Taking Action on Your Ideas

Ben Deuling, owner of a local mushroom farm called SporeAttic, and Zariah Tolman, founder of a nonprofit called Positivity Outward, will present "Taking Action on Your Ideas" at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 20, in Jabs Hall, Room 111, on the Montana State University campus. The talk is free and open to the public. It is hosted by the Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship with support from the MSU LaunchPad through the college’s Orser Executive Speakers Forum.

Deuling and Tolman both successfully started, maintained and accelerated entrepreneurial ideas, with assistance from the MSU Blackstone LaunchPad, while either being students of MSU or recent graduates. Their stories of success and failure, time management tactics, resource leverage and braving the unknown may help others recognize their potential and give them the courage to take steps toward innovation, event organizers said.

SporeAttic is a commercial gourmet mushroom farm based in Bozeman. Deuling started the venture two years after beginning a doctoral program in molecular bioscience at MSU. He said he discovered that academia was not the career path that he wanted but found a passion for cultivating gourmet mushrooms, which utilized his training in microbiology. Deuling earned a master’s degree in microbiology from MSU in spring 2020, then launched SporeAttic that fall. Deuling and his team now produce and sell more than 400 pounds of gourmet mushrooms each week around the Gallatin Valley.

Positivity Outward aims to help improve the mental health of rural youth. The nonprofit uses an app to connect rural youth to service opportunities that encourage personal development and community improvement while they raise funds for service projects and organizations. The app allows students to select activities, such as mentorship, through which they can develop self-reflection practices and self-awareness. The organization just began a research-based pilot program with 35 mentors who will support up to 100 students from rural middle and high schools in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Tolman graduated from MSU in spring 2020 with degrees in neuroscience and biochemistry, along with minors in biomedical engineering and global health. In 2019, she won a Truman Scholarship. In 2020, she was one of three winners nationally of a $15,000 Samuel Huntington Fellowship for Public Service award to help launch Positivity Outward. This spring, she will earn a master’s degree in innovation and management from MSU’s Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship. In addition to her work with youth and Positivity Outward, Tolman will begin a doctoral program in developmental psychology at the University of California Riverside this fall.

The Orser Executive Speakers Forum is a continuing component of a program started in 1988 by David B. Orser, a 1966 MSU graduate and retired business executive, to bring leaders to the college to inspire students to pursue careers as innovative, responsible and ethical business leaders. More information is available at montana.edu/business/orser/index.html.

The MSU Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship offers four undergraduate options of study — accounting, finance, management and marketing — as well as five minors — accounting, business administration, entrepreneurship and small business management, finance, and international business. It also offers a master of professional accountancy degree, a master of science in innovation and management, a business certificate and entrepreneurship certificate. More information is available at montana.edu/business.