Tortoise Awards 2017 Young Entrepreneurs Scholarships

Jocelyn Galicia of Wichita, Kan., Michael Naber of St. Louis, Mo. and Weston Hamilton of St. Joseph, Mo. are the 2017 recipients of the annual Tortoise Young Entrepreneurs Scholarship Awards. The scholarships are designed to give deserving students a head start in their academic endeavors and encourage an entrepreneurial mindset that helps recipients conceive or support firms that create innovative products, processes and solutions.

“We are pleased to award scholarships to these deserving recipients for their educational pursuits,” said Tortoise Capital Advisors’ Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Birzer. “These young people have demonstrated tremendous enthusiasm for entrepreneurial endeavors, a key component of our own company’s success story.”

Tortoise 2017 Young Entrepreneurs Scholarship Recipients

Jocelyn Galicia

Jocelyn Galicia is an entrepreneurship and real estate major at Wichita State University (WSU) where she serves as the president of Shocker Startup and as a university innovation fellow, a fellowship through Stanford's Epicenter. While at WSU, Jocelyn has won seven entrepreneurship distinctions and has interned at the WSU Center for Entrepreneurship, Lange Real Estate, Merrill Lynch and OxCart Products. She has also hosted pitch competitions, entrepreneurship speaker events and workshops to promote entrepreneurship.

She co-founded a technology startup, Mobile Car Tune, in August 2016. Mobile Car Tune provides mobile mechanic services in the Wichita area. Jocelyn was 12 when she realized that she wanted to become an entrepreneur and began pursuing that passion.

Michael Naber

Michael Naber has been an entrepreneur since the age of 13 when he inked his first development partnership with a London-based company for a series of mobile entertainment applications. After that, Michael taught himself programming in middle school, and his mobile applications reached the top charts in Argentina, Chile and Finland. In his early high school years, he completed a paid internship with a California-based technology startup company, the youngest intern in the company’s history. In his senior year of high school, Michael was selected as a national merit scholar, an award given to the top 0.5% of the roughly 1.6 million entrants each year. After being admitted to prestigious institutions including Carnegie Mellon, Claremont McKenna and the University of Texas at Austin, Michael chose to attend the University of Southern California as a presidential scholar. Michael continues to expand his intellectual property as he further develops his ideas involving engineering, entertainment and financial sectors.

Weston Hamilton

Weston Hamilton is an incoming freshman at Missouri State University where he plans to further his business acumen in financial studies. Before founding WH Labs LLC, he was always looking for opportunities to make money his own way. WH Labs LLC, produces and distributes handmade lifestyle accessories, as well as providing freelance photography, cinematography and graphic design services. Alongside the lab, Weston is a sponsored artist for Aroundsquare and brand ambassador for Zing Toys Thumb Chucks, where he performs demonstrations of products at toy fairs around the globe. Ultimately, Weston wants to build WH Labs into a household name of luxury, craftsmanship and altruism.

About Tortoise Young Entrepreneurs Scholarship Program

The Tortoise Young Entrepreneurs Scholarship Program was established in 2012 in celebration of Tortoise Capital Advisors’ 10-year anniversary. The program recognizes the challenges and rewards of the entrepreneurial spirit and encourages the next generation of curious, persistent and passionate entrepreneurs. The Tortoise Young Entrepreneurs Scholarship Program awards three annual, non-renewable scholarships valued at $3,000, $2,000 and $1,000. Applicants must (i) be a resident of Kansas or Missouri (Tortoise Capital Advisors’ headquarters borders these two states) who attends or plans to attend a full-time undergraduate course of study toward a bachelor’s degree, or (ii) be a full-time student seeking a bachelor’s program at a Kansas or Missouri accredited university or college. All applicants must also meet certain academic and college entrance exam scores.

About Tortoise

Tortoise is a leader in essential assets and income investing. Through its registered advisers, Tortoise provides investors access to differentiated active and passive investment solutions and market insights. Tortoise had $20.3 billion assets under advisement as of June 30, 2017. Its business is rooted in more than a decade of leadership and expertise in both income and equity investing in energy and essential assets