During the aftermath of Hurricane Hanna, which had made landfall in the Rio Grande Valley in July 2020, Lucious McDaniel IV spoke to someone who had lost their home and two cars to flooding. It was a tough loss, but thanks to the work of aid groups and McDaniel’s startup Phly, that person was able to receive food, shelter and a sense of relative stability and safety. Phly stands for “philanthropis on the fly” and provides a platform for mutual aid groups and local communities to collect, track and send money that they raised for their respective causes.
“That was the moment where I thought, ‘Wow, we are actually building something that is making a difference in the world,’” he says.
In addition to being the founder of Phly, a Forty Acres Scholar and one of our outstanding graduates from the class of 2022, McDaniel is above all a problem-solver. He will graduate with degrees in business honors and management information systems with a certificate in elements of computing.
Read more about Lucious and meet other graduates at news.utexas.edu/class-of-2022 #UTGrad22