USA diver helping youth athletes through cofounded business ELETE

When Carolina Sculti looked back on her junior diving career, she realized she would have benefitted from a mentor.

Earlier this year she and Abby Greubel, a Stanford soccer player, founded ELETE, a small business whose mission is simple: Helping athletes help athletes.

The goal for ELETE was to create a platform for college athletes to connect with youth athletes to provide private training and mentorship sessions.

“(Greubel and I) both fell in love with our sports at a young age. As we grew up, our love for sport fueled a dream to compete at the collegiate level. While at Stanford and reflecting on our youth careers, we realized how valuable it would have been to work toward those dreams with a mentor who achieved them. We wanted to make this possible for all aspiring athletes,” Sculti said.

Sculti became a five-time All-American at Stanford after winning four junior national titles and three Junior Pan American Championships gold medals.

When ELETE launched, Sculti and Greubel did a test run at Stanford. Their focus was on providing mentorship and training opportunities for youth athletes, while simultaneously providing opportunity for collegiate athletes to benefit from NCAA NIL (name, image and likeness) rules.

“It was definitely hard to balance school, social life and diving all while building the company from the ground up, but we saw an effort to help the community,” Sculti said.

Since ELETE’s launch, more than 40 Stanford athletes have been doing private lessons in the Bay Area or offering remote mentorship sessions. Sculti said that hearing feedback from parents has been awesome and rewarding, and they hope to scale to other schools in the future.

And now that she has graduated from Stanford, Sculti is furthering her education with hopes of continuing to build a successful business.

She is starting graduate school this fall at the University of Southern California, where she will pursue a master’s degree in entrepreneurship and innovation.

Sculti and Greubel’s vision for ELETE is to build community, allow youth athletes to feel supported in the pursuit of their athletic and academic goals, and bridge the gap between youth athletes and their role models.

Sculti will dive this upcoming 2022-23 NCAA season after gaining an extra year of eligibility because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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