Charleston Daily Mail
April 3, 2003
Entrepreneurs Turned to UC Students for Help, Class Helped with Web Site, Business Plan
By Therese Smith Cox
Sisters Julie Mobayed and Natalie Tappe formed their own business in late 2001, armed with lots of nursing experience but no background in managing a company. It took an unlikely group of college students to rescue the sisters and send them on to business stability, if not success. "Tim has been a lifeline, a mentor," Tappe said, about Tim McClung and his Entrepreneurship Center at The University of Charleston. "
I wouldn't have dreamed we could do what's been done," added Mobayed.
McClung recruited several students in a UC business marketing class, offering them on-the-job experience and a small stipend for about 30 hours of work. He explained that the sisters and their new company, Hyperion Clinical Research LLC, could use some help in designing a brochure, creating a Web site, setting up an accounting system and developing a business plan. Students Kristin Casso and Kirsten Ramsey worked with Hyperion in writing and illustrating a brochure. Tappe said she has taken bundles of them to health fairs and has received many calls as a result.
"From the brochure, I got into more digital stuff, so I'm taking a digital imaging class," Ramsey said. Trond Haugen set up Hyperion's accounting system and Ashish Malani devised a Web site, www.hyperionclinicalresearch.com. "After four years in the classroom, I learned something to use in the real world," Haugen said.
The sisters, both of whom have earned master's degrees in either nursing or public health, returned to their native Charleston from northern Virginia about six years ago to help start a coordinated approach to clinical research trials at Charleston Area Medical Center. They left a couple of years later to branch out. They joined a new local company owned by two brothers who lived out of state. When the brothers decided to concentrate instead on other pursuits, Mobayed and Tappe - already involved in several pharmaceutical clinical trials - decided to persevere on their own.
The region's only network for clinical trials, Hyperion links needy patients with access to drug development. Mobayed and Tappe currently are working with 15 physicians throughout the state and about 100 patients. "Many of our volunteers are from rural areas, and we are able to provide medical care and medicines they might not otherwise receive," Mobayed said. "With the close medical monitoring, we have also been able to uncover and address serious health problems that have gone undetected."
UC's Entrepreneurship Center works with Adena Capital, a venture capital company located in Athens, Ohio. The relationship is part of a federally funded program aimed at promoting venture capital investment in needy areas in 15 states. The efforts are part of UC's foray into expanding its focus on business and helping companies to expand from within. "I'm very passionate about what they're trying to do in West Virginia," McClung said about Mobayed and Tappe. "But they were reluctant business owners."
