Fellow:Molly Grace


Name Molly Grace School (Cohort) Oregon Institute of Technology (2022 cohort) Majoring in Business Marketing Country United States Email molly.grace@oit.edu

Bio

Molly Grace is a student athlete on the Womens Volleyball team at OIT majoring in business Marketing. During her freshman season she helped lead her team to their first national tournament appearance in school history. She also helped create a marketing strategy for the team to host a record-breaking number of 1,151 fans in the stands at a home match. She now holds the single match kill record in the program scoring 29 kills in a regular season match against Bushnell University. Additionally, Molly is committed to helping other students succeed academically. She serves as a Business Presentations Student Instructor and a Business Management Student Ambassador. Outside of being a full-time student athlete she works as a marketing intern at a local company, SmithBates Marcomm Solutions, and has assisted on many integrated marketing campaigns within the community, most notably the Healthy Klamath Escape from Vape campaign. Molly is the co-founder of FairPlay Challenge, an innovation education company that designs educational escape room kits. Molly also sits on the Ready. Set. Innovate! planning committee helping students in Klamath County get to experience a day filled with innovation education. Molly is now entering her senior year at OIT and will be a UI guide for the 2024 UIF cohort!

Achievements

Molly and her business partner Grant Kightlinger won first place and the people’s choice award at the 2024 Catalyze Klamath Competition with their business idea the FairPlay Challenge. The two developed a line of education escape room kits for middle school students in Oregon that teach both traditional subjects and social and emotional skills. They also received a bid to move onto the state level entrepreneurship competition, Invent Oregon. They moved on in the competition becoming finalists presenting their project at OSU. Although the project fell short of a winning prize, it turned heads in the innovation education space. The Lemelson Foundation took notice and interviewed Molly about FairPlay Challenge. You can read the full article here!