Veronica E. (Shaw) Adams ’61
June 23, 2022

Janelle C. Ashley, PhD
October 7, 2022

Kirsten M. Backlin ’92
July 7, 2022

Paul K. Bitter ’69 MDiv, LPC
October 13, 2022

John P. Borci ’63, MEd ’69
October 17, 2022

Mary-Ellen Boyle, MEd ’62
August 25, 2022

Dorothy A. Brophy ’86, MEd ’90
April 10, 2022

William Brouwer ’65
October 21, 2022

James H. Burns ’73
May 9, 2022

Constance H. Burr, MEd ’74
April 20, 2022

Lillian R. (Cederlund) Carroll ’51
June 10, 2022

Donald A. Cherry ’91
August 8, 2022

Carole Anne (Amour) Chiras ’64, MEd ’81
July 12, 2022

Anthony J. Cimino ’58, MEd ’64
June 23, 2022

Margaret M. Clancey ’82
October 2, 2022

Ruth Cohen ’73, MEd ’76
August 6, 2022

Jean T. Corbett ’77
June 10, 2022

Claire H. (Cavanaugh) Cunningham ’57, MEd ’60
October 13, 2022

Lois A. (Wennerstrand) Dahlin ’58, MEd ’76
August 11, 2022

Douglas R. Dawson, PhD
May 30, 2022

Elizabeth Leanna Dickinson, MEd ’83
September 7, 2022

John M. Duffy ’83
June 21, 2022

John V. Dunn
May 24, 2022

John E. Durkin, MEd ’54, PhD ’58
September 2, 2022

Richard B. Dymek ’54, MEd ’63
July 29, 2022

John A. Ehret ’61
May 15, 2022

Diane M. Epstein ’69
May 19, 2022

Paul M. Fernandes ’90
July 17, 2022

Joseph B. Finnegan ’71
October 29, 2022

Barbara A. Gianaris, MEd ’78
April 1, 2022

Anne L. (Brierly) Gordon ’67
April 25, 2022

Marie D. Granlund ’98
October 14, 2022

Andreana M. Grimaldo ’88, MS ’93
August 6, 2022

John F. Grogan, MEd ’72
August 8, 2022

Cynthia A. (Barnes) Herrick ’59
August 14, 2022

Diane J. (Dalton) Hersey ’81
April 29, 2022

Dawn M. Hoyle ’92
September 3, 2022

Robert B. Isenberg ’74
May 6, 2022

Lorraine Jankowski ’96
October 24, 2022

Janice L. Jolly, MEd ’90
June 30, 2022

Richard F. Jones ’80
August 28, 2022

Norma T. (Griffin) Kallio ’56
June 26, 2022

Thomas P. Kelly, MEd ’72
July 26, 2022

John M. Lajoie ’85
August 10, 2022

Catherine E. Levasseur ’96
July 19, 2022

Gail C. Lock ’68
August 5, 2022

Barbara A. (Birch) Mahoney ’57
May 26, 2022

Barbara L. Martel
June 6, 2022

Keith W. Mattei ’93
September 27, 2022

William J. Moran ’99
September 25, 2022

Gerald F. Moynihan ’63, MEd ’67
May 5, 2022

Cheryl Murray ’68
August 21, 2022

Kathleen M. (Zaterka) Napoli ’69, MEd ’74
October 3, 2022

Virginia N. O’Neil ’05
October 10, 2022

Nancy A. (Stefanik) Pelland ’77
June 22, 2022

William F. Perron ’78
July 13, 2022

Beryl “Bev/Philomena” (Matthews) Pettiford
July 22, 2022

Cecile Plotkin, MEd ’76
June 20, 2022

Francis A. Porcaro ’75, MEd ’85
April 1, 2022

Patricia A. (Reed) Proulx ’73
June 2, 2022

Jon James Raymond ’99
April 8, 2022

Leo H. Roberge III ’74
April 29, 2022

Ann-Marie (Lefave) Roche ’93
April 9, 2022

Miriam C. Roeder ’73
May 4, 2022

Robert M. Sabatalo ’77
April 30, 2022

Clifford R. Sawyer ’73, MEd ’77
June 9, 2022

Dorothy R. Scanlon ’72
May 29, 2022

Angelo R. Scola, MEd ’71, PhD
June 6, 2022

Arthur D. Shea ’73
August 13, 2022

Dorothea R. Simmons
July 1, 2022

Barbara A. Spence, MEd ’80, EdD
June 8, 2022

Heather E. Taurus ’05
May 3, 2022

Mary-Ann B. Tellier, MEd ’91
April 17, 2022

Eugene F. Ticknor, MEd ’70
May 26, 2022

Carol M. Tinsley ’84, RN
June 13, 2022

Gary J. Vecchio ’75, MEd ’81
July 18, 2022

Joseph M. Vecchio ’98
June 6, 2022

Richard T. Vigeant ’80
April 29, 2022

Elaine K. (Kirby) Vitone ’58
June 7, 2022

Francis L. Walsh Jr. ’63, MEd ’69
August 2, 2022

Nancy E. (Peterson) Weissinger ’53
July 25, 2022

Susan M. Wise ’90
May 30, 2022

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More than 1,000 alumni, students, and families gathered at Ģ������Ƶ to celebrate Homecoming Weekend 2022. Under sunny skies, many said they were just happy to see friends, classmates, and fellow alumni come together again. Family Day offered a festive carnival-like atmosphere for more than 700 students, parents, siblings, and alumni. Nearby, hundreds of alumni gathered throughout the day Saturday for BBQ, ice cream, and family activities at Homecoming Experience. The Saturday afternoon football game brought a big and noisy crowd to Coughlin Field with the final score UMass Dartmouth 41-Ģ������Ƶ State 20. (Photos by Matt Wright ’10)

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Homecoming Weekend was capped by a semi-formal celebration that drew 175 attendees to honor the 50th Anniversary of the Office of Multicultural Affairs. The event paid tribute to OMA leaders Sidney Buxton, Marcela Uribe-Jennings ’82, MEd ’91, Laxmi Bissoondial ’02, and the student-led Intercultural Student Alliance, and to OMA’s mission to support first-generation, low income, and ALANA/BIPOC (African, Latine, Asian, Native American and/or Black, Indigenous, People of Color) students. (Photos by Matt Wright ’10)

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The inaugural George H. Albro ’65 Memorial Golf Tournament drew more than 100 participants, all in support of Ģ������Ƶ State Athletics. The event was named in memory of Lancer legend, educator, coach, and mentor George Albro. Save the date on August 7 for the 2nd annual George Albro ’65 Memorial Golf Tournament. (Photos by Matt Wright ’10)

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More than 250 students and donors connected this year at the annual scholarship brunch, an event that brings together donors who fund scholarships with the students who receive them. The University Advancement tradition fosters intergenerational friendship, support, and networking. Each year the Ģ������Ƶ State Foundation awards more than 400 student scholarships, most of them established by alumni, friends of the university, faculty, and staff. This year, 22 new scholarships were established. (Photos by Matt Wright ’10)

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When Judith Hoyer was a student at Ģ������Ƶ State in the 1960s, poets like Robert Frost, Randall Jarrell, and Archibald Macleish were household names. Hoyer, who had loved poetry her entire life, attended every reading she could and saw all three poets when they read in Ģ������Ƶ. “Poets were rock stars,” she said. “They were my heroes.”

Upon completing her degree, Hoyer put aside her dream of becoming a poet herself to focus her energy on her family and her career as a school psychologist in the Medway, Mass., public school system. It was only after she retired in 2005 that she was able to pursue that dream.

She describes the years since retiring as “a little like being an adolescent.” Poetry has helped her access great depths of emotion. Her involvement in the poetry world has also afforded her a chance to be in a community of other like-minded people. She has published a chapbook—Bits and Pieces Set Aside (Finishing Line Press)—and has a full-length collection, Imagine That, coming out next spring from FutureCycle Press.

Judith Hoyer at Burncoat Park. (Photos by Matt Wright ’10)

“I’m always thinking about poetry,” she said, “always. Walking, reading—all of that counts.” She does sometimes face writer’s block, but she has a way to deal with that. “If I can’t come up with something, I go for another walk, read, maybe bake some cookies.”

Most of her poems tend to be about herself and her experiences in some way. Her best poems, she thinks, are “about something that I know really well.” Nevertheless, one of her favorite things about writing poetry is surprising herself. “The fun thing is when you get to the end of a poem and think, ‘Oh, voila!’ You realize something you didn’t think of before. That’s very satisfying.”

In 2013, Hoyer attended a poetry reading at Ģ������Ƶ State, organized by English professor and poet Heather Treseler. The reading was the first of a poetry reading series that Treseler was trying to run on a shoestring budget. Hoyer knew right away she wanted to help fund the series. “I wanted the students at my state college to have an experience that’s available to students in other colleges in the Ģ������Ƶ community.” Through this series, students would be able to hear poets read and also meet them, ask questions, and get answers.

With this idea, Hoyer approached Treseler, whom she describes as a “writer, teacher, poet extraordinaire. She’s just the best.” Now named the Judith O’Connell Hoyer Poetry Reading Series, the program brings two new poets to campus each year for readings and craft discussions with students. Hoyer doesn’t give Treseler suggestions on poets to invite to the series. “I’m firm about letting Heather do that. She has a vast network of poets she knows.”

Over the eight years the two poets have known each other, their mutual respect has grown. “Judy is someone I admire so much,” Treseler said, “because she pulled off the trifecta of having a successful professional career, having a writing career with two books to her name and many publications in journals, and being a wonderful person. She never lost sight of her literary sense and ambition and pursued it with a lot of diligence, patience, and openness.”

Hoyer, who lives in Wayland, Mass., attends all of the readings at Ģ������Ƶ State—but says she can’t choose a favorite from among the readings. “They were all terrific,” she said. “I see the students flock to these readings, and they feel so comfortable being in an atmosphere where it’s okay to ask questions and be enthusiastic about being creative.”

“These readings have provided for me a sense of being in a community that believes in art and the value of poetry to enrich lives in a time when people are looking for beauty, for solace, in a time when the world is so fraught with trouble,” she said. She hopes that the students who attend these readings also see poetry as providing community, giving comfort, inspiring people to be creative, and facilitating an appreciation for the arts.

Though Hoyer has favorite poets that she always returns to, like Seamus Heaney, Elizabeth Bishop, Eavan Boland, Rita Dove, and Diane Seuss, she says, “It’s always wonderful to hear new poets.” She is excited about the state of poetry today. “It’s very inclusive in a way that it was not before. Everybody comes with their own background, and that’s what’s so special.” The Judith O’Connell Hoyer Poetry Reading Series has brought poets with a variety of backgrounds and often underrepresented identities.

All told, the university has brought fourteen nationally known or emerging poets to the Ģ������Ƶ State campus in fewer than ten years. Poets who have read at Ģ������Ƶ State are Alan Michael Parker, Joy Katz, Forrest Gander, who would soon win the Pulitzer Prize, Christina Davis, Sandra Lim, Anna V. Q. Ross, Marge Piercy, B. K. Fischer, Kevin Prufer, K. B. Kinkel, Jennifer Militello, Virginia Konchan, Stephen Kuusisto, and Nathan McClain. Hoyer hasn’t missed a single reading.

End of Childhood

I was a believer in those honest acres inside
invisible gates where I ran sunny and solitary
from my mother’s unforeseeable moods.

Where my feet pumped high over the caretaker’s
cottage, summer house and swimming rink.
Beyond everything, Green Hill, and the buffalo.

Where a grand fountain cooled down geraniums,
the earth around, the wire surround and boys
on bikes who rode too close.

Where carp with mouths as wide as galvanized pails
rose empty from the fishpond underworld
to fill on bread pilfered from the pantry.

Where I learned to fringe a linen placemat with
the feel and color of parakeet feathers that cushioned
my breakfast cereal, banana, and spoon.

Where the facts of life were blabbed to me
on a stone bridge that led from before to after.
There weren’t many words, and the girl was gone.

Where I can still hear a horseshoe striking
luck around a metal stake or landing
with a thunk in a cloud of red dirt.

—Judith Hoyer

About the poem

The poem, “End of Childhood,” is from Hoyer’s forthcoming book Imagine That from FutureCycle Press and first appeared in The Ģ������Ƶ Review. Of the poem, Hoyer says, “The idea for the poem came from a workshop prompt given by my longtime poetry mentor, Tom Daley, who suggested that we write about a memory we had from a public place. It could have been the circus, a ball game, a busy city street, but the park hit a chord for me. Burncoat Park was just a hop, skip, and a jump from where I lived on Barnard Road. It was a place where I could escape. There was a feeling of freedom, of being in another world. I could ride my bike on the paths, meet my friends, bring a picnic lunch, play tennis, skate in the winter, and be a part of nature all year long. Of course, there was an aspect of danger, too, that went along with that freedom of being alone in a public place. There was a caretaker who lived on the grounds. His name was Bart McKeon, and he loved fussing over the huge, beautiful circle of geraniums in the middle of the park. Although it is much smaller now than when I was young, the park is a lovely, rather private, green space surrounded by an urban environment.”

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When Poliana Alarcón Bustos, MA ’18 attended her first day of English-language class at Ģ������Ƶ State in 2015, she realized she was surrounded by students who didn’t speak a common language. At first, they found ways to communicate without using spoken language. As the semester went on, they were able to share the excitement of acquiring a new language together and using it among themselves. “Suddenly,” Alarcón said, “you’re able to share your experience and ideas. All of us came the first day with no English, and at the end we were all best friends.”

Alarcón learned English at Ģ������Ƶ State’s Intensive English Language Institute (IELI) after coming to Massachusetts from Chile with no knowledge of the language. It was the influence of her father, who studied business administration at Ģ������Ƶ State from 1976 to 1980, that led her here. The diversity of the students in the program, which was intimidating at first, became something she found extremely beneficial. “It opens your mind,” she said. “It makes you a better person. You are exposed to people who have different religions, traditions, habits, food, perspectives of reality. You discover these differences are not bad, just different.”

During her two semesters at IELI, Alarcón was in classes for four hours a day, Monday through Friday. “My experience at IELI was short, but it was super intensive,” she said. “Everything I learned there was the foundation for what I’m doing now.” Alarcón had planned to learn some English, then return home, but, after completing the program, she enrolled at Ģ������Ƶ State to earn a master’s degree in Spanish.

It might seem unusual to some to study the literature of one’s native language in a setting where the majority of people speak another language, but it makes perfect sense to Alarcón. “The perspective is wider,” she said. “It includes texts about immigration, what it means to be a foreigner.”

She had worked in theater companies in Chile as an actress. “I was an actress since I was born. I was always speaking in public and in every after-school program.” She says she got this love of theater from her grandfather, who was a theater director. “The blood pulls you,” she said, quoting a Chilean saying.

As a student at Ģ������Ƶ State wanting to reconnect with that part of herself, she knocked on the door of Professor Adam Zahler, director of the Visual and Performing Arts Department. In that first meeting, they talked for two and a half hours. “It was the first time since coming to Massachusetts that I could speak to a professor in my own language,” she said. “Not Spanish, but theater.”

Zahler invited her to work as an assistant in the play he was directing that semester. “I was really glad I did,” Zahler said. “I was impressed then by her connection with our students. Since then, seeing her work with community members and other students, I realize how fortunate we are to have such a talented, insightful, and skilled teaching artist working with the university.”

As Alarcón is earning her PhD at Boston University, she remains active in Ģ������Ƶ theater, teaching after-school acting classes to students at David Prouty High School. (Photos by Matt Wright ’10)

Shortly after that, she joined the university’s Latino Education Institute, coordinating theater programs. In that role, she directed members of the community—many of whom had acted before—in a Spanish-language performance of the play Correr o Volar (Run or Fly), about the Mirabal sisters. It’s an experience she finds deeply rewarding. “That’s why I’ve stayed with LEI, because that’s what they do, they give access to the community, to kids and their parents who are workers and never had time to get involved in the arts.”

Her continued work with LEI is remarkable when you consider that she is also teaching two acting classes four times a week—while working on her PhD in the Hispanic Language and Literature program at Boston University. She teaches an introductory acting class at David Prouty High School in Spencer, Mass, where students learn the basics of performing arts theory and practice. Her students are preparing a stage reading based on the play Six Characters in Search of an Author by the Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello with original monologues about their experiences and views of life and art.

Her dissertation is related to feminist activism through theater in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. She’s focusing on the work of theater companies founded by women that are tackling topics that nobody wants to talk about in countries that are heavily influenced by the Church and that have seen multiple transitions between extremely right-wing governments and more progressive ones. She’s exploring how women are working within this instability to deconstruct patriarchy.

She is drawn to theater that’s political. “If it’s only about having fun, that doesn’t make sense to me. What is the sense of representing life issues if you’re not going to let the audience take something from them. It’s not about being leftist or conservative. It’s about human rights, equality, respect.”

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The grant from the Baker-Polito Administration and the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) was a first for Ģ������Ƶ State and was awarded as part of a $14.6 million investment in STEM workforce education statewide. “From Boston to the Berkshires, the life sciences can offer transformational educational and career opportunities to people throughout our Commonwealth,” said MLSC President and CEO Kenn Turner in announcing the grants. “I am proud that under my tenure we launched a new effort to strengthen and diversify the Massachusetts life sciences talent pipeline by investing in robust and industry-aligned training programs.”

As part of its application, Ģ������Ƶ State received letters of support from a number of Massachusetts-based life sciences firms, including Pharmaron, ETR Laboratories, Curia, and Bristol Myers Squibb. Over the course of the academic year, the funding has been put to work purchasing new equipment to augment capabilities of the laboratories in the Ghosh Building that are used by more than 400 undergraduate and graduate biology, chemistry, and biotechnology majors.

“The equipment items we requested will be used in a wide range of courses and student research, allowing us to better furnish students with the hands-on laboratory skills that are in greatest demand by employers and to expose them to industry-relevant equipment that they can expect to encounter in work settings,” said Jennifer Hood-DeGrenier, chair of the Biology Department.

Among the new pieces of equipment is a benchtop nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer, which is used to determine the content, purity, and molecular structure of a sample. The new equipment will be used alongside an existing NMR to allow students to work in smaller groups to gain more familiarity with the instrument and its applications.

Other equipment will significantly increase the laboratories’ infrastructure for protein purification, which is a crucial process in the biotechnology workflow. This includes new bioreactors that can be used to grow large cultures of microbial, mammalian, or plant cells as the raw material for protein purification as well as a fast protein liquid chromatography (FPLC) system that will be used for the purification process.

“The FPLC is a tool that we didn’t have here that they use at companies like AbbVie and Bristol-Myers Squibb,” said Associate Professor Roger Greenwell, who co-leads the biotechnology program. “That was part of the reason why we wanted it. It’s used in industry all the time for protein purification processes.”

“This grant helps us to continue to open the doors for our students as they graduate,” said Greenwell. “It creates more opportunities for collaboration between faculty and industry and increases the perception of Ģ������Ƶ State as an important player in the life sciences and biotech industry.”

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Best. Year. Ever.

What else to call 2022 for tech entrepreneur and CEO Derek Canton ’15?

Derek Canton joined Forbes 30 Under 30 honorees in December to ring the Nasdaq closing bell in Times Square. (Photo by Nasdaq Inc./Vanja Savic)

In March, his startup company Paerpay hit an exciting tipping point when it secured $3 million in venture funding, bringing the company’s total capital to $4.2 million. Then, came high profile recognition through the summer, including Paerpay being selected from among hundreds of applicants as one of 12 companies for the third class of Google for Startups Accelerator: Black Founders.

November, well, it defied gravity: At age 29, just a few months before his 30th birthday, Canton was named to the 2023 Forbes 30 Under 30, securing his name on a rarified roster of entrepreneurs, artists, social change leaders and innovators transforming our world across every industry, from the arts and energy, to consumer technology and education. Past winners have included the founders of Instagram, Canva, Bumble, Instacart, Spotify, Dropbox, Asana, and DoorDash. The 2023 listing was an historic one, featuring Megan Thee Stallion as the first Black woman to grace the cover of the Forbes 30 under 30 issue.

And in a storybook ending written just for an entrepreneur, Canton closed out 2022 by ringing the Nasdaq closing bell in Times Square—alongside the CEO of Forbes and his fellow Under 30 superstars who made the list. The experience, he said in a text message, was “SOOOOO AMAZING!!! The amount of talent was next level. I was just grateful to be in the room.”

Back on campus at the end of 2022, Canton talked about chasing his dreams, a journey in which Ģ������Ƶ State figures prominently. “It’s funny to be on this side of it now,” he says. “2022 is a recognition year for a lot of the hard work that I’ve been doing for many, many years prior to it.”

As dazzling as the 2022 highlight reel is, Canton says it’s not the whole story. It’s important, he said, to not lose sight of what led to the accomplishments. The excruciating long hours. Multiple failures. Rejections. Daunting risks. “You hear about people who went to Harvard, wrote an idea on a napkin, and now they’ve got millions of dollars. That’s not my story,” Canton said. “I talk a lot about being in the trenches. That’s been my journey. People ask, ‘What’s your secret to success?’ My answer is, I decided just not to die. That’s it. Stay alive and you will figure it out.”

“I just loved doing projects”

Raised in Shrewsbury as the middle child of three boys, Canton credits his involvement in his church, Liberty Assembly of God, with planting the seeds for his entrepreneurial interest. As the church grew from 45 to 2,000 parishioners over time, Canton did a little of everything.

“That’s where I got a lot of entrepreneurial skills,” he said. “Candidly, I just loved doing projects. That was my thing.”

Derek Canton photographed by Matt Wright ’10 for Ģ������Ƶ State Magazine’s cover.

Early on, he had to figure out what kind of an entrepreneur he would be, particularly in tech, an industry dominated by men who started off as engineers, coders and programmers. He initially double majored in business and computer science at Ģ������Ƶ State, but found the technical side of tech wasn’t for him. He ended up pairing his business administration major with double minors in economics and communications. “I always had this passion for running a technology company, but how do I do that being someone who does not write code? I found my strength with technology was design. That’s something I did really, really well.”

During Canton’s sophomore year at Ģ������Ƶ State, business professor Joan Mahoney told Canton about a new entrepreneurship competition being launched at Ģ������Ƶ State—The Next Big Idea. The competition was created and funded by a Ģ������Ƶ State alumnus, Robert K. O’Brien ’58, who himself had launched 10 companies and employed hundreds during a distinguished business career.

At the time, Canton was designing and selling T-shirts with positive messages. Mahoney urged him to enter the contest, telling him, “You’ve come too far to just come this far.”

“I felt like I did not belong,” Canton said. “Everyone was juniors and seniors. I was a sophomore and like, ‘There’s no way.’ I almost didn’t apply. And literally in the 11th hour, Dr. Mahoney told me, ‘Just submit it.’”

That decision proved pivotal for Canton’s career. Not only did he win the first prize of $2,000 for his idea—G1G, an apparel and accessories company—he found career mentors in O’Brien and businessman Craig Bovaird ’77, both of whom had judged the competition.

“A big part of unlocking my entrepreneurial passion was that Bob and Craig really took me under their wings after I won the competition.” he said. “They were like, ‘Hey, let me see how we can plant that seed.’ That’s really what opened up my ideas for entrepreneurship,” Canton said. “The reason why that story is so important to me is there are people from Ģ������Ƶ State who are investing in their students outside of just the classroom.”

What followed his college years was a stint at Dell and a string of “terrible ideas” for startups, Canton says with a laugh. He was undeterred by the possibility of failure. “At Dell, all the executives had done some startups and I remember them saying they had failed and sold their companies to Google. And I’m like, ‘Well, if I fail and sell a company to Google, that would be cool, right? Why not?’”

The idea that finally took off to become Paerpay crystallized after Canton took another leap—the 2017 Money20/20 Hackathon in Las Vegas. He had an idea—a winning idea, as it turns out—but not an invitation to take part in the massive conference of developers competing for substantial prize money. So he just showed up.

“I literally showed up without a ticket, slept on the floor of the Venetian Hotel, convinced them to let me compete and ended up winning it,” he said. “It was crazy.”

With the Money20/20 winnings, Canton founded Paerpay. The next year, the company was one of 128 early-stage startups selected from 1,600 applicants for the 2018 MassChallenge cohort. By 2020, Canton had secured an initial round of angel investing and was ready to launch when the world shut down.

For many entrepreneurs, the shutdown was permanent. Not so for a company developing a contactless payment system for food services, a concept that was about to become a game changer.

“I’ve come too far”

As the pandemic threatened to leave the restaurant industry in ruins, Canton reimagined his restaurant payment technology as a solution for an unprecedented time. In 2020, conventional wisdom dictated apps were the future and QR codes were dinosaurs. However, in the context of no-contact transactions and social distancing, the humble QR code was making a comeback. Paerpay revamped its product to eliminate the need to download an app and streamlined the restaurant payment process even more through QR codes and a web-based platform that can fully integrate with leading point of sale systems and payment technologies.

The tailwind was strong as Canton headed into 2021. Then came a major setback. A significant change in his company’s leadership was followed by a loss of funding. Paerpay was on the verge of running out of operational dollars. “It was one of the most challenging situations,” Canton said. “We were down to our last $20,000. I remember thinking, ‘This is it. We are done.’”

A mentor stepped up with words of encouragement, reminding Canton that he still had a good business model. He looked around at his small team and realized he owed it to them to keep trying. He remembered Professor Mahoney’s words to him years earlier. “I decided I’ve come too far to just come this far,” he said. He doubled down—more long hours, more creativity, more of what he calls “CEO-ing.”

“I probably overcorrected and worked too hard.” Canton recalls. “I just threw all myself at my work, and I think I could have done that a little bit in a more healthy way.”

Still, the hard work paid off. By early 2022 Canton was closing on $3 million in seed funding led by MassMutual through the MM Catalyst Fund. They were joined by Elevate Capital, MassVentures, Techstars, The Fund, Gaingels, and Chingona Ventures. In making the announcement, Mass Mutual’s lead portfolio manager Jason Allen praised Canton’s “leadership and vision” and Elevate Capital Founder and Managing Partner Nitin Rai applauded the company for “making a powerful difference in the restaurant industry.”

“If you look at the statistics for people who look like me who are getting venture capital, it’s abysmal to say the least,” Canton said. “Being able to be an advocate for those other founders has been really cool, and to cross that chasm from raising a couple hundred thousand dollars to millions of dollars is just incredible.”

Today, Paerpay is working with a few hundred restaurants and food service businesses nationwide, including Steak ’n Shake. Next up for Paerpay is transforming restaurant drive throughs with a more effortless payment system. Customers will be able to scan a QR code at the speaker and pay their takeout bill on their phone right after they place their order. For restaurants—and potentially other businesses like pharmacies – the return on investment is significant both in terms of efficiency and accuracy of orders, says Canton.

“The goal for us is making payments as simple and easy as possible for anyone who wants to accept payments, whether that’s through Apple Pay, Google Pay, or credit card, debit card, or whatever that might be,” he said. “And simplifying that in a way that’s meaningful, but also accommodates credit card rates. We’re winning in a lot of ways because we’ve integrated with all the major credit card processors and POS systems in a unique way that allows us to get a location live in a matter of weeks opposed to months or years.”

As his company takes off and Canton leads a bi-coastal life sharing his time between New York and California, he is turning attention to giving back and volunteering.

“As I’m going into my thirties, I feel like it’s a new beginning,” Canton said.

In 2022, he joined the Ģ������Ƶ State Foundation Board of Directors, a team of community leaders charged with overseeing the university’s endowment. The board makes decisions about how the donated dollars are invested and spent in support of students and university operations.

“For many years the business ran me, and it cost me a lot of time and energy,” he said. “Now, I’m being very intentional about who I am as a person, whether it’s giving back or volunteering on boards. Being a part of the Foundation board is absolutely incredible, to say the least. I’m honored to be a part of it.”

“Dream big dreams”

Just after Thanksgiving 2022, Canton was in Roseville, California for business. Still on East Coast time, he woke up at 3 a.m. in his hotel and was mindlessly scrolling Instagram when he saw that Forbes had announced the coveted list. In one final attempt to fulfill a dream he’d set for himself more than a decade ago—Forbes 30 Under 30—he’d thrown his name in the mix. He’d already applied 10 times in years past and been rejected.

Canton flipped over to his email to look for an email from Forbes. He didn’t see anything. “I’m like, okay, I didn’t make the list. It’s a data point, not a proof point.” he said. “I had a Post-it Note of stretch goals and this was on there. I didn’t really understand the caliber. I knew it was going to be hard, but I didn’t realize it was tens of thousands of people.”

Many young entrepreneurs dream of landing on the Forbes list. Very few make the cut. The judges are industry-specific experts and Forbes journalists who wade through mountains of applications. This year, they received more 12,000 applications and whittled it down to just 30 people leading the way in 20 industries.

That morning in the pre-dawn hours with disappointment setting in, Canton decided to take a peek at the list—just in case. “You know what? let me just look,” he thought.

There he was. Derek Canton, CEO of Paerpay, on the list of 20 trailblazers in the Food and Beverage Category. The category was judged by Food Network chef Kardea Brown; Forbes Chief Content Officer and Editor Randall Lane; Entrepreneur Vanessa Pham, a Harvard graduate and co-founder of the Asian food brand Omsom; and Lee Schrager, founder of the star-studded Food Network South Beach Food and Wine Festival.

In 2018, Canton delivered the keynote address during Ģ������Ƶ State’s Convocation to incoming students—unbelievably enough—of the Class of 2022. He spoke of how through the Next Big Idea, the contest he won his sophomore year, he discovered his passion for entrepreneurship. “I learned the value of stepping out of my comfort zone,” Canton said. “You owe it to yourself to figure out what you are passionate about. Class of 2022, step outside your comfort zone. Dream big dreams.”

Watch video below of Canton in Times Square with the Forbes 30 Under 30 honorees

The post The Dream Chaser appeared first on Ģ������Ƶ State Magazine.

The confection company, which started with a shop in Millbury in 2018, now has three locations. The menu rotates, with 15 to 18 flavors at a time, and Rocco’s has nearly 300,000 followers on TikTok who offer enthusiastic comments on the company’s colorful and upbeat doughnut-making videos, like, “These look AMAZING!” and “I wish I could order from Cali!”

Among menu favorites are Fruity Pebbles, a colorful confection that evokes a favorite childhood breakfast cereal; an oversized gorgeously gooey chocolate frosted doughnut; a maple bacon delight; and perennial pleaser, cookies and cream.

These menu mainstays share the shelves with a rotating cast of innovative delicacies that recently included the “cannoli,” a yeast-risen shell with house-made cannoli ricotta and vanilla-dip icing, topped with crush cannoli shells, and “caramel s’mores,” a raised doughnut dipped in chocolate icing, with a graham cracker cookie rim, topped with a perfectly toasted marshmallow. Flavors change monthly and seasonally, with pumpkin cheesecake being a recent runaway fall favorite.

Inspiration for doughnut flavors comes from many sources, including bakeries and doughnut shops around the world. “Creating flavors is probably one of the hardest things with this business,” Lia said. “It’s something that we’re definitely working on right now. We are in the process of creating an in-house team of people just designated to flavor creating.”

After working in the corporate world for more than 25 years, Joe Astrella, who majored in business at Ģ������Ƶ State, says he’d had enough. Earning a living at his own business is the best way to make dough. “I love it,” he said. “There are some days that are stressful, but I could never see myself going back to a nine-to-five job in a corporate office cubicle again. I would lose my mind. I am more excited now doing this than I ever have been.”

Rocco’s is named in honor of Joe’s late father, who owned a Dunkin’ Donuts shop in the 1950s and later managed one in Ģ������Ƶ. The idea of continuing the doughnut tradition came from Joe’s daughter Kerri, who graduated from Ģ������Ƶ State in 2018 with a nursing degree.

“I was looking for something new, and one day Kerri said, ‘Have you seen all these gourmet doughnut shops popping up?’ Maybe you could do something like that,’” Joe recalls.

Though it would be revisiting his father’s Dunkin’ Donuts roots, Joe had actually never learned how to make a doughnut. On the plus side, however, he and Vincenzo had run a side business for several years making T-shirts and helping companies with branding efforts, and so those business skills were at their disposal.

“I said, ‘Let me research it because I need a change in my life,’” Joe said. Encouragement from Vincenzo helped seal the deal for Joe’s new direction. “After Kerri suggested that he should do something with food, I knew he could take it and run with it,” Vincenzo said. “Because, even to this day, if there’s a church event or a family gathering, he does the food on a restaurant scale. So, I thought the idea of ‘let’s create a restaurant and have the family included in it’ would work. When he gets an idea and has people supporting him, there’s no stopping him.”

To get started, Joe scanned Craigslist and found equipment for sale from a bakery in Vermont that had gone out of business. Vincenzo and longtime friend Todd Businskas, who’s been their head of production since the beginning, rented a box truck and headed north to pick it up. “We were still so new to this industry that we didn’t even know to bring some better equipment to move all this stuff,” Vincenzo said. “Me and Todd just manhandled the heaviest of industrial equipment onto the truck, and we finally got it home.”

Rocco’s doughnuts on display at their Westborough location. (Photo by Nancy Sheehan)

Meanwhile, Lia and Vincenzo began publicizing the doughnut shop on social media, complete with tantalizing images of the kinds of fancy flavors they planned to offer. “We were hyping this whole thing up, but we were also getting into the busy holiday season,” Vincenzo said. “Then in January we were like, ‘All right, now we’ve got to figure out how to make doughnuts.’”

Luckily, a friend connected them with someone who had owned a bakery for years. The baker agreed to teach Vincenzo, Domenic, and Todd how to make doughnuts.

“He was this old Italian guy named Joe who was about to retire,” Vincenzo said. “So, he comes in and he says, ‘All right, boys. What do you know about baking?’ We’re like, ‘Zero,’ and he loved that. He said, ‘That’s great, because you guys are teachable.’”

After the doughnut-making lessons were completed, finally, an opening date was set and announced on social media. Then . . . panic set in. Joe felt something wasn’t quite right with the dough.

So, they called the baker and asked him to come back so they could get it perfect.

When the store opened in March 2018, the doughnuts were undeniably amazing, and the Astrellas’ months-long social media campaign had cultivated a large number of potential customers anxious to sample Rocco’s treats.

“We had a huge social media following before we even knew how to make doughnuts,” Vincenzo said. “We opened with a bang.”

A big bang.

“It was crazy,” Joe said of opening day in Millbury. “We had a line going down the street and around the corner. Policemen were coming and telling us, ‘What are you guys doing? You can’t park on the street.’ We sold out in two hours. We didn’t have enough doughnuts for everybody, and people were like, ‘What do you mean you don’t have any?’ But how to make the right number of doughnuts was one of those things we had to figure out over time.”

Now, five years in and with a payroll of about 30 people, family members are still hands-on in production and simultaneously focused on building a company structure that will support future growth. That’s where Lia’s role comes in. After her daughter was born, she left her job as an account executive at a major cosmetics company to join the family business. “I started off part-time just doing catering sales and booking,” she said. “Then I slowly took over scheduling of all the stores and then doing the payroll and then events, which we want to do more of.”

Those events regularly include doing pop-ups with Tree House Brewing Company, and recently, Tuscan Village in Salem, N.H. “We started in the reverse from where people usually start,” Joe said. “Most people begin with pop-ups then go to brick and mortar. We started with brick and mortar and are finding out we want to do more popups.”

Now, Joe says, the family’s main goal has moved from just making the best doughnut around to growing one of the best organizations around. “A friend of mine who’s very successful in business told me a long time ago that you need to get to a point where you spend more time working on your business and not in it. So, I’m at that point now finally. It took me five years to get things right and get comfortable enough, but now I can focus on where we go from here.”

Photos by Matt Wright ’10

Rocco’s Do’s and Do-nuts:

How many servings per doughnut?

Lia: It’s actually a good question because when people say, “How many calories in a doughnut,” I’m like, “Well, you should say calories per serving because our doughnuts are definitely more than one serving.”

Joe: I would say two servings each because they’re double the size of other doughnuts.

Vincenzo: I just eat the whole doughnut. Plenty of people do.

Fork and knife, or no?

Joe: The only doughnut you might need a fork for is the strawberries and cream because that’s like a sandwich. It’s cream and strawberries in the middle, and I would use a fork and knife for that, otherwise you get it all over your face. For some, though, the messier, the better, so it’s all good.

What’s the perfect drink to have with a Rocco’s doughnut?

Joe: Rocco’s coffee. Our coffee comes from a local roaster in Ģ������Ƶ, so we’re able to source our coffee or right from the same city that I grew up in. I love our iced coffee. It’s the best around, but I have to admit I don’t drink hot coffee. I have to put a shot of chocolate flavor or something in it, but Vinny drinks it straight—no sugar, nothing.

What should you do if you can’t decide which doughnut you want?

Joe: That’s easy. Buy ’em all.

Top image: Joe Astrella, second from left, and his children Vicenzo, Domenic, and Lia are all part of the success of Rocco’s Doughnuts.

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