Emma Foresi, an Industrial and Operations Engineering major, is a part of CFE’s Entrepreneurs Leadership Program, is a long-standing CFE Instructional Assistant, and helps bring CFE awareness to U-M students as a Brand Ambassador. She believes that Entrepreneurship can be a force for good as it solves a lot of problems and can provide solutions that can help us as a society to move to a more equitable future.
“I have always wanted to own my business and start my own company,” said Emma.
Her first venture into entrepreneurship was in the ninth grade when she was taking AP US Government and Politics with her classmates.
“When, upon our first examinations, there was a stunning amount of people who failed – I saw an opportunity. I started selling my (proven to be effective) study guides to my classmates for $5 each. Eventually, I had converted almost all of my classmates into customers.”
Emma was introduced to the CFE first by enrolling ENTR 413 – Entrepreneurial Marketing. Ted Dacko taught this class and she learned a lot about the inner workings of startups and how marketing alone could make or break a new venture. From there, she was recommended to be an IA. This gave her an opportunity to get more involved with the CFE.
After getting started, she continued to get even more involved in the world of entrepreneurship at the University. She became a brand ambassador for CFE, talking to interested students about ENTR courses and CFE co-curriculars. Emma has continued her U-M journey as part of the latest ELP Cohort which has been helping her take a deep dive into her own ventures.
“The CFE has 100% helped me narrow my focus in the aspects of entrepreneurship that I favor. My time with ELP has helped me explore my own venture ideas, and now I’m working on building my own start-up business model. The mentors that the CFE provides have also helped me to know exactly where to start in manifesting my ideas.”
In the future, she hopes to enter the industry (as an operation engineer), and build some personal equity. In about 5 to 10 years time she wants to fully dedicate herself to building her own company. Throughout her time in a platform job, she wants to network with her coworkers and continuously learn more about establishing a venture.
Emma has some great advice for the students – “I would tell undergraduate students to allow themselves to dive into the CFE as much as they can. The amount of resources at your fingertips is unimaginable. Also, college provides the perfect safety net to explore startups without feeling like you’re swimming in the deep end. Enjoy it while you can!”