FROM THE NEST | SUMMER 2024 | 21 CHRISTA NEU As a senior finance major at Lehigh, Michael Roth ’12 took the lessons he learned in the classroom to Community Action Lehigh Valley and its Rising Tide Community Loan Fund, which provides loans to small businesses on South Side Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and beyond. The internship experience, he says, proved eye-opening. “I learned that a loan is valuable [to small business startups],” he says. “I learned that support is transformational.” Aware of the counseling, marketing assistance and significant loans that the Rising Tide Community Loan Fund provides to small businesses, Lehigh has recommitted for five years—after an initial 10-year commitment—to the program. That means its initial $250,000 loan to Rising Tide will continue, in turn, to help fund loans to potential small business owners, as well as provide experiential learning opportunities for Lehigh students. ‘A Good Thing’ Since its inception in 2001, Rising Tide has provided loans to 261 businesses, including the Flying V Food Truck and the Flying V Poutinerie. After operating a pop-up tent to sell the Canadian dish poutine (French fries with cheese curds and gravy) at festivals, Flying V owner Christie Vymazal and her partner had wanted to expand operations. They initially sought a traditional bank loan, but, she says, “everyone laughed in our face because ‘zero experience’ and it’s a risky industry in general.” They turned to Rising Tide. Lehigh’s recommitment to the loan fund is “a good thing to do for the community,” says Economics Professor Todd A. Watkins, a Rising Tide board member and executive director of Lehigh’s Martindale Center for the Study of Private Enterprise. Also, he says, a thriving environment well serves the university’s students, faculty and staff. “Often these are very viable businesses that can employ people and bring some business activity, employment activity, economic activity to regions of the Lehigh Valley that wouldn’t otherwise have that injection of capital.”—Mary Ellen Alu “I LEARNED THAT A LOAN IS VALUABLE. I LEARNED THAT SUPPORT IS TRANSFORMATIONAL.” —Michael Roth ’12 COMMUNITY A ‘Rising Tide’ of Support Lehigh recommits to program aimed at helping small businesses. BUCKET LIST After trying four or five times over more than three decades to be a contestant, Journalism Professor Kathy Olson appeared May 15, 2024, on the long-running syndicated game show “Jeopardy!” Although she had passed the initial tests and made it to auditions, she had never previously been chosen as a contestant. Sworn to secrecy about the outcome, she couldn’t say in advance how she did. “But I was joking that I had two goals: One was to not end up with a negative score, so I couldn't be in Final Jeopardy, and the other was not to become a meme.” Olson met her goals—and finished with $2,000. MISCELLANY
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