Here’s how Kloopify CEO Daniela Osio ended up on a Times Square billboard

Although 375 miles separate Pittsburgh and Manhattan, on Dec. 6, the Steel City’s tech community got face time in Times Square.

Were you to stroll through those busy streets last Wednesday afternoon, you would’ve seen Kloopify CEO and founder Daniela Osio’s smiling face featured on the Nasdaq billboard, along with the other graduates of the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center’s Milestone Makers program.

“Thank you Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center for making this impossible moment, possible,” she wrote on LinkedIn this week. “Seeing my face and all the fellow Milestone Makers’ faces on the Nasdaq tower in Times Square is something I will never forget.”

The program supports founders working on issues related to the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals, which are objectives designed to serve as a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.” Each Milestone Makers season’s session focuses on different themes. In the fall, they were sustainable cities and communities, and affordable and clean energy.

As a member of the fall 2023 cohort, Osio told Technical.ly that she was able to work with other companies committed to sustainability. (Kloopify makes a platform that gives industry purchasers the data they need to understand how shipping, distribution and other supply chain dynamics affect their companies’ emissions.)

The 12-week program “helped us really sharpen our swords and become better leaders, better entrepreneurs, and be able to better support our companies,” Osio said.

Program participants are also paired with coaches and mentors who have insight into their respective industries, and are tasked with achieving certain milestones during the program. The cohort members who achieved their milestones were rewarded by being featured on the Nasdaq billboard, Osio said.

“Some of the takeaways are to really [focus] on your own mental well-being as you continue to build your companies,” Osio said. “And by being a better leader and by caring for yourself, you’re ultimately caring and better caring for your company.”

Atiya Irvin-Mitchell is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Heinz Endowments.