Colleen Kazanjian truly lives out the term student-athlete to its fullest extent. A starting goalie for the women’s lacrosse team, a creator of a successful product, a founder of a business and a member of faculty committees and advisory boards for Bucknell, she has truly shown her strength, skill, talent and incredible time management skills while excelling in all aspects at Bucknell and she credits it to her family, her support systems and being a goalie.
“I think a lot of people think goalies are crazy. Who wants to play the position where the whole game is on the line and just get hit all the time right? But it's the best thing I've ever done, any success I've had in and out of lacrosse, I owe to being a goalie. It's totally shaped who I am as a person,” Colleen says.
Being a goalie can be an isolating experience. You are the last line of defense and a game can hang on your shoulders alone, but being a goalie also teaches you a lot of life lessons that can help you excel in many aspects of life and Kaz has taken many of those lessons and used them to help balance her crazy schedule.
“It's taught me how to get knocked down and get back up again and even if you fail half the time, a great game is if you make half the saves. It’s also helped with being able to handle high pressure situations and kind of slow them down in my head and get through them and with being able to stretch myself out pretty thin as well.”
Colleen came to Bucknell because it combined highly ranked academics with a Division I athletics experience that wasn’t too far from home and knew the second she came here, she would take full advantage of every opportunity.
“Academics is huge for my family and for myself. My parents always said to choose a school that even if you didn't play lacrosse anymore, you would want to be there and you'd be getting a good degree from.”
Colleen's mother Glynis, who has always been her number one fan and photographer, went to college a couple years later than people normally would and her father Victor, who has coached Colleen in lacrosse her entire life, had to work a full-time job to put himself through college. They both encouraged Kaz to take the awesome opportunity of being at Bucknell and make the most of it. Their motto; you get what you put into it.
Kaz has always lived by this motto since she was a young child and had a busy schedule playing sports while doing school at the same time. While she played many different sports growing up Colleen was the youngest of three kids and both of her older siblings played lacrosse, so she knew what sport was going to become her life.
“My older brother, Brendan started playing maybe a year or two before me and then my sister, Olivia started playing and she was a goalie. My sister went off to play club and the coach, who's my dad, asked me if I would also play. I started as a field player and by fifth grade my team needed a goalie. It looked like my sister was having a lot of fun and I would be able to share something special with her. I also was like ‘I guess if I'm gonna be out here all day, I don't have to run as much’ so I started playing rec and the next year I joined the club team and I guess I just never quit.”
After committing to Bucknell and the women’s lacrosse team, Kaz’s playing journey has not been ordinary. She played most her first season with the Bison and then tore her right labrum and was forced to miss the last games of the season. After having surgery and recovering the fall of her sophomore season, Colleen was cleared to play again, but a few weeks later she was struck with pneumonia and medically redshirted her sophomore season.
“I came back junior year and had to train my butt off that summer and was just fully committed to staying healthy. I was actually getting a chance to compete with my team and I started all last year which was awesome and I’m back at it this year. Playing here, it's been very interesting. I'm very grateful that I've had the opportunity to play every year I could.”
Colleen has been the Bison’s No. 1 goalie the past two seasons and has put her heart, mind and body on the field to fight for her team each game and wouldn’t change a thing.
“Goalies and defenders are the best teammates you can have 'cause you're literally out there for the people. You play for your team every single day. It’s absolutely isolating but that's why your unit, like the goalies I play with, are there for each other, because if you're not cheering for each other, no one's cheering for you. Everyone is cheering for a goal to get scored. They've been just amazing, such a support system.”
Along with a support system to help continue her love for her sport, Colleen has also found ways outside of her athletics to help express herself and keep her level.
“You need an outlet outside of sports sometimes to appreciate it more because it's a lot more of a job than it is an extracurricular like it is in high school. You have to have another outlet to express different parts of yourself when you are injured and you need to feel like you’re still valuable. Having that has made my experience at the school so much better and well-rounded. I've met so many people outside of the athletics department as well, which has made me appreciate the sport even more just because it's a thing I get to do instead of have to do.”
For many an outlet might be a hobby like drawing or singing, for Colleen, her outlet is entrepreneurship. Creating businesses and products that she herself is looking for in the world and giving back to the entrepreneurial community at Bucknell.
“I started my experience with entrepreneurship in high school. I went to the Bullis School in Potomac, Md. and crazy enough, we had an entrepreneurship program at the high school and there was a capstone class my senior year and a whole bunch of courses I got to take and basically play around in that world.”
At Bucknell, Colleen entered the Freeman College of Management, but entrepreneurship wasn’t a huge focus when she first arrived. The Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Bucknell just opened in the summer of 2024 and prior to that the school began offering different courses in the subject.
“My junior fall, I took entrepreneurship when it was finally offered and then I took advanced in the spring and in the entrepreneurship course you have to come up with a product and do a whole pitch. In the advanced course it’s a requirement to apply to BizPitch.
BizPitch is Bucknell’s annual student startup competition where participants present early-stage business concepts or startup companies to a panel of judges with the chance to win seed money and access to Bucknell’s entrepreneurship resources. Colleen entered a product that she had created for herself in high school called Face Guard.
“I've been a goalie for a billion years and something that comes with that is that helmets are disgusting because you don't get to wash them like you do gloves, shin guards, chest protector, whatever it is. If you're super fortunate, you could get a new helmet every couple years, but if you're a normal average person, like me, my helmet is my brother's hand me down, that was my sister's hand me down, that was mine so several people have been wearing that and that's the case for I think most people.”
Colleen was getting acne, rashes and irritation all over her face from wearing the helmet, so she decided to come up with a product to help combat those issues and that is when FaceGuard, a hypoallergenic disposable helmet insert to prevent acne, rash and skin irritation came to be. After submitting the product to BizPitch and presenting it, Kazanjian went through all of the rounds and ended up winning the competition, all while she was in season for lacrosse and the best part for her, her family and teammates were there to support her.
“My whole team showed up, which was so awesome and I felt really loved. Everyone came out to support. It was super cool being able to connect my academic passions and my athletics and come up with a cool product for everyone. It is so big just to show up for people and knowing that you matter to them, outside of your talent and your participation in that sport.”
While her teammates came to the final event and were there supporting Kaz, she remembers how much having her team in the room changed the feeling of the official broadcasted business event.
“When I ended up winning, they cheered like it was the end of the game. They were up screaming, clapping, chanting and everyone in the audience was like, ‘oh my God, that's so funny’. It made the experience just a million times better and they still talk about it all the time like this big shiny moment for me. I think it made them more excited than I was.”
Colleen didn’t stop her entrepreneurial spirit with the BizPitch win however, she found another world where she needed a product that didn’t exist and began her own company called OttoPilot.
“My junior year, I wanted to work at a tech startup for the summer for my internship and I really wanted to be out in New York City. Problem is, tech startups don't hire interns. They don't have the money, they don't care, they don't have the time. I asked all my professors here who they know or who I could talk to, but we didn’t have a pipeline built out, so with the help of my brother who's in the tech space, I put together an AI bot for my LinkedIn that automatically reaches out and messages people that I'm interested in getting in touch with.”
Kaz used the AI social networking service that she created to get in touch with Bucknell alumni that live in New York City and work for tech companies and ended up talking to a couple hundred people before she connected with somebody who introduced her to their boss at Monte Carlo Data and they ended up creating a position for her to work there over the summer.
Colleen was also a part of the hiring committee for the entrepreneurship center during the spring of her junior year and talked to the newly hired director of the Perricelli-Gegnas Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Erin Jablonski. Jablonski, who has been a huge mentor to Colleen, gave her the task to get alumni engaged with the center.
“I told her I already got this whole system I had built out. So, I used that AI networking system for the center and then people I was talking to thought it was interesting. I had set it up for some of my friends. It worked well for them and then the Career Center here asked me to actually build it for them. That’s when I knew that this should be a company. I make calls, figure out who people want to get in touch with, set up the system for them and I run their account. It's on them to actually get on the phone with people, but I've had some friends get jobs from it.”
The professors at Bucknell have been extremely supportive and confident in Colleen throughout her academic, professional and athletic journey through her four years which has been a cherry on top for the senior.
“The support I've had from my professors here has been incredible inside and outside of the classroom, all the opportunities they've thrown my way. Everyone's always asking me how my games are and are never doubting that I can't handle what they're throwing at me. That's just been so huge in regards to me being able to be a part of the entrepreneurship center and be on faculty committees and do all these internships on top of being a Division I athlete.”
After Colleen graduates from Bucknell, she will be going to New York City to work for a tech startup in the AI space, but she holds a spot on the Entrepreneurship Center’s Advisory Board and will be a sitting member for the next three years which will tie her back in to Bison Nation after she leaves.
Being a goalie has led Colleen to a lot of success both on and off the field by teaching her valuable lessons and giving her unique outlooks on life and she says;
“I would go back and do it all again. All the bruises were worth it. All the hits were worth it.”
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