Lancaster Student and Father Named A Finalist For A Statewide Innovation Award

A company co founded in Lancaster by a high school senior and her father is one of 18 finalists for the 28th annual InnoVision Awards, the only finalist from York or Lancaster counties in this year’s field.

Pathly, co founded by Grace Brusky and her father Alan Brusky, is a finalist in the Community Enrichment category. The InnoVision Awards Board of Directors announced the full slate Wednesday, a day after a reception for finalists at The Palmetto Club in Columbia sponsored by the South Carolina Research Authority. Winners will be named Nov. 5 at the Thornblade Club in Greer.

What The Platform Does

Pathly is an artificial intelligence guidance platform for students deciding what comes after high school. Students take assessments covering personality, values and emotional intelligence, which the company says run under 15 minutes, and the system matches them against more than 1,000 careers. It then builds a roadmap that breaks a career goal into weekly and monthly steps, down to which classes to take next semester and which certifications will be needed. An AI mentor answers questions around the clock.

The platform does not treat a four year degree as the default. Trade schools, apprenticeships, certifications and starting a business appear alongside colleges.

Pathly is free for students with no per student fees, according to the company. Revenue comes from schools, districts and independent educational consultants, who get a dashboard showing where each student stands and what to raise before a meeting. Schools and districts can start with a free pilot. Whether any school in Lancaster County School District or a neighboring district is using it has not been announced.

A Familiar Name In Lancaster County Conservation Circles

Grace Brusky is a student at Cyber Academy of South Carolina, a virtual charter school, and serves as a Charter School Student Ambassador for the Charter Institute at Erskine, the statewide charter authorizer that oversees it.

Her work in Lancaster County predates the company. She won an Outstanding Youth Board Member Award for her service with the Lancaster Soil and Water Conservation District, and teaches conservation classes in person in Lancaster. In January she presented at the South Carolina Conservation Partnership Conference in Spartanburg, where she demonstrated Carolina Nature Adventures, a platform she designed that turns state science standards into 18 digital games for students from kindergarten through 12th grade. She has also been building statewide materials to help high school students prepare for the Envirothon, an environmental competition.

At that conference she met with State Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver, South Carolina Governor’s School for Agriculture President Timothy Keown, and Will Brinkley, the farmer known online as the Tar Heel Farmer, about drawing students toward environmental careers.

“Students cannot pursue paths they do not know exist,” she said in an account of the conference published by the Charter Institute at Erskine, adding that being the youngest person in the room by decades underscored why students belong in conversations about their own futures. That is essentially the argument Pathly is built on.

Privacy Terms

Because the product is aimed at minors, the company addresses student data directly. Pathly says it follows the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, does not share personal data, and runs its AI mentor on what it calls zero retention models, meaning student conversations are not used to train outside systems. Students choose what a counselor can see and can revoke that access. Those are the company’s own representations, and no independent audit is cited.

The Category And The Competition

InnoVision updated two categories for the 2026 cycle. Community Enrichment combines the former Education and Community Service awards into a single recognition for innovations that improve quality of life through educational opportunity, community health or cultural enrichment.

Pathly is competing against Dreamgarten, a Greenville company whose burnout prevention program for doctors in training was validated with Prisma Health and Furman University, and Quick Connect by MyUI.ai, a communication platform for senior living communities built on Clemson University research.

Finalists in all six categories were chosen by a panel of independent judges from outside South Carolina, three per category. The rest of the field sits in Charleston, Greenville and Columbia, with entries also from Clemson University, Fountain Inn and Ridgeway. The Tech Founders of York County is among this year’s InnoVision sponsors.

Two additional honors will be presented Nov. 5 and have not been announced: the Ibrahim Janajreh Michelin Young Innovator Award, for programs that push South Carolina students toward STEM fields, and the Dr. Charles Townes Individual Achievement Award, the organization’s highest.

The platform is at pathly.com. Information on the November celebration is at innovisionawards.org.

Full List of Nominees