Subject Areas: Tech (sustainability) + Gen Z

Entrepreneur Patricia Garcia is the founder of Unithrifts, which she started in her college dorm room at Florida International University and continued at the University of Southern California. She has won over 25 student pitch competitions, thousands in investment funding, and numerous national and international awards for entrepreneurship.

C4C Correspondent and Google Account Executive, Chelsea Ziadie, interviewed her to learn her secrets to pitching success, why she turned down financial giant Blackstone to follow her entrepreneurial dream of scaling Unithrifts (the sustainability platform enabling a circular economy on college campuses), and how her family and humble beginnings inform her approach to her life and career. A native of Miami's Little Havana, Ms. Garcia earned her B.S. in Mechanical/Interdisciplinary Engineering from Florida International University (a leading Hispanic Serving Institution or HSI). The GEM Fellow went on to graduate from the University of Southern California (USC) with a Master's in Product Development Engineering and Product Development Systems. USC's School of Engineering selected Ms. Garcia as its 2022 commencement speaker. Since our 2022 interview, the former MIT researcher has won the Fulbright Entrepreneurship Award, which is awarded to only one student annually, and covers tuition and fees for the MSc in Entrepreneurship at the UCL School of Management. The Fulbright is one of the most prestigious awards in the world.