by Sharon Sanders
In creating Clarity Juice by Syd, a line of organic fruit and vegetable juices, Sydney Peyser ’10 focuses as keenly as she did playing the attack position on the women’s lacrosse team.
“I followed my passion for clean eating, clean drinking, and clean thinking and created a fresh, healthy product,” Peyser says. She was also inspired to become an Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching certifi ed coach by her friend, Mica Diamond ’93, Westport, Conn.
Peyser, an art graduate, experienced increased physical well-being and mental clarity after frequenting the juice bar at Whole Foods Market. She began concocting juices from local organic produce in her Breville® juicer and selling them at Saratoga Springs, N.Y., farmers’ markets, lacrosse tournaments, yoga studios, and other venues. Flavors such as Beetox (beet, apple, lemon, ginger, and carrot) were instant hits.
Peyser is now bottling Clarity Juice for distribution in the upstate New York market, using cutting-edge high pressure processing that maintains nutrients using pressure, not heat, to kill harmful bacteria. She plans to begin national distribution this fall.
Her entrepreneurship is a journey of self-discovery that began at Lafayette. “Finding the art department helped me so much by challenging me to think bigger, think differently, turn dreams into concrete reality,” she says, naming mentors: Ed Kerns, Clapp Professor of Art, Jim Toia, director of community-based teaching, and Lew Minter, retired director of the media lab.
Peyser has learned that building a business is like masonry—laying one brick at a time. She earned an FDA-mandated hazard analysis and critical control point certification at Cornell University and completed a Columbia University online personal leadership course.
“It was a vision, and I made it concrete,” says Peyser.