An inventor visits Woodward Children's Center

The Woodward Children's Center at 201 Merrick Road in Freeport annually studies Black heroes for Black History Month. Executive Director Greg Ingino and Principal Danielle Colucci also find speakers who will engage the students. This year, the speaker was Russell Fearon, a Syracuse University graduate who co-invented a prize-winning health device.

The students, who are middle and high school age, listened attentively as Fearon, 23, narrated his story of discovering at age 21 that he was diabetic. To be diabetic meant he had to take out equipment and test his blood sugar if he wanted to eat anything sugary – even a cookie.

Fearon was then completing his bachelor’s of science degree in mechanical engineering. His friend Ricardo Sanchez was an industrial and interactive design major. Through Syracuse University’s Invent@SU program, the two created a watch and a mobile app that could monitor blood glucose levels for Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes sufferers, and for those with a prediabetic condition as well – and do it far more elegantly than the traditional finger stick jab.

They entered their invention in major contests. Fearon captured first prize – $50,000 dollars – in the American Heart Association’s EmPOWERED to Serve Business Accelerator Competition in October 2019. He and Sanchez together won a $5,000 cash prize at the 2021 ACC InVenture Prize Competition, Syracuse edition. They founded their own firm, SugEx, to help drive their invention toward manufacture.

Fearon finished his master’s degree in bioengineering and biomedical engineering in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After his speech, Fearon fielded one question after another from the students. Was his invention like the Apple watch? What was it like to be diabetic? To have your own business? At last, he finished and the Woodward students proceeded to deliver their class presentations of Black heroes they had studied, such as Ernestine Shepherd, who is 86 and still enters bodybuilding competitions.

In a post-program interview, Fearon discussed his journey to prize-winning entrepreneurship. He credited his parents and the Freeport middle school that he attended, the De La Salle School at 87 Pine Street, with steering him toward sustained educational development.

“I love De La Salle,” Fearon said. “I practiced leadership because of [then-Executive Director] Brother Thomas [P. Casey] and Kevin Rall, who are no longer there. I was president of my eighth-grade class. They didn’t call it leadership, exactly. They called it being a gentleman.”

Fearon took the poise and discipline he learned at De La Salle to a difficult but successful four years at Chaminade High School.

“I really struggled in some of those classes,” Fearon said, “until my junior and senior year when I really figured what focus was, and focus wasn’t hanging out with a lot of people.” Fearon knew no one expected him to average 90 or above, but in his junior year, “Once I kind of set that as a desire, something I wanted to do, I went and got it.”

Being just about the only Black student at Chaminade had its ups and downs, Fearon said, but, “I overcame. The right decision was to remove myself from some of the negativity, from those who didn't really accept me for me, and put myself in a situation where I was just going to be my best self.”

Though his “best self” carried him to the prize-winning collaboration with Sanchez, after graduating with his master’s, Fearon has found that fundraising to get his invention manufactured has been tough. He and girlfriend Tiffany Gerald, who holds a degree in communications and historical studies and a certificate in project management, are now finding that even high qualifications don’t net them the work they want immediately after graduation.

“Most of the time it takes a little while after you graduate to get somewhere you want to be,” Gerald said, “so it can be a rollercoaster after graduating college.”

Fearon agreed. “You may have to work for a lot less than what  you’re worth, or what the work you do is worth,” he said. “You just have to make it happen.”