On an almost daily basis, SCORE counselors hear business ideas from aspiring small business owners.
But it”™s not often they hear an idea that could change the world.
But Fairfield SCORE Counselor Austin Pryor said he heard just that when listening to the business idea of Dr. Teresa Piliouras, president and founder of Albright Associates. SCORE stands for Service Corps of Retired Executives.
“It is extremely rare to encounter a client and business concept that could become a giant business creating hundreds of new jobs,” said Pryor. “In fact, I suspect that this is a rare event for all of SCORE”™s 389 chapters across the country.”
Pryor introduced Piliouras at the Fairfield SCORE”™s annual luncheon in New Canaan May 30, where she gave a presentation about her UXID technology.
Piliouras said there is currently no national infrastructure or consistent methodology to calculate student graduation, dropout and transfer rates, or to perform statistically accurate long-term studies of education program effectiveness.
That led her to develop a technology she calls UXID, which works like an electronic ID card that tracks “at-risk” student progress throughout their school career.
Students would first sign up for an ID when they enter a school system, and the program would continue to monitor the students progress, or lack thereof, throughout their education.
Piliouras said an outgrowth of her work evaluating national and state programs targeted at improving the graduation rate and performance of “at-risk” junior high and high school students.
“There”™s no program in our country to keep track of something as basic as graduation rate,” she said.
This led to her to the invention of UXID, which stands for Universal Anonymous Exchange Identifier, and other UXID patent-pending software and product offerings.
Piliouras said she is in the process of meeting with possible partners and financial backers “to scale the program so it could sustain a national launch.”
Another version of the program, UXID.a, was developed to verify identities on Web sites such as MySpace, said Piliouras, who said it ties in with legislation proposed in the Connecticut General Assembly to regulate the use of such social Internet destinations
Prior to founding Albright Associates, Piliouras was co-founder of TCR Inc., a consulting company specializing in data mining and advanced technologies. She has also held senior managerial and technical positions at such companies as Accenture, Pitney Bowes and PepsiCo.
Also on hand at the luncheon was U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, who praised the Fairfield SCORE chapter for recently being awarded the chapter of the year by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
“You volunteer your time and talent to help others,” Shays told the crowd of SCORE counselors. “That is something pretty unique to the United States.”
Â
Â
