Entrepreneurship


MasterCard Worldwide Champions Women at Work

MasterCard Worldwide, the recent platinum sponsor of UConn’s third annual Women Entrepreneurs Empowerment Forum, has been a long-time champion of women in the workplace.

In addition to offering a powerful mentoring program to help women advance up the career ladder within its own company, MasterCard also monitors gender issues around the globe.Continue Reading


‘Top Notch’

UConn EBV Class of 2015
EBV Class of 2015 (Lisa Ducharme)

UConn Graduates 25 from EBV Program; Veteran Entrepreneurs Poised to Start Own Businesses

After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, retired U.S. Marine Corp. Staff Sergeant Lawrence “LD” Dapo’s assignment was to fly then-Vice President Cheney to an undisclosed, secure location.

“It was all business that day,” Dapo recalled. “I had no time to reflect on the tragedy until afterwards. But that was the day I knew I would marry my wife. She was quite the trooper.”Continue Reading


Terrific Tea-riffic!

Mario Leite ’98 and Souvannee Leite ’98
Mario Leite ’98 and Souvannee Leite ’98 (Nathan Oldham/UConn School of Business)

Enterprising Husband-and-Wife Team Create Award-Winning, Tea-infused Ice Cream

What happens when you combine two of America’s top comfort foods with the ambition and knowledge of an enterprising UConn husband-and-wife team?

The result is an award-winning, tea-infused dessert, called Tea•rrific! Ice Cream. The company, founded in 2011, is now producing 23,000 pints of ice cream a month, which is sold at Whole Foods, Stop & Shop and specialty stores and restaurants from Maine to the Washington D.C.-area.Continue Reading


Accelerate UConn Welcomes 1st Class of Entrepreneurs

UConn Health- Accelerate UConn, a National Science Foundation (NSF) entrepreneurship program at UConn, has selected 10 faculty-student teams to receive seed grants and business training aimed at more quickly and successfully commercializing early-stage technologies developed at the University.


Cosmo Editor Shares Advice

Joanna Coles, Cosmopolitan Magazine

Work Becomes Easier When You Get to the Top

How do I ask for a raise?

That’s one of the most common questions that the editors of Cosmopolitan magazine are asked every year, said Editor-in-Chief Joanna Coles.

Coles, who since 2012 has led the world’s largest women’s magazine, with 18 million readers in the U.S. alone, regaled some 300 women with stories of career and life, at the third annual Women Entrepreneurs Empowerment Forum on Sept. 18. The event was presented by Platinum Sponsor MasterCard and hosted by the UConn School of Business at UConn Stamford.Continue Reading


Kevin Bouley’s Passion Is Promoting Connecticut’s Brainpower, Creativity, Innovations

As a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, Kevin Bouley ’80 is always searching for the next great innovation.

But what he really seeks—which is even more rare and a thousand times more intriguing—is the next great innovator.

“I spend a fair amount of time at UConn, visiting the labs and walking the hallways meeting with faculty, undergraduate students and graduate students, looking for that spark, looking for that student or faculty member who wants to build a business, wants to launch a company based on a technology they’ve developed in a lab,” he said.Continue Reading


Cosmo Editor: “Develop It to Scale”

Stamford Advocate – To hear Joanna Coles tell it, any discussion about women’s entrepreneurship is inextricably linked to broader issues of women in the workplace and all the facets that go into a story of success or struggle: work-life balance, fair compensation, effective communication and assertiveness..


UConn Launches New Entrepreneurship Program

Hartford Business Journal – Q&A talks about Accelerate UConn, a new entrepreneurship program at the University of Connecticut, with Michelle Cote, managing director of UConn’s Connecticut Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, and UConn business professor Timothy B. Folta.


What’s the BIG Idea?

What's the BIG Idea?

Six Finalists from UConn’s ‘Innovation Quest’ Impress Angel Investors

Kyle Mahoney ’18 just finished his freshman year at UConn, but already he has created a therapeutic massage device that he believes will be a retail blockbuster.

Mahoney and his business partner, Chris Brown ’15, were among six teams recognized as the best entrepreneurial ventures in UConn’s highly competitive Innovation Quest. Continue Reading