Daniel Fisher is leaving St. Francis College not only with a college degree but with his own business.

The Deer Park, Long Island resident – born and bred there – launched a clothing company Colorway NY, in January 2018. With his co-founders Nick Crocco, Ahmed Abdeltawab, and Sukhminder Singh, Daniel has been slowly building the business, taking advice along the way from Eda Sanchez-Persampieri, Director of the SFC Center for Entrepreneurship.

Daniel entered St. Francis College with a semester's worth of credits from classes he took in high school, allowing him to wrap up his studies in fall 2019.

The recipient of this year's Giordano '79 Student Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Daniel recently spoke about his entrepreneurial ventures and his years at St. Francis College.

You won the Giordano '79 Student Entrepreneur of the Year Award this year. How do you feel about that?

It's very honorable. I didn't think I was going to get it because my business is still so brand new and so fresh. I'm honored that she [Eda Sanchez-Persampieri] thought of me. I've been telling her about starting my business and running my business, and she gave me so much advice: on different vendors and what to look out for in the clothing industry and business. I've just been building around her advice.

How do you describe your business?

It's a clothing business. We focus on bringing every race, every culture together through clothing. I'm Jamaican, and there are three other co-founders: Italian, Indian and Egyptian. We take from all of our cultures and put them into the brand. We want to express humanity and community through clothing and through our message of bringing everyone together.

How did you balance being an entrepreneur with being a full-time student?

I've got to give credit to my co-founders. We all had different schedules and different tasks. We split up the responsibilities of the company. I would focus on creating designs. Another founder would manage the social media. Everything just split up pretty much evenly. We all had time for our personal lives and our education.

Do you plan to focus exclusively on your business now that you're done with college?

I have other aspirations, but the business is going to be my main focus. I do want to have something of my own as well. I'm focusing on entertainment and screenwriting, movie production. I'm a personal trainer. I also DJ and do film photography on the side. I have a number of different projects.

What professors impacted you most during your St. Francis College career?

Eda [Sanchez-Persampieri] has been a great professor. I first met her because she and my brother [who also attended St. Francis College] created the Entrepreneurship Club. I was very familiar with her as a freshman, through my brother. As a professor, she just taught me so many lessons about being your own person and being honest. Just giving advice on what to do and what to look for as a businessperson and not just as a young person who's just going into the field.

Marie Segares [Assistant Professor, Management and Information Technology], my advisor, has also helped me a lot.

How did you decide to attend St. Francis College originally?

Through my brother and his girlfriend. They both attended St. Francis and they told me about it. They said it's just a great small community. The classes are very intimate, So I said, it's better to have that type of experience than a big campus experience. I think it's just a better learning environment for me. And it definitely was.