Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
I’m not sure I can ever express the gratitude I have for this University, but I’m going to try, by being the person for others that so many at Creighton were for me.
By Micah Mertes
In his sophomore year at Creighton, Valery-Elvis Shafack, BSBA’25, and his classmates received a challenging assignment: Start your own companies from scratch. You have eight weeks.
“It seemed crazy at first,” Shafack said. “Some of us were like, What have we gotten ourselves into with this class? But everything about the project and the class turned out to be so fun and engaging and dynamic. In my case, it changed my life.”
The class, an entrepreneurship course, was taught by then-adjunct professor Nathan Preheim, who is now the director of the Center of Enterprise Value in the Heider College of Business. Preheim said the class and many other efforts in the business school are designed to help students think more entrepreneurially, to see how they might address their communities’ needs while also creating innovative, sustainable businesses.
Shafack, an Omaha native, has always been entrepreneurially inclined. At 10, he started his own juice stand; at 13, his own sneaker restoration business; in high school, his own production company.
At Creighton, he founded NIYOU.
The idea grew out of Shafack’s work as a marketing intern in Athletics, where he had gotten to know many of the University’s 300 student-athletes. He saw that most of them didn’t have the time to think about navigating Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) partnerships and securing sponsors, in addition to balancing their academics with practice, travel and competition. NIYOU could help them fill that gap and not miss out on opportunities.
For their first partnership, NIYOU connected players on the Creighton men’s and women’s basketball teams with a Raising Cane’s sponsorship.
In the years since, NIYOU’s clients have expanded to other Creighton Athletics programs and student-athletes at other schools (University of Nebraska-Lincoln and University of Nebraska at Omaha), forming partnerships with Nissan of Omaha, Omaha Steaks, Cobalt Credit Union, Invisalign and more. Recent NIYOU-secured sponsorships include:
- Creighton basketball players Morgan Maly, BS’25, and Steven Ashworth, BS’25, hosting a pop-up lemonade stand and a subsequent podcast with Dayspring Bank.
- Creighton volleyball player Sydney Breissinger developing and sponsoring the protein-packed Bluejay Whey smoothie for her native Cincinnati’s Nekter Juice Bar.
- Creighton softball player Sydra Seville, BSBA’25, embarking on the ultimate Capitol District experience.
As NIYOU’s CEO, Shafack plans to remain in Omaha and expand his client base of student-athletes and brands as far as possible. The company’s staff recently grew from four to eight, with NIYOU’s team boasting a few other fellow Bluejays.
Sam Perkinson, BSBA’25, NIYOU co-founder and chief brand officer, said that just about every aspect of his Creighton experience prepared him to join NIYOU. For starters, he co-founded and served as the president of the Creighton Entrepreneurship Club, which he called “a home for dreamers and doers.” (“It’s the thing I’m most proud of during my time at Creighton.”)
His freshman year, Perkinson lived on the seventh floor of Swanson Hall (where the men’s basketball team also lived). On other floors of Swanson, he got to know student-athletes from most of the programs. His roommate was a tennis player, his best friend a member of the men’s golf team.
“I saw through firsthand experience that a lot of student-athletes just aren’t getting the opportunities to see the fruits of the NIL changes,” Perkinson said. “So one of the early mantras of founding NIYOU was ‘to serve the underserved.’ We want to help find opportunities for the student-athletes who aren’t making millions.”
Kylie Karsky, BA’23, NIYOU chief operations officer, said the values she, Shafack and Perkinson formed at Creighton are woven into their company’s DNA.
“I came to Creighton and continue to stay with Creighton because of the community,” said Karsky, who is now a Creighton law student, also earning her MBA and working as a legal analyst at Smith Pauley LLP.
Karsky said Creighton’s community fostered her growth from every angle.
She found support as a first-generation student from the Success Center’s TRIO program. She conducted research alongside professors in the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Law. She volunteered for perspective-shifting service opportunities through the Schlegel Center for Justice and Service, and she found life-changing spiritual guidance through a Jesuit-led theology class.
Founding and running a company as a college student is impressive anywhere, Karsky said. But a startup launched at Creighton comes with a few extra ingredients. The unique perspectives formed through a Jesuit education inform every stage of the new company’s development. Put another way, it’s not business as usual.
“Our aim with NIYOU is to take on more brands, schools and more student-athletes,” Karsky said. “But just as important, we hope to also be giving back to more communities in the process.”
Despite NIYOU’s rapid growth, the company’s CEO said they’re just getting started.
“There’s so much opportunity in this area, which is really still emerging,” Shafack said. “We get to be at the forefront of this and, over the next five to 10 years, see where it can go.”
Shafack said that one of NIYOU’s greatest assets continues to be the place where it all began: Creighton University.
“The Creighton network of faculty and alumni is insanely strong,” he said. “Both as a student and an entrepreneur, I’ve felt so supported by this network, which is full of people who are willing to pour everything into the next generation so they can grow and succeed, too.”
To illustrate just how supportive the Heider College of Business is, Shafack noted that two of his biggest champions are members of the college’s namesake family: Scott and Cindy Heider. In 2013, Scott Heider’s parents — Charles “Charlie” F. Heider, BS’49, HON’10, and Mary C. Heider, HON’10 — made the largest gift in Creighton’s history, launching an era of enrollment-doubling growth and academic innovation in the business college.
“I'm extremely grateful to have the Heiders in my corner,” Shafack said. “It has been a blessing to be able to learn from them and be mentored by them.”
The most exciting thing about becoming a new alum, he said, is joining the Creighton network and becoming another source of support for the community.
“I’m not sure I can ever express the gratitude I have for this University, but I’m going to try, by being the person for others that so many at Creighton were for me.”
