UCI Foundation trustees Mark and Kathleen Santora cut the ribbon to unveil the brand-new Santora Pitch Lab in the UCI ANTrepreneur Center on Oct. 22.
The grand opening took place on a Thursday evening outside the ANTrepreneur Center, with an audience of students, alumni, UCI dignitaries and city officials, including Irvine Vice Mayor James Mai.
The Santora Pitch Lab is a versatile space with plenty of movable equipment. Students are able to reserve the center to use its space for meetings, practicing speeches, presentations, and more.
Joe Kiani, the founder of Masmo and Willow Laboratories, spoke to the audience after they had viewed the inside of the lab, beginning a speaker series of entrepreneurs.
During the ceremony, ANTrepreneur Center Director Ryan Foland spoke about the center’s hope with a simple statement, saying, “Students deserve to have their ideas heard.”
The Santoras and Foland also introduced “Ready, Set, Pitch!” alongside the lab, a quarterly pitch competition.
“We wanted to activate the space, give people an excuse to use it and give them short-term opportunities,” Foland said to New University regarding the challenge. “We love running in quarter sprints to make things achievable, fun and meaningful.”
The challenge begins in the fall quarter, when student speakers can make a 60-second pitch. In winter, the pitch will expand to two minutes, and in spring, to five.
One of the Santora Pitch Lab’s main goals is to prepare students for the professional world. As a result, the challenge models what students can expect when they enter the job market.
“If you’re serious about getting into an accelerator or an incubator, you almost always have to submit a two minute video that shares what your ideas are,” Foland said.
As trustees, Kathleen Santora serves on the Nomination and Governance Committee, and Mark Santora serves on the Executive Committee and represents UCI Athletics.
The Santoras have previously been benefactors of UCI, most notably sponsoring the Santora Elite Training Center, which opened in 2013.
“We really enjoy supporting students,” Kathleen Santora told New University. “The more we can do to help students in one way or another, the better.”
Their newest endeavor is in the UCI ANTrepreneur Center. With increasing AI screeners in the job market, they aim to help students navigate this rapidly changing landscape.
“One of the things I hear all the time from the current job market or job seekers is: ‘How do I get my resume past the AI filter?’” Mark Santora told New University. “It’s a huge challenge.”
The Santoras met at a startup in Northern California and used their business experience to examine what employers want and how to help students meet those expectations.
“[Employers] will gravitate to whoever makes the best presentation, [is] the smoothest and understands how to connect with their target audience,” Mark Santora said.
However, the Santoras say students have little to no dedicated space and time to learn to become effective communicators, leaving them without an essential skill.
“We’re all supposed to know how to do this,” Kathleen Santora said. “But very few of us are ever taught how to. When in fact, there are some steps that you can take that will make your argument land more effectively.”
As a result, they went to Foland with a project that could serve undergraduate and graduate students from all backgrounds, majors and skill sets.
Foland returned with the idea for the Santora Pitch Lab. They found the home for the lab in a classroom, renovating it with mobile televisions, modular equipment and flexible room layouts.
However, for the Santoras and Foland, the Pitch Lab is not simply to practice communication for the workforce, but a place for students to become effective speakers in all aspects of life.
What all these spaces have in common is the need to connect with others effectively. The goal of the Pitch Lab is to allow students to build their confidence before they get into high pressure situations.
“We’re developing a space that can replicate these different [situations] in an environment that you can have the comfort of practicing in when the stakes are low,” Foland said.
Before cutting the ribbon to open the Santora Pitch Lab, the Santoras took the podium to share their hopes for the lab — a place where students, whether they were first-years or doctoral, could come together to realize their potential and support their ideas.
They signed off by simultaneously putting on sunglasses and saying, “Here at the Santora Pitch Lab, the future is so bright, we’ve got to wear shades.”
Moksha Kolli is a Features Intern for the fall 2026 quarter. She can be reached at mokshak@uci.edu.
Edited by Avery Rosas and Jaylynn Tsui.
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