Jason Shacter

Lehigh University College of Business

“Entrepreneurial, analytical, passionate, and musical person who cares way too much about Chicago sports.”

Fun fact about yourself: I’ve done two backpacking trips longer than two weeks in the Midwestern/Canadian wilderness.

Hometown: Chicago, IL

High School: Jones College Prep

Major: Double major: Business Analytics, Management (Entrepreneurship Track)

Minor: Data Science

Favorite Business Course: ENTP 312: Launching Entrepreneurial Ventures II with Professor Ehrig

ENTP 312 is simply a roundtable discussion twice a week with a group of students who are pursuing their own ventures. The class is execution-focused, with students presenting on their progress on one of the two days each week. I took it the spring of my junior year, where I leveled up my sports card business, @shacpac_sports_cards. I was encouraged to increase my social media presence, redefine some sales tactics, and simply spend more time working on it. As a result, I grew from $17,000 in sales that year to $42,000.

I found it so helpful that I’m taking it again this spring as an independent study, with a different venture. I’m building a customer relationship manager for hobbyists who deal frequently. Current CRMS are all built for established companies, but individual resellers and hustlers can also get a lot more value out of their relationships with the help of technology. My platform is called Deal Easy, and it helps you easily add, track, and search through your business relationships cheaply. It reminds you of relationships you should follow up with and will eventually allow you to promote yourself to the community.

I love getting feedback from classmates who are equally committed to making their idea a reality; it provides a great combination of experienced instruction from Professor Ehrig and input from my peers. ENTP 312 is the best accountability measure I’ve had, and I’m excited to see what happens the rest of this semester with Deal Easy.

Extracurricular Activities, Community Work and Leadership Roles During College:

• Dean’s List all semesters
• Accepted to Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society during junior spring.
• President of the Kappa Gamma chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi
  • Kappa Kappa Psi is an honorary band fraternity focused on serving the community through music.
  • Volunteering initiatives include:
    • Broughal Middle School – Playing in their pep band for their rivalry game, assisting in operating their concerts (ticket sales, stage management, etc.), writing letters encouraging them to stick with music, playing with them in parades
    • Allentown Symphony Orchestra – Helped staff their instrument petting zoo, letting young children try different instruments for the first time
    • Performed for small businesses and the Fred B Rooney retirement home in South Bethlehem
    • Assisted in setup and takedown of Lehigh concerts
    • Assisted the Marching 97 with instrument cleaning, uniform breakdown, and shoe cleaning prior to LeLaf
    • Volunteering at regional marching band festivals (Collegiate Band Festival, USBands Marching Band Competition, USBands Drumline Competition)
  • Assisted our recruitment chair in almost doubling our chapter size this year from 21 to 41.
  • I oversee service, fundraising, and social committees/events, along with recruitment of new members. I lead bi-weekly chapter meetings and am responsible for all paperwork/communication with our district and national HQ.
  • Previously Treasurer and Service Coordinator as well.
    • As treasurer, I created our yearly budget and managed expenses and revenue throughout the year.
    • As service coordinator, I assisted in planning and promoting all service events for the academic year.
  • Data analyst for Lehigh Baseball during spring ‘26. The role is about to kick off, but I’ll be building visualizations, filtering data, and drawing insights to help our players gain an advantage at the plate and on the mound.
  • Marching Band – I play the alto saxophone!
  • Member of Climbing Club and Business Analytics Club
  • Participated in the LehighSiliconValley program during the winter term of my sophomore year.
    • Competitive one-week program where participants travel to San Francisco and meet with founders, CEOs, and other changemakers to hear their stories
    • Completed intensive live cases, providing recommendations to real companies with real issues
      • Generally only had a couple hours to formulate these, giving us practice with tough time pressure
    • LehighSiliconValley confirmed my thinking that I want to be an entrepreneur. I don’t mind working in industry, but I will always be leveling up my own ideas and ventures alongside or instead of a traditional 9-5. I love the idea of building from scratch, which is why I am so committed to shacpac_sports_cards and Deal Easy.

Where have you interned during your college career? FINRA (Chicago Office) as a Retail Firm Examinations Intern

• Reviewed firms’ general ledgers, account statements, customer complaints, and employees to identify sales practice risk. I got a lot of experience learning how to read financial records with an eye to government compliance, one of the most complicated applications of financial reporting.
• Gained advanced knowledge of financial markets, investment products, regulations, and trading patterns. As I studied for the Securities Industry Essentials (SIE) Exam (which I passed at the end of the summer), I learned so much about how financial markets operate, the different products sold, and the ethical implications involved in financial products.
• I attended calls with CEOs/CCOs of financial firms as part of my assistance with risk assessment. It was fascinating to see the different attitudes towards regulation of the executives, how they operated business meetings, and the questions asked by my colleagues about their operations.
• I also reviewed and created visualizations to identify outliers in financial activity, utilizing mostly Power BI and Excel.

Where will you be working after graduation? Unsure, but I plan on continuing shacpac_sports_cards and Deal Easy into my career. It’s important to me to be entrepreneurial throughout my life, and I plan on making time for independent projects wherever I end up.

I am currently seeking roles in sports – either business analytics, sports analytics, finance, or sales/business development. I’ve applied and reached out to different companies and teams, so we will see what happens!

Who is your favorite business professor? Professor Joshua Ehrig – I had him for 311 and 312, as well as this independent study. I need someone to tell me to execute instead of just think and research, and Ehrig brings his own industry experience as well as years of teaching to help me accomplish this goal. He’s also a proponent of tough love, which is also how I learn best. I value authenticity and honesty tremendously.

What is the biggest lesson you gained from studying business? It’s all about execution. You can research a target market, read a ton of articles, and ask potential customers what they’re looking for, but the most raw and honest feedback will come when you actually implement your business plan. This is relevant for both established companies and new ventures, and it requires a structure that can handle iteration and revisions.

What advice would you give to a student looking to major in a business-related field? I would advise potential business majors to practice making connections and acting on ideas. Network is very important in school and professionally, so getting into the practice of following up on first impressions will make your life much easier. I’d encourage potential business majors to try out whatever business ideas they have too. Even if they completely fail, I learned the most when I actually developed my website and tried some new strategies in my sports card business. It’s worth it to try things out whenever you can.

Looking back over your experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently in business school and why? It relates to my advice – I’d leverage my network earlier on in my college career. I only started networking with professionals towards the middle/end of my sophomore year, putting me in a tougher spot when finding opportunities later. I would definitely reach out to folks earlier, building relationships for when I was looking for opportunities.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What is one insight you gained from using AI? AI has been integrated into many of my business analytics courses through building chatbots and generating and reviewing code. We have also compared our own insights to what various AI models say, which was interesting. The biggest insight I gained from using AI was how easy it is to build a baseline. I utilized AI to assist in building the tech stack of Deal Easy and it sped up the process tremendously. Even when doing research, using AI to brainstorm potential questions or sources saves a lot of time. It is definitely important to integrate it, but also integrate it smartly with plenty of human review.

Which academic, extracurricular or personal achievement are you most proud of? I am most proud of building Deal Easy. It’s the first time I’ve ever even come close to building a brand-new product, which is a departure from my usual strengths: critiquing and building on existing strategies and business models. It’s exciting to completely own a venture, and I look forward to launching it soon.

Which classmate do you most admire? I admire Roman Moskalenko. He’s done so many impressive things already: he has built multiple businesses, including a language school and his current venture, Carmel Labs. He routinely puts in long hours to succeed in these projects while attending full-time classes, which I admire as someone who shares in that tough time management. I also got to know him really well during LehighSiliconValley, and he’s been a great friend ever since. I look forward to seeing what he does in the future.

Who would you most want to thank for your success? I want to thank my parents. I went into Lehigh business undecided, took a full year-and-a-half to declare my major, pursued a ton of different extracurriculars and classes, and continued to pursue entrepreneurship projects outside of the classroom. Throughout all of that, my parents wholeheartedly supported and encouraged me. They continue to do so as I’m figuring out my role after graduation.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list?

Number one is working for a sports franchise in Chicago. It would be a dream come true to supplement my die-hard fandom by assisting in their success. Sports analytics is such a fascinating use case that I am excited to explore with Lehigh Baseball, and I’d love to continue that professionally.

Number two is successfully building my own company or being on the early team of a successful startup. I would love to build something from the ground up. Hopefully that happens with Deal Easy, but I will learn a lot regardless of its degree of success and apply it to future ventures.

What made Jason such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2026?

“Jason holds an outstanding 3.95 GPA and pairs his academic excellence with an impressive entrepreneurial drive. He runs ShacPac, a business focused on buying, selling, and trading sports cards through social media, online marketplaces, and conventions, and is currently developing Deal Easy, which is a customer relationship management platform designed specifically for hobbyists, beginning with sports cards with plans to expand into other collectible categories.

In addition to his entrepreneurial work, Jason brings a diverse range of professional and leadership experiences. He interned at FINRA as a retail examination intern, where he presented recommendations to senior leaders on improving and streamlining internal collaboration. He also serves as President of Kappa Kappa Psi (Kappa Gamma), leading a chapter of more than 25 musicians and coordinating service-oriented initiatives that use music to positively impact the community. This only further demonstrates the breadth of his leadership and diverse experiences.

Jason is highly personable and collaborative, while also being unafraid to challenge assumptions or reframe problems when initial solutions fall short. His work ethic and commitment to excellence are exceptional, and his intellectual curiosity consistently elevates not only his own work, but also the performance of those around him. It has truly been an honor to be part of his undergraduate journey.”

Joshua Ehrig
Senior Professor of Practice, Department of Management
College of Business, Lehigh University

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