Celebration Ezra event honors entrepreneurs from across fields

From software and AI to healthcare tech to food, cannabis and perfume and more, all of the diverse products and pathways that entrepreneurs create were celebrated April 9-10 during the yearly Celebration Ezra event on campus.

The event also honored Daniel Cane '98 as the 2026 Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year, featured pitches by the 15 student startups that are part of this year's eLab cohort, included panel discussions and conversations and honored the winners of the BenDaniel Venture Challenge and the 2026 Student Business of the year.

"More than 200 alumni came to campus for this year's celebration and the interactions between them and current students are always phenomenal," said Zach Shulman '87 J.D. 90, director of Entrepreneurship at Cornell. "The number of students across campus who are involved in the ecosystem is growing and electric."

Haera Millais Shin '26, a student in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, was honored with the student business of the year award for her company, Maison Millais, a fragrance house with a successful debut collection and a new suite of perfumes launching this year.

"I started formulating fragrances in high school," said Shin, who said she saw a gap in the fragrance industry and found through interviews that people were open to buying fragrances online, as well as in stores or "fragrance bars" within institutions such as museums.

Other student entrepreneurs presented their businesses during the Demo Day event for eLab, Cornell's leading student business accelerator on campus.

Carmyn Polk MBA '26 developed the idea for her Partum Care Now online platform based on her own experience as a new mother. "My unexpected C-section left me completely unprepared for what was to come," she said. "And my experience isn't unique. There's a gap in care for women after they're discharged with their new babies."

Gurkaran Ahuja MPS '26 designed his company, Heera, to provide traditional Indian footwear, called Juttis, with cushioned insoles and arch support. "When you go to Indian weddings, everyone is wearing this beautiful traditional clothing, but they take off their Juttis because they're too uncomfortable," Ahuja said.

Cane joined Tim Barry '93, chair and CEO of VillageMD and 2024 Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year, for a chat as they celebrated Cane's honor this year. Many of Cane's classmates - some who joined him as business partners - also came to Cornell for the event.

"Those suitemates who I met at orientation have become lifelong friends," Cane said. "I wish the same for all of the students here now."

Cane's first business, CourseInfo, which he co-founded while an undergrad, provided a platform for professors to post course notes, practice tests, discussion notes and syllabi. It later merged with Blackboard.

Cane talked about successes and failures, including a few companies he started between Blackboard and his current venture.

"There's nothing wrong with failure," he said. "It's a much better teacher than success."

Cane is now co-CEO of Modernizing Medicine, a medical technology company that offers software for dealing with electronic health records, practice management and patient engagement.

"AI will usher in a whole new era of companies we've never heard from," he said. And for his company, which already has a robust data set, "we get to disrupt ourselves."

One other panel at the conference featured a conversation between Nancy Whiteman '81, founder and former CEO of Wana Brands and CEO of the Whiteman Family Foundation, and Rachel Dunifon, the Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Dean of the College of Human Ecology, from which Whiteman graduated.

After Cornell, Whiteman went to business school and worked in a corporate position before moving to Colorado and launching a cannabis product, as the state became the first to legalize medical cannabis.

"There were no requirements in the beginning; it was the wild west," she said. "Then the state started passing regulations."

Her company began to experiment with gummies, way before the time when they became the de facto delivery method for cannabis. "We were ahead of the curve in terms of formulations," she said, adding that her products quickly spread to 21 states and Canada, becoming the major brand in the space in the early days.

Taking action was key, she said. "I see a lot with people who want to be entrepreneurs, but who have a hard time moving from the planning stage to bringing their product into the real world," she said. "You probably won't hit it out of the park your first time out there, but it's important to get actual marketplace reaction to what you're trying to do."

She sold the company in 2021 and has been focusing on her foundation, which supports organizations across a range of interests. "It's been an opportunity for me to give back to the world in a way that's also truly engaging to me," she said.