Contributed by Jacob Rossow, Mpowered Marketing Director, Undergrad LSA Student
This past March 12th and 13th, Mpowered Entrepreneurship, in partnership with the Engineering Career Resource Center and the Center for Entrepreneurship, hosted the most successful Startup Career Fair in recent memory. The two-day fair spanned Michigan’s campus, with the first day held on North Campus and the second at the Ross School of Business on Central Campus.
The turnout was remarkable, with more than 300 students attending and 9 startups participating over both days of the event. Students from across the university came out in full force to connect with startups and entrepreneurs from a wide range of industries. What stood out just as much as the sheer number of attendees was the diversity of their backgrounds. Engineers, business students, LSA students, arts majors, and everything in between walked through the doors, a testament to the fact that entrepreneurship doesn’t belong to any one discipline. It lives at the intersection of all of them.
That cross-disciplinary energy is exactly what makes events like this so valuable. Beyond networking, the fair gave students a chance to explore real job and internship opportunities at early-stage companies, get an inside look at what the startup environment truly looks like day to day, and build the kind of professional skills that are uniquely valuable in fast-moving, entrepreneurial settings. Whether a student came in with a background in computer science, economics, or the humanities, there was a place for them in the conversations happening across both campuses.
The attendance and enthusiasm from both students and companies alike are a strong signal that Michigan’s startup ecosystem is thriving and that the next generation of founders, operators, and innovators is ready to step into it, from every corner of campus.
A huge thank you to the Mpowered Entrepreneurship team, the ECRC team, the CFE, and all participating startups for their leadership in making this event a reality, and to everyone who showed up and made it the biggest one yet. We can’t wait to see what the next Startup Career Fair brings.