Who supports the competition

Sponsors and people

A short index of the named sponsors, program staff and judging-side partners disclosed across Merage and UCI Beall coverage.

Named sponsors

Pulled from Merage NVC pages and Beall Center coverage. The list is non-exhaustive. Year-by-year sponsorship attribution is not always preserved in indexed sources.

The Beall Family

Experian

John Chuang

Emanuel Shaoulian, MD

David Ochi

Stella Zhang

Elvin Kay

Ken & Carla Neeld

Withum

Finance Agents

Ingram Micro

Larry Wilk

Sponsors fund the program collectively. Per-track corporate sponsorship does not exist in this competition's structure; tracks are funded from the pool and named only by category.

Naming donor

Stella Zhang (FEMBA '05) and her spouse John Shen announced the naming gift in January 2022. Zhang made an additional $750,000 five-year commitment in March 2025 that raised the prize pool past $150,000. See the about page for full sourcing.

Program staff (currently named in primary sources)

Jenn Huynh · Program Manager
Sara Heimann · Innovation & Entrepreneurship Librarian · sheimann@uci.edu

Track partnerships

Social Enterprise. Partner: UCI Blum Center. Named judge: Richard Matthew (Blum Center Faculty Director).