JOHNNIE INNOVATORS LONG NGUYEN ’14
Long Nguyen launched his first business venture as a Saint John’s junior and then vaulted into a tech career in Silicon Valley. Nguyen recently co-founded San Francisco-based Everfit, a business-to-business platform that helps gyms and wellness centers build client relations and lets fitness trainers create and deliver training from a mobile app. Nguyen’s résumé also includes running a software development shop and working for a Silicon Valley advisory firm for startup CEOs. His own first startup, Campus Konnect, became SJU/ CSB’s official mobile app. He credits Saint John’s for exposing him to a wide variety of subjects beyond his management major, setting his course through Entrepreneur Scholars and kickstarting his success with the renowned Johnnie alumni network. “I met my first boss and many other mentors through this network. The willingness of alumni to connect with each other and especially help recent graduates is unparalleled.” Nguyen hopes to develop Everfit into a major player in the fitness and wellness industry and strives to bring Silicon Valley expertise to the startup ecosystem in his home country of Vietnam.
16 WINTER/SPRING 2020
The Saint John’s Pottery firing is a chance for Hardwick (upper left) to stoke the flames for an artistic endeavor he admires greatly and rekindle his relationship with the campus he loves deeply. “I was like, ‘Oh, wow, that’s kind of spooky. I was talking to this guy in person.” Klonowski will remember their conversation for a long time. “It felt empowering for him to put out his hand for me and ask for my contact information, too. I thought that was really cool – and how interested he seemed in what I was doing.” That kind of connection can alter someone’s course. “That’s what I like to do,” Hardwick said. “Change people’s lives, in a nice way. It’s not a power thing. It’s just a ‘You know, this worked for me, and so the opportunity is there for others.’ ” HE TRAVELS from his home in Kennebunk, Maine, to volunteer when the Saint John’s Pottery fires the Johanna Kiln. It’s a chance for him to stoke the flames for an artistic endeavor he admires greatly and rekindle his relationship with the campus he loves deeply. “I just think of this place as home, you know?” Even his affinity for art can be traced back to Saint John’s, where he took his required art course and then stuffed it in the back of his memory until he was in his mid-20s and colleagues talked him into visiting the National Gallery of Art while they were at a convention in Washington, D.C. I said, ‘Let’s go and get a drink. The hell with the National Gallery.’ And they prevailed upon me to go with them. And I walked in and I was just, as the