She expected to meet a few people, enjoy the sessions and return back to Lehigh as a double major in supply chain management and marketing.
Instead, she took a seat next to Timothy Eades, entrepreneur, founder and former CEO of vArmour and Anetac. After Eades led an interactive Q&A session, the two got to talking. A volunteer at LSV since its establishment, Eades visited campus in the spring to reconnect with the LSV students and offered the opportunity to intern with vArmour.
“I already had an internship set up for that summer,” Nicholas said, “but I kept thinking about how cool it would be to go to California and work for a startup. So I shot my shot.”
One email response from Eades changed her entire trajectory.
Nicholas found herself dropping supply chain management in exchange for a minor in entrepreneurship, a decision that felt natural, she said, and allowed her to build confidence in her skills and explore something she was finding passion in.
After interning and then working at vArmour throughout her senior year, she accepted the offer to move out to the Bay Area and join the team full time after graduation.
“After coming to the Bay Area for LSV, I wanted to plunge into entrepreneurship,” Nicholas said, adding that Eades helped “amplify and champion” her in the organization, which allowed her to embrace a number of different opportunities during her five-year tenure at the company.
“These jobs are really hard, really emotional and sometimes downright lonely,” Eades said. “But that's the journey that you need to go on in order to become where you should be to fulfill your potential. Diana is incredibly talented, and we can say to each other, ‘I don’t know what to do and you don’t know either, but we’re going to figure it out.’”
Nicholas’ experience at vArmour gave her a unique understanding of the problems people were having within the cybersecurity industry. Joining forces with engineers and team members, including Eades, Anetac was born.
Throughout the process of building the company, Nicholas conducted countless interviews to identify what technology could do to provide a solution and target specific pain points for clients.
“We were doing preliminary research right as ChatGPT came out, making sense of all of the data and asking ourselves, ‘What does that sprawl look like as we think about the world of AI?’” Nicholas said.
“As an entrepreneur, you've got to go with your gut, connect with your heart and follow your passion,” Eades said. “Somewhere between your gut and your heart, you'll find out what you want to do. You only fail when you stop trying.”
Just like Eades said, Nicholas followed her passion in entrepreneurship and it led her back to Lehigh. Except this time, Lehigh met her out west. Established in 2016, Lehigh West serves as the university’s West Coast gateway for immersive learning, dynamic career pathways, and transformative partnerships. With direct proximity to Silicon Valley, it places students, faculty, and programs at the center of the world’s leading innovation ecosystem, providing real-world experiences that launch careers, ignite innovation, and build lifelong networks.
Nicholas, who experienced the pathway to Lehigh West through LSV, is eager to help shape future opportunities for students to find their home through Lehigh West. She continues to mentor and host Lehigh interns through Lehigh West programs like Startup Academy and the Innovation Internship.
“I want to be involved in any way possible and continually meet students and alumni engaged in Lehigh West,” said Nicholas.
She wants to give students the type of support she wishes she had, which includes finding housing, negotiating your career and connecting students to people that she knows.
“We’ve built a great community out here, and more people are starting to take the leap because of that,” she said.
Building relationships and taking advantage of programming in entrepreneurship is something Nicholas whole-heartedly encourages. “The energy is palpable here,” she said. “You can’t feel entrepreneurial spirit like this anywhere else.”
What’s stuck with her the most, however, is something Eades said on the very first day they met.
“Invest in your relationships, even if it’s just a small message saying, ‘I’m thinking of you,’” Nicholas added. “Nurturing relationships and remembering to always be kind is the attitude I try to lead with within entrepreneurship, my career and in my life.”
Read more about LehighSiliconValley at go.lehigh.edu/lsv, and Lehigh West at https://westcoast.lehigh.edu/.
