Season's Greetings from the Make48 Elves! We hope your holidays are filled with joy, warmth, and maybe a little bit of maker magic! ✨
This year has been a whirlwind of activity for Make48, from all of our 48-hour innovation challenges to the launch of our brand-new educational course. We've faced challenges and celebrated triumphs, and through it all, our incredible team has kept the momentum going.
To recap this exciting year, we invited our team to play a game of "Rose & Thorn." Read on to hear their perspectives!
Tom Gray, Chief Executive Officer
My Rose is undoubtedly working alongside both the blind students and their chaperones. They are such sweet humans who appreciate life that most of us take for granted.
My Thorn would be the growth challenges of launching into education. This was expected, but no matter how much we prepare, there are a million twists and turns. I am very grateful to have hardworking and dedicated people all around us within Make48 and The Debruce Foundation team. Everyone is pulling together to make something special.
Amy Gray, Director of Events
My Rose for 2024 was seeing the Curriculum get rolled out. We had two wonderful people join our team this year to execute this and it's been amazing to see all of our hard work over the past couple of years come to fruition. It makes my heart happy to see that we'll be impacting so many more students through this initiative.
My Thorn for 2024 was doing two events two weeks apart! That was a whirlwind! Although it was hard, our team made it happen and I'm so thankful for all their hard work - I just hope they don't make me do it again anytime soon. Ha!
Courtney Rosenquist, Make48 Community Builder
My Rose of the year was getting to attend so many events and spend quality time with my amazing coworkers and work bestie.
However, my Thorn of the year was the bittersweet feeling of missing my baby while being away for those events.
Brett Kisker, Director of Education
My rose is getting the opportunity to join two amazing groups of kind, hard-working people in Make48 and The DeBruce Foundation who both fully believe in their missions. I have truly enjoyed creating new, amazing experiences for students and teachers across the country!
Thorn - As expected with a new role, especially when building a new vertical of a business from the ground up, the sheer amount of new skill sets I've needed to develop has certainly pushed me. The saving grace here, again, is the fact that we have a great team that works together to figure things out and get things done!
Cassandra Munoz, Communications
Working with our incredible M48 team (ie: 9am team, tool techs, partners and work bestie!) and working with new groups and people who are passionate about our goals was my rose this year.
My thorn this year is losing our rockstar WI sales ambassador, Katie Cappozzo, at the end of the year. We will miss you!
Sharrell Howard, Educational Experience Strategist
This year, my rose was the incredible opportunity to attend both the MSOE and National Make48 competitions. Being in the building for these amazing events felt like a full-circle moment for me. As a teacher, I’m always striving to give my students the most authentic, real-world experiences possible. I can confidently say that Make48 is the embodiment of what we as educators aim to create for our students. The best part? We don’t have to build it ourselves because Make48 is already here!
While we’ve made great strides and significant progress, there’s still plenty of work ahead as we prepare for the Bracket launch in Fall 2025. Developing the processes and procedures for onboarding and supporting schools is an ongoing, collaborative effort that often requires adjustments. Gathering the right resources to ensure the best experience for teachers and schools can be challenging, but it’s a rewarding and exciting challenge that I’m eager to tackle.