Zach Weis (’24) and Chance Hergott (’25), both of Omaha, Neb., have won this year’s Brugman Pitch Contest, earning $1,500 for their initiative, What Being Nebraskan Means to Me.
“This is our second time competing, and coming back after last year’s second-place finish feels like redemption,” Hergott says. “We were able to learn from some of our mistakes that we made last year and improve.”
Weis says, “Success in the contest is really important to us. It has such fantastic heritage. The contest goes back almost 20 years.”
Students are given a prompt and a tight deadline to pitch a solution. Winning pitches move through rounds eventually into a final round. This year the panel of judges asked students to refine proposals from the second round, which asked them to secure a strategic partner and support an initiative within their major.
Weis says this year’s competition was intense. "It felt like preparing for a soccer game. My hands were shaking a little bit. You can feel your heart beating, but the adrenaline is a really good thing.” Weiss and Hergott are ߲ݴý Men’s Soccer student athletes, too.
In the final round, Weis, a philosophy and political science double major graduating this December, and Hergott, a business and finance major graduating in spring 2025, pitched a partnership with TED Talks. Their initiative would foster community and dialogue, addressing divisive topics in a unifying and innovative way.
Their idea emerged from a desire to bridge divides, particularly in political discourse. “Not many people enjoy politics because it’s divisive. It's hard to connect with people about politics,” Weis says. “I thought maybe therein lies the solution—finding a way that we can bring different people together. Then, that connects to the core values of our institution of building a community of integrative learning. And we just kind of jumped off that.”
Hergott says the idea came at the right time, just weeks after the latest presidential election. “Let’s take a step back from that and focus on our unity within our community in Nebraska. Our country was never founded on the idea that everyone would agree about everything. And that's okay. We’ve lost track of the idea that while we disagree on things, we have more things in common.”
The pair credited their success to their complementary strengths—Weis’s speechwriting and Hergott’s presentation skills—and expressed gratitude to the Brugman family, event sponsors and fellow participants. “There were phenomenal ideas across the board,” Weiss says.
With their win, Weis and Hergott say they hope to inspire conversations that celebrate shared values while respecting diverse perspectives, embodying the contest’s spirit of innovation and collaboration.