$5,000 Promise Prize Awarded to Grad Student Who Aspires to Be Entrepreneur

Dana LaCondre-Nugent, who is pursuing a master’s in accounting, was awarded the 2015 Marie Nesbitt Promise Prize at the School of Business faculty brunch May 18.

The prize is awarded by the Change Create Transform Foundation, which was founded by Vikki Pryor. The Promise Prize honors Pryor’s grandmother, Marie Nesbitt, who was a great-granddaughter of slaves and held jobs ranging from domestic worker to welder.

View photo gallery from the event.

The Promise Prize was first awarded here in 2014, and Montclair State is one of eight colleges/universities that Change Create Transform has chosen for the award.

The $5,000 annual prize is awarded to a black entrepreneurship or business student with the following traits:

• Academic excellence (high GPA)
• Leadership
• Scholarship
• Initiative
• Service
• Entrepreneurship

LaCondre-Nugent has a high GPA while pursuing her MS in accounting. She received a bachelor’s in accounting at Montclair State in 2008. She works at Lovas Financial in Paramus and was previously assistant controller at Hickory Industries in North Bergen. LaCondre-Nugent is actively involved with her community and church, including mentoring young people in East Orange and Orange and participating in Midnight Run, a New York-based charity that helps the homeless, by supervising youth groups and serving as a driver when the teams hit the streets to distribute clothing and food to the homeless. She is also currently training to run her first 5K for charity, raising money for the Arc of Essex County in N.J. LaCondre-Nugent aspires to be entrepreneur and own an accounting firm someday.

The 2015 award was presented to LaCondre-Nugent by last year’s Promise Prize winner, Alanda Alexandre, who is graduating May 2015 with a Business Administration degree with concentrations in Finance and Management. Alexandre will enroll in Montclair State’s MBA program in fall 2015. Pryor was also present during the award ceremony.

LaCondre-Nugent was chosen by the selection committee consisting of Agatha Jeffers, accounting professor; Hermann Sintim-Aboagye, economics and finance professor; and Sharon Waters, program manager at the Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship. The Feliciano Center handles administrative tasks for the award. The selection committee wrote in an email to Pryor, announcing LaCondre-Nugent as the 2015 winner that it chose her because she was mature, smart, poised, engaging and enthusiastic, as well as embodying the award’s traits of academic excellence, leadership, scholarship, initiative, service and entrepreneurship