Alumni’s Virtual Museum Platform Featured by NY Times and CBS News
During the pandemic, Treasured co-founders, Schulich alumni Vito Giovannetti (BBA’14) and Nikita Varabei responded to heritage organizations across North America impacted by closures. Motivated by the digital transformation to bring collections online, their platform helps create immersive virtual museums designed to give visitors the sense of traveling through a physical building with a floor, ceiling, and walls. This week Treasured was featured by NYTimes, CBS Evening News, and la Repubblica for its collaborative work with Chapman University’s Center for American War Letters (CAWL).
The CAWL consists of an extensive manuscript collection of war letters from every American conflict, beginning with handwritten missives composed during the Revolutionary War and continuing up to emails sent from Iraq and Afghanistan. It is committed to the ongoing collection, preservation, and promotion of these incomparable records of the American experience. “They humanize the men and women who serve,” said director Andrew Carroll. “They remind us that they’re not statistics. These are individuals with spouses and parents, children and best friends.”
In the future, Treasured will continue creating places of culture and education with inspiring storytellers across North America. Leading a vision that makes it easy for any organization to create a 3D Website to raise awareness about their mission and core offerings.
As a former recipient of The Peterson Family Gold Medal and Scholarship in Entrepreneurial Studies and now the Chapter President of the Schulich Entrepreneurial Alumni Association (SEAA), Vito remains highly engaged within the Schulich community. “Schulich faculty and staff inspired me to make an impact on my community upon graduation in 2014,” said Vito. “The inspiration led me to collaborate with Chris Carder on the creation of Schulich’s burgeoning entrepreneurial community, Schulich Startups.”
Explore the Museum of American War Letters today.