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For his years of work as a volunteer mentor to Pitt faculty and students involved in startups, Sullivan was named the 2025 James \u201cChip\u201d Hanlon Volunteer Mentor of the Year by the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n\n\tBy MARTY LEVINE<\/p>\n
\n\tThe ideal candidates for receiving mentoring, says Brian Sullivan, are \u201cpeople who come at it with curiosity and humility.\u201d Those who make their dream of a startup company happen are already \u201cusually fantastically successful in some ways. \u2026 They see an opportunity. They come at it from an \u2018I know this stuff\u2019 perspective but they may not know how much else there is out there to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFor his years of work as a volunteer mentor to Pitt faculty and students involved in startups, Sullivan was named the 2025 James \u201cChip\u201d Hanlon Volunteer Mentor of the Year by the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n
\n\tEarly in his career, Sullivan began working for large corporations \u2014 defense contractors \u2014 and says he frankly \u201cgot bored.\u201d His first idea for a startup company originated then and there. Although it eventually \u201cpetered out,\u201d he said, \u201cI decided to get out of defense and became COO of a medical device company.\u201d That led eventually to his current concentration on advising medical device startups in particular, which includes the development of rehabilitative and assistive technologies.<\/p>\n
\n\tToday he is also an adjunct professor in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences\u2019 Department of Rehabilitation Science and Technology, teaching commercial translation of laboratory breakthroughs.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI like working with people who are trying to do things that are totally new,\u201d Sullivan says \u2014particularly \u201cblue-sky projects\u201d that are not driven primarily by money. He believes in the philosophy attributed to Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi, often paraphrased as: \u201cBe the change you want to see in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cChanging the world \u2014 that usually is the thing that gets me up in the morning,\u201d he says. Sometimes the most fun thing to do, he adds, \u201cis to make the world a better place. I really gravitate to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIn big companies, each employee usually has a specialized role \u2014 but there could be a department of, say, five people all doing one job, he points out. In a startup, on the other hand, there is often one person doing five jobs. \u201cI\u2019ve always been more of a decathlete than a single-event competitor,\u201d Sullivan says. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m able to bring all of my skills to bear\u201d as a mentor.<\/p>\n
\n\tHow own current startup is kairon.app, which he describes as \u201can online social media platform to give people a unifying and affirming alternative to the existing landscape of rage-baiting and fear-mongering content.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHe compares its most innovative function to mapping software that helps us drive from one spot to another, warning us of speed traps and construction slowdowns along the way \u2014 which is often crowdsourced by the app. For kairon, \u201cimagine a notice, \u2018There\u2019s a mean post coming up\u2019 or \u2018There\u2019s a mean person coming up,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\n\tAnd instead of just hashtags there will be caretags, \u201can emotional extension of hashtags, which bring people together into an \u201cempathy chamber\u201d rather than an echo chamber, where people of every attitude can share the life circumstances that have created their points of view. The idea, he says, is to \u201cencourage the most constructive response to (participants\u2019) social and emotional situations.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tBut Sullivan will certainly continue mentoring others.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI\u2019m just trying to be the best mentor for the people I mentor,\u201d he says of the award. \u201cWhat would I do in their shoes? I\u2019m in it for the feeling of helping people and seeing their appreciation when they get past\u201d the roadblocks, and when they \u201cmaster things they didn\u2019t know they didn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tMarty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times.\u00a0Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu<\/a> or\u00a0412-758-4859.<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tHave a story idea or news to share?\u00a0Share<\/a>\u00a0it with the University Times.<\/p>\n