ALUMNI PROFILE
Paolo Soriano ’10 The Providence Journal claims that the millennials of today “are the best educated and most diverse population of young people in U.S. history,” but “are not big risk takers.” As a matter of fact, their age group has the lowest rate of new startups, with the lowest number of entrepreneurs since two decades ago. However, they are also “community minded,” making them “more progressive” when it comes to addressing others’ needs. Paolo Soriano ‘10 both defies and reflects the expectations of the millennial label by creating “Campus Watch” as the result of a tragedy that occurred on the University of Texas’s campus in April of 2016. At that time, a young woman was walking back to her dorm from the Drama Building through a well-traveled public path alongside a creek bed in the middle of campus, but she never arrived. Film footage showed her on the path, where a male transient eventually followed her, later showing up on other footage holding her duffel bag, though she was nowhere to be seen. He had sexually assaulted and murdered her, even though she was within fifty feet of three blue light emergency call boxes. She was, however, on her phone. The steady sound of blaring sirens in the background appropriately suits the discussion of the new cell phone safety app that Soriano explains during a video interview. “Campus Watch” has garnered plenty of attention in the college town of Austin, Texas, and his appearance on several news programs is certainly going to move this beyond those boundaries. Soriano saw a need for a more instant connection to police dispatch than a phone call from these blue light boxes provides. With the press of the Campus Watch help button that appears even when the phone is locked, emergency dispatchers at campus or municipal police departments immediately know the name and location of the victim. Currently, once the blue light box is reached, the victim must relay this information in the phone call, which takes extra time and can further aggravate the perpetrator of the crime. Unlike other companies that provide similar apps, Soriano thinks this one provides a service that stands out from the others. He explains that “students can take part in their own safety, and we’re trying to empower them in this movement to take responsibility for it without leaving it to someone else. And we do that in a very specific way.” When this very non-technical PAGE 24
interviewer asked exactly how it works, Soriano likened it to Waze, which populates the lock screen with specific information through geo-location; it allows users to avoid traffic by a submission of tips through its user base. The Campus Watch app, aside from instantly reaching dispatchers, can also be preventative instead of just reactive: through a series of colored dots, an interactive map might show – from student tips and other reports – where crimes have been committed previously and the unsafe routes to avoid and get home safely. “As the map becomes more robust and the students become more active in using it, the technology gets better and better. You’ll be able to see a real-time interactive map of what’s going on on campus,” Soriano says enthusiastically, “It allows peers to take care of peers.” As the project develops, Soriano also sees other uses for the app aside from ensuring safety on campuses (which can give parents peace of mind as their children go off to college); hotels would provide guests with a customized app translated to the local language or home security, where even a child can easily access the icon to more quickly contact dispatchers. Upon graduation from the Abbey after following his brothers Inigo ’05 and Luis ’07, Soriano attended UT as a Government Major with the intention of attending law school. He hated it. Upon graduation, he connected with Peter Wallace ’09, who had been working in the tech field. This led to Campus Watch, and Soriano couldn’t be happier – or busier. His apartment was half boxes and desks – it served as everyone’s office until moving to a
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