After a rigorous recruitment process, the CFE’s Entrepreneurs Leadership Program has announced it’s 2020 cohort.
ELP provides deep training and mentorship for a select cohort of students to develop the functional, managerial, and leadership skills that differentiate the good from the great entrepreneurs.
The program equips some of the University of Michigan’s most driven minds with a meticulous experiential curriculum to lead them onto an entrepreneurial path during and after their college career.
To celebrate the new cohort and welcome them to the CFE and ELP community, the program held a kickoff at the startup coworking space Cahoots in Ann Arbor.
“We are very proud that ELP recruits students from all schools and colleges, academic programs, and years,” said Nick Moroz, assistant director of entrepreneurial practice. “This multidisciplinary quality of the incoming cohort is exceptional, featuring first year students studying computer science to doctoral students focusing on molecular and integrative physiology.”
Students in the program first engage in a three-credit Winter semester course that encompasses entrepreneurial fundamentals such as financial analysis, business development tactics, and strategic product positioning taught by entrepreneurial thought leaders.
During this course ELP students visit a series of startups in the Michigan entrepreneurial ecosystem, as well as startups in hotbeds of innovation such as New York City and San Francisco.
Then, during the summer, students are expected to gain hands-on experience working in an entrepreneurial ecosystem by completing an internship at a growing startup, starting their own venture, or shadowing an entrepreneurial leader.
Once fall begins, students take another three-credit course that serves to solidify team-building aspects of startups and project management as they work on a semester-long capstone project.
“This fifth cohort is a major milestone,” said Moroz. “At this point in time, the first ELP cohort has, or is about to graduate from Michigan and will join the entrepreneurial community full time.
“We now have more than 100 students who have gone through the program.”
Along with the new cohort, another new development for the program is the introduction of two new co-instructors, Nick Cucinelli and Grace Hsia, who both boast significant entrepreneurial experience.
Nick (MS ‘05 MBA ‘05), CEO and Co-Founder of Endectra, is a serial entrepreneur with vast experience mentoring and leading high-tech ventures. Prior to Endectra, he served as CEO of CSquared Innovations Inc., a U-M spinout commercializing additive manufacturing technologies which offer a cost effective and highly scalable “platform” approach to the synthesis of nanostructured materials and films for advanced batteries, capacitors, photovoltaics, and industrial coatings.
He is a graduate of the U-M Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, earning his MS is Sustainable Energy Systems, and earned his MBA with a concentration in Entrepreneurship. He is also a graduate of the Coast Guard Academy (‘95).
Grace (BS ‘12 MS ‘13) is the Co-Founder and CEO of Warmilu LLC which is commercializing a non-electric warming technology for newborns. She co-invented the technology as an undergraduate in the U-M Materials Science department as part of a capstone program.
She has since grown the business through partnership with groups like Doctors Without Borders to warm more than 8,000 babies in 32 hospitals based in 12 countries.
Grace earned her BS in Materials Science and MS in Entrepreneurship.
“With the additional resources of these two new co-instructors, the program has matured greatly, exiting pilot-mode, and we are all very excited to see how this community of entrepreneurial leaders grow,” said Moroz.