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Pursuing Entrepreneurial Dreams

Justin Moreno (LA '23)
July 23, 2021
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Hello! My name is Justin Moreno and I am a rising junior at Washington University in St. Louis studying finance, Spanish, and business of entertainment. On campus, I am a part of Student Life (the campus newspaper), Association of Christian Truth Seekers (ACTS), the Washington University Student Investment Fund (WUSIF), and was a Washington University Student Associate (WUSA) last year. All of my experiences, both in and out of the classroom, prepared me for this program and for my internship. 

As a kid, my heart had always been attracted to creativity and imagination. Perhaps that’s why I wanted to be an architect: so I could build something. As I became older, my career interests shifted to business, where building something involves harnessing an idea and making it into an idea or a service. This theme drew me to entrepreneurship and motivated me to want to be a part of the Skandalaris Entrepreneurial Fellowship. 

Politics has been another one of my passions. I entered Wash. U. aspiring to major in political science but felt like it wasn’t everything that I was looking for and later discovered my love for business. However, I always kept the possibility of politics in the back of my mind. When searching for a venture to work for, I didn’t know what I wanted. There are so many companies out there, but one didn’t capture my interest until I noticed FastDemocracy. 

FastDemocracy is an online platform that provides legislative bill tracking and other political insights to empower individuals, organizations, and businesses to be aware of our government’s legislation and to advocate for policy change. One of my responsibilities as a member of the team is to perform research on politics in certain states or at the national level and then write blogs about notable bills that have passed. 

For me, I love learning about all of the different laws being passed at the state level since I feel like I have not paid much attention to it compared to national initiatives. I feel as though sometimes it’s easy for the average person to forget that states have so much influence over our lives and instead focus solely on national politics. Some legislation states have passed in the past year have included voting restriction bills, infrastructure bills, marijuana legalization bills, or vaccine passport bills. 

One of the projects that I am currently working on is called a case study, which is where I will interview a current client of FastDemocracy and write an article about their experience using the service. It will provide great experience in terms of interviewing someone, understanding how to gauge customer satisfaction, and improve my writing skills. 

In the end, I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to work at FastDemocracy and I have loved working with Grant and being able to work from T-REX, which is an entrepreneurial co-working space.