While a “love” score in tennis may signify an unsuccessful performance, BYU Marriott entrepreneurship alumna Hailey Krey’s love for helping others has led her to real-life success as a tennis player, a student, and a member of BYU’s Crocker Innovation Fellowship.
One of the passions that has guided Krey’s life is her love for tennis, and she has found a way to use her talent in the sport to help others. She first discovered her love of tennis shortly before beginning high school when a friend invited her to take part in a tennis camp. The sport has guided and shaped Krey’s life ever since. “Tennis was everything in my life,” says Krey. “I knew I wanted to play in college, so I spent any moment I could on the court. I'd wake up and play a couple hours in the morning, head to school, and return to the courts after school to play for a couple more hours into the evening. ”
After graduating high school, Krey’s love for tennis led her to BYU–Hawaii where she played on the tennis team. In addition to her tennis commitments, Krey also began to develop a passion for entrepreneurship. “At BYU–Hawaii, I had awesome professors who were entrepreneurs,” she says. “I took a lot of their classes, and I fell in love with the field of entrepreneurship.”
Krey completed her first entrepreneurial project while at BYU–Hawaii when she wrote a children’s book and started selling the book on Amazon. After BYU–Hawaii discontinued its NCAA athletics programs in 2017, Krey decided to pursue both her tennis career and her interest in entrepreneurship at BYU.
During her time at BYU Marriott, Krey joined the BYU Crocker Innovation Fellowship, a program designed to transform students into interdisciplinary innovators through classwork and the completion of a project. “Being a part of the Crocker Innovation Fellowship was one of the highlights of my BYU career for sure,” she says. As part of that program, students are tasked with creating an innovative project, and Krey designed the Ascendant Anxiety Tracker, an app that helps people track their anxiety patterns.
As a newly minted 2020 graduate, Krey is now working full-time on the Ascendant app and hopes to fully release the product towards the end of summer 2020. “My team and I have received feedback from therapists and from individuals dealing with anxiety,” she says. “Those who have tested the app and given us feedback are all excited to use the product, so we're excited to release the Ascendant Anxiety Tracker to the public.”
Besides working on Ascendant, Krey will continue to share her love of tennis as a tennis coach throughout Utah, teaching children, teens, and adults ways to improve their game. “I love to coach and teach tennis because I love the relationships that I build with people and the impact I can have in their lives,” she says.
Whether Krey is coaching tennis or designing an app that monitors anxiety patterns, her goal for both is the same: she wants to have a positive impact on the lives of others. “That desire to help others is what guides my every decision for the future. I want to have skills to inspire, help, and serve others,” she says.
Krey sees business as a way to make the world a better place, and she hopes to continue working to improve the world through the business ventures that she undertakes. “A business is about so much more than money, and work should be about so much more than getting a paycheck,” she says. “I chose to study entrepreneurship so I could look back after a few years and see that I achieved something that has improved the lives of those around me.”
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Writer: Kenna Pierce
