Eye on the Future

A local start-up company wins local pitch competition to improve women’s lives.

January 1st, 2016 by: Misty Miloto

Landing Zone, a new 20,000 square-foot business incubator in the Lower Garden District that focuses on empowering entrepreneurship though strategic program alliances and partnerships, recently hosted the final pitch event for the 2016 SBA InnovateHER Business Challenge. The Small Business Administration, in partnership with Microsoft, has created this nationwide prize competition in an effort to find the most innovative products and services that help impact and empower women’s lives. 

A local start-up (called BioAesthetics) founded by entrepreneur Nicholas Pashos, which looks to transform the way women recover from breast cancer and mastectomies, won the New Orleans round of the competition. The company's revolutionary product — an off-the-shelf-ready graft — will allow surgeons to regenerate a woman’s own nipple-areola complex lost through breast cancer.
BioAesthetics, along with other finalists from across the country, will compete in the InnovateHER Finals to be held on March 16 and 17 in Washington, D.C., as part of a larger Women’s Summit. They will compete for three cash prizes, totaling $70,000, provided by Microsoft. sba.gov, lznola.org