(Delaware and Chester Counties, PA • November 4, 2016)—Student Colleen McCloskey recently won another prestigious competition for her company, Elite Pureed Meals LLC, which provides people with swallowing difficulties with pureed meals that look, smell and taste like the real thing.

An evening student at the College for nearly a decade, McCloskey won first place at the Keiretsu Forum Mid-Atlantic Angel Capital Expo last month at Drexel University. The win entitles her to $25,000 in professional services from Keiretsu investors and comes on the heels of her winning $4,000, first place and grand prize at West Chester University’s Annual Business Idea Competition—a victory which ensured her the invite to the prestigious Keiretsu Forum.

McCloskey’s success is to be all the more admired and congratulated because she has dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, disabilities which require her to spend much more time on her studies. Her disabilities are one of the reasons she has taken only one business class a semester for the last 10 years at the College. 

McCloskey keeps a hectic schedule. She is a caregiver at two separate residential homes, cleans commercial office buildings and has raised her 19-year-old daughter as a single parent. “Every day, I am studying three hours,” McCloskey said, adding that her study regimen involves reading an assignment, producing a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation and making a study outline.

Her study habits paid off when she presented her business in a five-minute, fast pitch to nearly 100 investors and judges at the Keiretsu Forum, a worldwide investment community of private equity angel investors, venture capitalists and corporate/institutional investors. One of four contestants in her category, McCloskey competed against students, many of whom have masters degrees. 

“I didn’t think I was going to win because I was up against people with masters degrees,” she said. “I was nervous the first 30 seconds, and then after that the nervousness passed because I really know my product.”