“Extremely impressive,” answers Brian Cayce, managing director of The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, when asked to describe the 26 fellows who are part of the center’s 2024 fellowship program.
There are 20 MBA students and six undergraduate BBA students currently serving in the program’s fourth and fifth cohorts. Of these fellows, many have either started their own businesses or innovated within one. According to Cayce, nearly a quarter of the fellows either currently manage a startup or have in the recent past.
These students have some level of experience that indicates they’re willing and ready to explore what are otherwise unconventional paths for a lot of Goizueta students.
Brian Cayce, Managing Director, Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation
As fellows, the students will have access to unique learning opportunities in three areas. These include venture development, capital formation, and corporate innovation and creativity. These opportunities include classes, experiential learning, and opportunities to connect and work with members of Atlanta’s startup and venture community.
From Healthcare to Film: Meet Two of the 2024 Fellows
Omid Razmpour 26MBA/PhD
The early stages of Omid Razmpour’s 26MBA/PhD nursing career coincided with the worst part of the Covid pandemic. Razmpour soon found himself battling burnout and let his manager know he was struggling. But rather than provide him with the resources he needed, Razmpour’s manager told him everyone was facing the same issues. So, when the struggle became unsustainable, he left. “That wasn’t my goal—to leave my job within the first year,” says Razmpour.
Razmpour’s experience as a nurse made him passionate about reducing turnover in the nursing profession. To that end, Razmpour, who is also pursuing his PhD at Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, created the RETAIN (Retention Evaluation and Turnover Analysis) Framework©, an innovative, data-driven approach to quantifying the nuanced cost of nurse turnover. With RETAIN and his PhD dissertation, Razmpour is attempting to make the business case for investing in the nursing profession. “My partners and I really think this project has the potential to be industry-changing,” he says.
Razmpour sees his time as a fellow at the center much as a nursing student who learns in the classroom and then applies that knowledge in a lab or hospital.
I’m really passionate about entrepreneurship, innovation, and investment, but if I didn’t have the opportunity to apply that knowledge, then I feel like it’s kind of a waste.
Omid Razmpour 25MBA
“That’s what the center offers,” Razmpour explains. “I’m going to be able to get into projects, work with the team, and be able to apply my learning.”
Cayce is excited to work with Razmpour to support his curiosity on how to grow nurse-founded ventures solving big problems the entire industry faces. “The fact that Razmpour has felt the pain of the target population he seeks to serve offers him the tremendous advantage of empathy,” says Cayce. “This will serve him as he evaluates startups and makes investment recommendations in this space.”
Parallel to his involvement with the fellowship program, Razmpour has connected with Nurse Capital. The venture capital company was started by a pair of former nurses and invests in “nurse entrepreneurs.” He’s working with the company’s general partners on due diligence, potential investment opportunities, and the organization’s backend operations.
Patrycja Kepa 21BBA 26MBA
After a brief stint in consulting, Patrycja Kepa 21BBA 26MBA joined independent film-making company Anchored Lens Productions as its chief operating officer. Dedicated to producing high-quality content, Anchored Lens is also leveraging the exposure that the film industry provides to help end homelessness (10% of the company’s profits from its feature films goes to its homeless foundation). The production company’s second feature film, The Grove, will debut in theaters in February 2025, and Anchored Lens is currently in talks with streaming services to distribute the film.
Cayce is excited to work with Kepa on the business side of media and entertainment, exploring the role of technology as well as potential opportunities for startups like Anchored Lens. According to Cayce, the fact that Kepa has raised a significant amount of capital and is currently running her business while also pursuing her advanced degree “is kind of off the charts for a Goizueta student.”
Kepa hopes to leverage Goizueta’s and the center’s networks and to learn from fellow entrepreneurs—especially when it comes to a long-term vision for Anchored Lens.
I’m excited to get guidance from people who’ve actually done that. I’m very open to new opportunities and to collaborating and seeing how it can benefit Anchored Lens Productions.
Patrycja Kepa 21BBA 26MBA
The center is working with the organizers of Avant South to bring its annual gathering of creatives, entrepreneurs, and business professionals from industries such as entertainment, music, content creation, and e-sports, to the Emory campus in the coming years. “I think there’s a huge opportunity at Emory to introduce more initiatives—even courses—about media and entrepreneurship,” says Kepa. “Atlanta is such a hot spot right now, and I don’t think it’s been fully tapped into yet.”
Expanding the Fellowship’s footprint
Later this year, the center fellows will get a chance to work on two technology conferences.
This October, the fellows will create a concierge-type service that matches attending venture capitalists with startups at Venture Atlanta, a conference that supports tech companies in the Southeast. And at Startup Atlanta, a non-profit focused on connecting, growing, and promoting Atlanta’s startup ecosystem, center fellows will provide judges with the due diligence reports to help them determine winners in several showcase categories.
“Students will see the themes that are really driving innovation. And that’s not just at Emory, but across the Atlanta ecosystem and beyond,” says Cayce. “They’ll also get exposure to some of the best startups in the area and learn about their process of securing investors for their startups.”
Tapping into the Emory Ecosystem
Additionally, the fellowship program continues to build connections across the Emory University ecosystem. The collaboration between Goizueta and the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing on behalf of Razmpour is one such example. “We are diligently working to collaborate across the University with other schools,” Cayce explains.
This includes working with the University’s new vice provost for entrepreneurship, Wilbur Lam, professor and W. Paul Bowers Research Chair in the Department of Pediatrics and the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University and Georgia Tech. Lam has been tasked with fostering a vibrant startup culture throughout the University.
The center is also assembling a robust mentor network. It hopes to offer “venture mentoring,” a team mentoring service for startups across the Emory ecosystem. “We want to be an agent for growing the number of founders that come through Goizueta’s doors and see success with their efforts,” says Cayce.
Learn more about The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Emory University’s Goizueta Business.
