Creating a New Way to Stay Hydrated, Wentworth Grad Sips on Success
They are the builders, the thinkers, and the problem-solvers. In the "Defined by Doing" series, we highlight exceptional alumni who are translating their education into action and redefining what is possible in their fields. From recent graduates to seasoned industry leaders, these stories prove that the Wentworth community is making a meaningful impact at every stage of the journey.
When athletes reach for a sports drink designed to replenish key minerals and electrolytes after a training session, Felipe Pinto wants it to be his.
The Wentworth Institute of Technology graduate was inspired by a simple revelation: The sports drinks he had grown up drinking weren't necessarily as healthy as he had assumed.
“During my time at Wentworth, I had been drinking a lot of sports drinks while working out, and then I dislocated my knee, and that’s when my trainer told me about the hidden dangers of these drinks and noted that I’d been drinking them too much,” Pinto said. “I had been thinking of LeBron James, Jayson Tatum—all these players who sponsored drinks like that. That’s what I grew up on.”
With the launch of his newly developed beverage, Elite Hydration, Pinto—who graduated from Wentworth in 2025 with a degree in Business Management—believes there’s a healthier way to support athletic recovery.
“When we were young, we weren’t educated that those sports drinks actually lead to an overconsumption of sugar, especially for youth, and for adults who aren’t exercising as much at a high-performance level where they would need all those carbs and sugars,” Pinto said. “And once I found that out, I looked into other products, and I realized there’s not really any sports drink on the market that’s supportive of health.”
Now, Pinto’s working to get healthier alternatives of the nostalgic drinks in front of the region’s athletes and children alike.
“Our whole mission is essentially to create healthier hydration, especially by creating an exciting version of these drinks for kids so that they and their parents don’t have to think twice,” he said.
For Pinto, who is also the CEO and founder of the Ventura Damon Youth Sports Foundation, the entrepreneurial process for Elite Hydration officially commenced while he was a student at Wentworth.
“At the university, I participated in the Accelerate Co-op for Entrepreneurs program, where I got paid to work on Elite full time. That’s where I learned more about market research and finding more data around the effects of sports drinks on health,” he said. “And I found a seven-year case study with 7,500 participants that related sports drinks directly to obesity.”
With a problem established and a goal in mind, Pinto began searching for a trajectory that would propel his product forward.
“I was tapping all my resources at Wentworth and had asked one of my professors during one of my first courses, ‘Where do I find someone that’ll help me make a drink? Where can I get a sense of direction?’ He was so surprised, because it’s a really complicated question,” Pinto laughed. “But he sent me down the path of talking to a university chemistry professor, and she helped me establish the initial formulation.”
“I started creating my own models and one thing led to another,” he continued. “Over the past four years, I went from talking to chemistry professors to having one of the biggest formulation teams in the Northeast region create our next four flavors. And now we are in the sales phase.”
The first place that Elite Hydration will hit the market is Wentworth itself.
“We’re coming in this fall with coolers for the university’s trainers, and we’re hoping to get a fridge there, as well, of our tropical fruit punch flavor,” Pinto said.
Soon, Pinto aims to have the beverage available at schools, universities, and healthcare organizations in the community and plans to expand even further after that.
“We’ve really ramped up in the last four months or so and we’re really excited to have a sales pipeline to other universities and athletic programs,” he said.
Before he concocted the recipe for the drink’s success, Pinto was observing the everyday efforts of his parents while growing up. He said he has always been motivated by their work ethic and perseverance.
“My mother was an entrepreneur, and my father had multiple jobs, so I knew what hard work and discipline was. My mother’s entrepreneurial spirit really shined through after coming from another country to the United States, where she didn’t speak much of the language and didn’t understand much of the culture,” he said. “Those experiences played a role in what I was exploring for my career.”
Pinto said he owes much of his business success to Wentworth, for its eager-to-help faculty and a plethora of readily available resources like Accelerate, the university’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center, where he participated in both pitch competitions and their accelerator program.
“It wasn’t so long ago that I was a student myself, but I’m applying everything that I’ve learned at Wentworth at a really exponential rate,” he said. “Whether using the university’s library for research, participating in the Accelerate co-op program, or partnering with my professors, Wentworth really set me up with everything I needed to pursue this goal.”
Looking ahead, Pinto said he’s excited for the momentum that Elite Hydration is gaining and is passionate about supporting the community through his health-forward company.
“What it boils down to is just making sure that, day by day, everything’s moving along, whether that’s one step, three steps, five steps, 10 steps, or even half a step,” he said. “All the steps matter every day to reach our overall goal, mission, and vision of what we’re doing. We’re doing a little bit of everything and just trying to make the world a better place.”