UNI senior, TJ Nissen, owner of Network Nirvana, a business in the R. J. McElroy Student Business Incubator, was awarded the Grinnell State Bank (GBS) scholarship. The scholarship comes with a dedicated office for his business.

The scholarship and suite was the idea of David Jones and Austin Jones, both UNI alumni and owners of Grinnell State Bank.

Nissen, from Evansdale, Iowa, continually puts his graphic technologies major to use in creating game worlds for Minecraft. Nissen originally started a Network Nirvana club in his early years at UNI. In the club, he and other members tried to sell Recodexer, a gaming manual, at the annual Rod Com, but sales were minimal. Then Nissen became involved in with the JPEC and this lead him to launch Network Nirvana.

The JPEC Student Business Incubator (SBI) has provided Nissen with invaluable experiences, including meeting John Pappajohn at the venture competition in 2017. Nissen said, “It was terrifying but so helpful to receive advice from the man who started our program.”

Nissen continues to propel his business onward by creating new gaming worlds and manuals. He is currently working diligently on producing his third and fourth books. Staying on track, his next major game world is set to be released this summer. While working closely with the Cedar Falls Public Library this past year, Nissen has broadened the network and fan bases substantially. Nissen said, “I’m excited about our rise in player base over the past year and can’t wait to see where Network Nirvana goes next.”

To find out more about Network Nirvana, visit the website at https://www.networknirvana.net/.