From New Orleans to entrepreneurship

Brett Hyman and Lara Stepneski-Mintz return for their 20th reunion after building businesses inspired by their Tulane years

Twenty years after graduating from Tulane, Brett Hyman (B ’06) and Lara Stepneski-Mintz (NC ’06, SLA *12) are returning for their 20th reunion with very different careers and businesses more than 1,000 miles apart. But trace either story back, and it leads to the same place: New Orleans.

For Hyman, it began with a question familiar to generations of Tulane students: What should we do this weekend?

An entrepreneur even then, Hyman cold-emailed House of Blues with an idea for a college dance night. The response was essentially: Why don’t you host it? Soon he had incorporated Category 5 Entertainment and was organizing college nights at different New Orleans venues, while double majoring in business and political economy and serving as president of AEPi fraternity. “I got the bug for event planning right when I got to New Orleans,” he said.

Today, Hyman is CEO of NVE Experience Agency, an independent experiential marketing company he founded in 2013 that has 160 employees and offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City and London. 

“We’re working for the world’s most iconic brands,” Hyman said. NVE has created experiences for brands including Apple, Amazon, Google, Pinterest and NBCUniversal. Its projects have ranged from a star-studded Beats Music launch party, which brought 14 iconic ’90s hip-hop artists, including Eminem, Dr. Dre, Nas and Ice Cube, onto one stage to an immersive Percy Jackson billboard at Hollywood and Vine that released cascading water. For Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, NVE transformed Bourbon Street into “Rum Street” for Captain Morgan.

For Stepneski-Mintz, New Orleans became the inspiration for a business of her own. After transferring to Tulane as a sophomore, she majored in political science and communication at Tulane, with a minor in French. 

“I fell in love with the campus and New Orleans,” she said. “Obviously it was a perfect fit.”

She stayed in New Orleans for a total of 17 years, working in public relations, earning a Master of Liberal Arts in history from Tulane and eventually starting a wedding coordination business. When she and her husband Clifford Mintz (UC ’05, B *12), also a Tulane graduate, moved their family to her hometown of Denver after the COVID-19 pandemic, she began wondering how to carry a piece of New Orleans to their new life.

“I wanted to do something fun and bring a taste of New Orleans to Denver,” she said. “New Orleans and Tulane are just so special to me. … It’s my second home. It’s just really special to us to be able to share that with our community.”

Sweet Nola Snoballs opened in 2024 with machines and flavor concentrates from SnoWizard in New Orleans. Today, customers can order everything from Tiger’s Blood (her bestseller) to wedding cake with condensed milk (her favorite), and the business has expanded beyond its storefront in Denver’s Mayfair neighborhood to summer camps, corporate events, weddings and even a Mardi Gras-themed bar mitzvah. 

Hyman and Stepneski-Mintz were Tulane seniors when Hurricane Katrina struck.

Hyman spent the fall semester at the University of Southern California, where an entrepreneurship course and a paper about Los Angeles nightlife helped set his post-college career and the launch of nightlife marketing and event-production firm Night Vision Entertainment. At the same time, worried about Tulane’s future, he created the Tulane Student Blog, which became a popular space to share news and updates with displaced students and families. 

Stepneski-Mintz spent the semester at the University of Colorado Denver, then returned to Tulane. After graduation, she chose to remain in New Orleans and be part of the rebuilding.

Twenty years later, both are helping lead the effort to bring their classmates back to Tulane for their 20th Reunion. Hyman chairs the reunion committee, while Stepneski-Mintz serves as a committee member. They are eager to return to the campus that played such an important role in shaping their personal and professional journeys.

For Stepneski-Mintz, who remains active with Tulane’s Denver alumni community, the weekend will mean football, favorite restaurants and time with friends and sorority sisters. “I’m looking forward to some adult time,” she joked, “and just being able to relive college days, but with adult money.”

For Hyman, whose career is built around creating meaningful shared experiences, the reunion offers one of his own.

“Every time I do see, particularly, a friend from Tulane, it’s almost like no time has passed,” he said.

Twenty years later, both have built careers, businesses and families far beyond the Tulane campus. Yet New Orleans remains unmistakably woven through what they created and who they became.

As Hyman put it, the reunion is a reminder “how important this part of my life was, and how much it shaped me and my career, but just who I am in general.”