrepreneurship programs of that caliber.”

As soon as she got to campus her freshman year, she hit the ground running, taking advantage of all the resources the E-Center had to offer to develop and market Brace Buddy. With the help of Director of Outreach Jeffrey Rupp and former E-Center student and CEO of Meta Games Ryan Gilbrech, she was introduced to a team of biomedical engineering students to help her with the prototype. “Brace Buddy was selected as a senior design project for a biomedical engineering class,” Henderson says. “They all signed non-disclosure agreements and met with me biweekly to address any concerns or ideas for the design. They made it from scratch. It’s completely functional; it’s collapsible and telescopic, but it’s just a prototype, so it’s obviously not what the finished product would look like. But it’s definitely helpful to have a working prototype to show off in presentations and pitches. For the Peer Review Entrepreneurship Panel (PREP) pitch, I was confident because I could pull the prototype out of my purse and physically show the judges how Brace Buddy works. It definitely helped me secure funding.”

This year, Henderson pitched Brace Buddy as part of the 2019 Startup Summit. The annual startup competition, hosted by MSU’s E-Center, is a weeklong event. Business model pitches are evaluated on company technology, management, financials and market by industry-respected leaders serving as judges from companies across the region. This year, 37 teams from nearly every college on campus competed for cash prizes totaling $34,000 in seed funding.

“We had four different divisions in our grand finale,” shares Henderson. “In the span of two days, I won $6,000 in seed funding for Brace Buddy by placing first in my division and second overall and winning the people’s choice award. This will help me finish covering legal fees, and any money that I have left over can go toward travel expenses for medical trade shows or paying someone to make the second prototype. My goal for this year is to start reaching out to manufacturers, showing them our design and how we would like to refine it – maybe make it sleeker and more compact.”

Photo by Beth Wynn

Henderson says she has enjoyed her first three years at Mississippi State largely in part due to her involvement in the College of Business and the E-Center. In addition to her already busy schedule in starting a business, she serves as a College of Business Ambassador and is a member of the MSU chapter of the University Women in Business organization. She loves the E-Center so much that she started working there as head marketing specialist.

“I handle all the social media channels, create all our promotional items and do graphic design work for the E-Center,” she says. “I already had experience creating videos and serving as the social media coordinator for Kappa Delta sorority, so this comes pretty naturally. It’s amazing to get paid to do something that you love, and for me that’s marketing and entrepreneurship.”

Henderson says that many people come to the E-Center with some super complex idea about curing cancer, which is great, but people should not be intimidated to share their ideas, even the least complicated ones.

“My little slogan is that ‘it doesn’t have to be that complicated to be something that works or that people need,’” she says. “Having support from the E-Center really helps you be confident in your idea. Anyone can come into the center with an idea, and with a little determination, have the potential to go all the way to their product’s launch.”

Once Henderson further develops and manufactures the product, Brace Buddy will provide a solution to patients who now have to hobble around to find an extra chair or stool to elevate an injured leg.

“With Brace Buddy, all they have to do is pull the device out of their bag or purse and prop up their legs with ease,” she says. “It’s a simple little product that people don’t realize they need until they do, and I am excited to be able to provide it for them.”