Sarah Kitlowski, 35

Sarah Kitlowski is employee No. 1 at Omeza, a Sarasota-based startup focused on creating skin care and wound management products.

Kitlowski connected with Omeza founders Thomas Gardner and Chip Bettle while in business school at University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee. She was also working at Bealls at the time as a business analyst and business architect in the information systems department. Kitlowski says part of how she balanced full-time graduate school and a full-time job was getting only four and a half hours of sleep a night. “I didn’t sleep much, but it was completely worth it,” she says.

Gardner and Bettle wanted to build a business around results they had seen in clinical settings. Kitlowski and some fellow USFSM MBA students worked with them on a financial model, initial packaging and product design. She stayed in touch, and a job offer materialized — take on Omeza as employee No. 1. “It was an MBA lottery ticket,” she says. “Every day, I feel like I won the lottery.”