A student’s lifelong battle with Leukemia has inspired a new social media startup focusing on promoting a social movement that is based on positive and uplifting content.

Hunter Wesolowski, a junior business administration major on track to graduate in December, was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, or CML, when he was just 19 months old. CML, a type of Leukemia that is most commonly found in men in their 50s, is a cancer of the white blood cells, and Wesolowski’s diagnosis at 19 months is extremely rare.

Wesolowski’s battle with CML has presented him with more emotional and physical challenges in 21 years than many people face in an entire lifetime, but he has not let these challenges deter him from living his life with a positive outlook. In fact, his experiences with CML, the challenges it has presented, and his emphasis on positivity, served as inspiration for starting Hunting Positivity LLC with his friend Nate Herman in 2024, a social media company and movement based on positivity and encouragement.

Herman, a junior aerospace engineering major at Penn State University, met Wesolowski at an event at Penn State Wilkes-Barre during their first year of college. The two immediately became friends, bonding over their love of golf and their faith.

The story of Hunting Positivity’s beginning is rooted well before 2024. To understand where Hunting Positivity currently is, and where it is going, it is important to understand where Wesolowski has been. After his diagnosis, Wesolowski’s parents were told his chances of survival were slim to none.

“When I was diagnosed, my parents were traveling all over the U.S. looking for the best hospitals, and they didn’t know where to go because many [hospitals] were saying ‘we can cure him from this type of cancer, but he will probably die in another way,’ and that’s not the answer they wanted to hear,” said Wesolowski.

Wesolowski’s luck began to turn when a doctor in Oregon, who created the medicine he is currently taking, recommended that his parents take him to Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, where they found the right doctor and program. One out of three people do not survive the treatment program that Wesolowski went through at Children’s Hospital, but fortunately, he was able to make it through the program alive. However, he has relapsed a few times since and still continues to undergo treatment.

“My white blood count is still elevated, and that’s why I still have to take chemo to this day. I’m not in remission. I don’t technically have cancer. I am kind of in my own stage. They aren’t really sure what the next move is for [me] because they don’t have [that] type of research yet,” Wesolowski said.

Wesolowski went through dark times in 2016, when his peers at school added insult to injury by bullying him frequently. Wesoloski’s experience with bullying was emotionally draining, but it also led to the concept that would eventually give him and Herman the idea to start Hunting Positivity.

“2016 I went through a rough patch, [I] got bullied, and it was like ‘what do I do? I keep on getting pushed down,’ so I decided to make a Snapchat story called Positive Vibes Only, where I posted inspirational quotes and short form video. I quickly got a following of over 800 people, and actually it was kind of crazy how random people would just come on and be like ‘oh, I think I saw you on my friend’s story, would you be able to add me to your Snapchat story?’ So, it was kind of cool,” said Wesolowski.

Wesolowski continued posting his Positive Vibes Only Snapchat stories until 2024, but that evolved into starting Hunting Positivity with Herman in the summer of 2024, when the two were working together at a summer camp in the Poconos called Rising Light Ridge, a ministry and recreational campus that was purchased by the Tim Tebow Foundation. The two friends spent their summer Monday through Friday working 12-hour days with underprivileged kids from the Northeast Pennsylvania area.

“We realized that, especially through our interactions, there was a lot of negativity, whether it be at home or peer to peer, but especially with social media. So [Nate and I] came together, I introduced him to my snap chat story, and we wanted to do something more, so we created Hunting Positivity.”

Herman jumped on the opportunity to both spread positivity to others and get involved in areas in which he had already expressed interest.

“He introduced it to me, and for a couple of years I kind of had an interest in the media/entrepreneurship space. I kind of wanted to get into that, but I didn’t know how or what to do. So, he introduced that to me, and we decided to make it bigger. We started out with a podcast and created all of our social media channels. That didn’t really take off until we joined a couple of entrepreneurship programs,” said Herman.

It was a Misericordia professor who pointed the two friends in the right direction to develop their ideas into a concrete business plan. Michele Conway, Instructor of Entrepreneurship and Management, informed them of two local technology-based entrepreneurship programs that helped turn their dream into a reality.

Techcelerator, a ten-week educational workshop in Luzerne County that’s geared toward equipping early-stage entrepreneurs with the proper tools and resources they need to succeed, was the first program Wesolowski and Herman participated in.

“You meet and you work on your business plan and customer discovery. You kind of just get mentored in the aspects of being an entrepreneur,” Herman said.

Techcelerator also helped the duo decide on the best way to expand their brand and reach the most amount of people.

“It originally started out as just the short form social media, but after several iterations going through these programs we kind of settled on the best use of our talents and the way we can spread this project the most is by the use of an app. Um, so we started building that, and we are currently in the development phase for that app,” Herman said.

After they completed Techcelerator, Wesolowski and Herman entered TecBridge, the second of the two entrepreneurship programs recommended by Conway. The duo made the finals of the TecBridge competition and presented their business plan to a panel of judges. An award ceremony will be held at the F.M. Kirby Center on May 1 to honor the winners.

The duo’s vision for the app is similar to TikTok, but with only motivational and uplifting content. The CO-founders/CEOs are using Artificial Intelligence to regulate the content to make sure it adheres to the app’s standards. Herman, who manages the software engineering aspect of the company, which includes the app’s development, hopes to have the app ready for launch by the end of the year.

“It’s in the works. We are hoping for a full release of the app, or at least the beta version to get some testing done, towards the end of this year or even in the fall, and then a full launch in 2026,” Herman said.

While Herman handles software engineering, Wesolowski, a business administration major and mass communications and design minor, oversees a lot of the business side of the company as well as the website and graphic design aspects. Recently, the two added Alyson Lenker to the team, a first-year Misericordia nursing major. Lenker serves in a Project Manager/Administrative Assistant role, helping Herman and Wesolowski stay on task while also coordinating their schedules and organizing their projects.

“I went to high school with Alyson and then we reconnected back at Misericordia. She does a lot of great service and [she’s] always helping others. We formed a relationship, and we felt she would be a great part of the team. We want others to get involved for our movement to make a true impact on our world,” Wesolowski said.

Lenker also provides a unique insight as a psychology minor, “I can probably add some of the psychological aspects of my learning and development to the app,” she said.

The trio is optimistic and has a clear vision for the future of the company.

“In five years, the app will be fully launched and developed, and we would like to have well over a million users, like a million monthly users, so that’s definitely a business goal. So that’s kind of more like a concrete thing, but kind of our overall vision is less concrete. We want to have this thing where Hunting Positivity is a household name, where people can look to that and know it as a positive movement, as a lifestyle movement that originated on social media, but eventually translates into their daily lives,” Herman said.

While the app is in development, the company is still active on social media (Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube @huntingpositvity), and is currently generating some revenue through clothing sales. Eventually the hope for Hunting Positivity is to have the app, a clothing line, monetized social media channels, and seminars to help springboard their movement across the nation.

Local industrial equipment supplier Milazzo Industries has agreed to sponsor Hunting Positivity, which signals the potential the company has going forward. Herman and Wesolowski’s futures are also bright, and considering the road the two took to get here makes it all the more impressive.

“Even when I was younger, they said I probably would never learn my ABCs or multiplication, and now I’m speaking about going to law school,” Wesolowski said.

Wesolowski has a message he would like to share with everyone in the Misericordia community, including their friends and family members.

“Embrace the good, share the good, be the good. Join the movement today with Hunting Positivity, because we aim for greatness,” he said.