“As judges, we went through this, we checked all the boxes, we looked at the criteria, we did all the head stuff. But then I think at some level, we as human beings know on a gut level, we know something great when we see it…and it came down to what was the gut homerun. So without further ado, I would like to say from the bottom of my heart, I am so happy and honored to welcome and congratulate MUSANA.” – Eric Harr, CEO Stand Technologies and Hult Prize Regional Competition Judge, March 12, 2016.

The room erupted with cheers and screams. The home team (HULT San Francisco) had won and we were ecstatic! A more surreal moment I have yet to experience.

Published in ​http://www.hult.edu/news/the-rise-of-musana-hult-prize-regional-finalists/

I am a Filipino… and I love basketball. If one reads the book Rafe Bartholomew’s “Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' UnlikelyLove Affair with Basketball”, (see my BLOG post) you could maybe begin to understand why a country located halfway across the world, whose population’s average height is around 5’6 – 5’8, could be so obsessed with a sport where height is seen as a premium. But I digress.

I am a Los Angeles Lakers fan (I could already hear the people snickering at that statement... but I don’t care, hehe). Due to the time difference between the US and the Philippines, NBA games would be playing in the morning, while most of us were at the office. I remembered how nerve wrecking the play-offs and eventually the finals were for me in 2010 despite the fact that I was only able to follow the game via the scores on NBA.com. I remembered watching that crazy roller-coaster Game 7 vs the Celtics via a cell phone on a Friday morning, so engrossed that I was unable to eat because my hands were shaking and my stomach was in knots.