For the 10th year this March, Emory University’s Goizueta Business School convened students, alumni, founders, and investors for the annual Entrepreneurship Summit—an event that has grown into a signature expression of the school’s commitment to experiential learning, venture creation, and cross-campus collaboration.
Founded and led by the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) program office, and now supported in partnership with the Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, the summit brings together the Emory entrepreneurship ecosystem to share knowledge and insights, ignite creativity, and create connection—all in service of motivating venture creation.
This year’s summit unfolded across three major components: a founder’s address delivered by Goizueta BBA exchange alumnus Fridtjof Berge, a highly interactive Friday morning luminary session featuring accomplished Emory entrepreneurs, and the final round of the Pitch the Summit competition.
Berge, co-founder and chief business officer of global venture capital firm Antler, opened the summit with a Thursday evening fireside chat. With Antler holding the distinction of the world’s most active early-stage investment firm, having backed more than 1,650 companies across emerging sectors including AI, fintech, and climate tech, Berge brought a global founder-and-investor perspective to the event’s opening night.
“I was thrilled that Fritz agreed to literally travel across the globe to come back to Emory and share his story,” says Andrea Hershatter, senior associate dean of undergraduate education and professor in the practice of organization and management. “Antler has found a way to disrupt the early-stage investment model. The candid insights and authentic perspectives he shared provided an unparalleled insider’s view to key drivers of venture success and outlined the ways in which access to venture capital has paradoxically become more accessible and more rigorous.”
Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
The founder’s address set the stage for the rest of the summit. Programming that followed not only gave students direct access to a deep and broad roster of alumni entrepreneurs but also offered them tangible opportunities to test their own ideas. For the past decade, the summit has served as a platform for embracing and building Emory’s entrepreneurship ecosystem and as such, has grown to reflect Goizueta’s continuing evolution within Emory and Atlanta’s venture community.
“The summit is student-centric,” says Hershatter. “Its purpose is to offer insights, create connection, and inspire venture creation. What has been especially gratifying is the growing attendance and participation by student founders across Emory who range from freshman to PhD students. The broad range of disciplines and backgrounds ignites creativity and builds community.
The spirit of innovation was especially evident during Friday morning’s interactive alumni luminary session, which featured approximately 15 highly accomplished Emory entrepreneurs representing a wide range of industries and business models. Alumni included founders and executives working across consumer products, travel, AI, healthcare, music, media, finance, and venture advising—offering students a broad view of what entrepreneurship can look like in practice.
Rather than a staid set of panels, the morning session involved a series of quick response activities led by alumnus founder-turned-author Jeffrey Chernick 04BBA and Hershatter. It featured student participation in live polls and venture bingo, and asked alumni to respond to “worst moments ever,” “never have I ever,” and “myth buster” style prompts.
From Idea to Execution: Pitch the Summit
The culmination of the two-day event came Friday afternoon with the final round of Pitch the Summit, a multi-stage competition designed to give undergraduate and graduate students hands-on experience presenting new venture ideas to seasoned judges. The competition was open to all degree-seeking students across Emory, and the winning pitches moved across schools and disciplines.
In the two months preceding the summit, participants advance through multiple rounds of competition, refining their concepts and receiving feedback along the way. Winning teams receive recognition, financial support, and resources to help move their ventures forward. This year, the competition also introduced a new people’s choice award, further inviting the broader summit audience into the experience.
The graduate and undergraduate finalists reflected a wide range of ventures emerging across Emory—from artist development and operational finance to healthcare compliance, consumer products, and AI-enabled platforms. A total of $25,000 in prize funding was awarded across the competition, along with mentorship through the Emory Venture Mentor Community.
Graduate Division
- First Place: The Elephant Room — Varun Sheel 27MBA, Jake Shawler 27MBA, Federico Morales Barerra 27MBA, Dhwani Ghandi 27MBA, with teammates Dure Ali and Adam Spierer.
Prize: $7,500
An accelerator for independent artists using data-driven analytics and machine learning to identify breakout potential and guide development. - Second Place: CFO Track — Karimatou Diallo 28MBA, with teammates Mariah Qunsel, Saliou Bah, and Apha Barry.
Prize: $3,500
Operational finance software that connects revenue, inventory, and marketing data to help founders better understand and plan for growth. - Third Place: GlamGuide — Ariana Sharafat 26MiM.
Prize: $1,500
A beauty social commerce platform offering discovery and booking tools designed to better serve Black and minority stylists.
Undergraduate Division
- First Place: Asoma — Malia Wakesho-Ajwang 26C.
Prize: $7,500
An AI-powered platform designed to support students with ADHD by helping manage executive function, focus, and academic tasks. - Second Place: Boomi — Shirin Deepak 26BBA ’26, Sushmita Rajan 26C.
Prize: $3,500
A protein-rich Indian masala powder that makes it easier to incorporate nutritious protein into traditional meals. - Third Place: Infervia — Luka Undilashvili 28C, Dharshini Kannan 28C, Rom Zuckerman 28C, Prem Galani 29C.
Prize: $1,500
An AI-powered regulatory intelligence platform helping healthcare organizations navigate compliance and policy changes.
In addition to taking first place in the graduate division, The Elephant Room was also selected by attendees to receive the Summit’s People’s Choice Award, along with an exclusive entrepreneurship community membership.
For Malia Wakesho-Ajwang 26C, presenting Asoma in the final round was both energizing and affirming.
“I thought I would be more scared, but everyone in the room was so receptive and engaged that I really enjoyed sharing what I had built,” she says. “I loved being able to share what I was doing.”
She says the feedback she received throughout the competition has helped her refine both her approach and her messaging.
“Being able to practice, have multiple rounds with judges always giving feedback, and willing to share time was so helpful,” says Wakesho-Ajwang. “I was able to spend more time really thinking about what it is we are doing and how to communicate it to people who may not be in college or have ADHD to be able to get them invested in what we are doing even begin to understand.”
For Ariana Sharafat 26MiM, founder of GlamGuide, the experience marks a turning point in bringing her idea to life.
“Presenting was genuinely exhilarating,” says Sharafat. “Pitch the Summit was my first pitch competition, so making it to the final round with GlamGuide meant a lot.”
She emphasizes the value of receiving direct feedback from judges.
“Getting to finally put that problem in front of judges and get real feedback on how to develop it further was incredibly rewarding.”
She also notes the importance of tailoring a pitch to different audiences.
“One judge pointed out that when you’re pitching to an audience who isn’t your target customer, you have to work harder to make them feel the problem.”
From the perspective of the Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, the competition plays a critical role in founder development.
“There are many elements that we screen in the selection process, from the stage of the product, evidence of early traction, to the status of customer development and more,” says Brian Cayce, managing director of the Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. “However, as important if not more, we are looking for the highest quality founding teams, who both understand their product and their customers, and also know how to articulate that to an audience.”
For many students, Pitch the Summit represents the most tangible expression of experiential learning: a chance to move beyond the classroom and test an idea in front of a live audience, experienced judges, and potential supporters.
Ten Years of Founder Development
As the summit marked its 10th year, it also highlighted the sustained investment Goizueta has made in fostering entrepreneurship across Emory.
“Pitch the Summit is one of the key programs that helps to reinforce to the Atlanta startup and innovation community that Emory University and the Goizueta Business School are key engines of talent, insight and implementation in the startup space,” Cayce says.
“As the quality of the startups and the pitches have grown, the community has been able to take note. This cements Emory’s and Goizueta’s reputation as being one of the greatest engines of talent development in the city and the region.”
He adds that the scale and consistency of the event reflect a long-term commitment to supporting founders.
“The Emory Goizueta Entrepreneurship Summit is a testament to the incredible faculty and staff who care deeply that we at Emory offer these types of opportunities to our students,” Cayce says.
“That the sessions are standing room only speaks to the quality of the speakers and panelists and the hunger that exists across the campus for learnings in this space.”
From its keynote and luminary programming to the final pitch competition, the summit was designed not simply to celebrate entrepreneurship in theory, but to create the conditions for it in practice—through exposure, connection, feedback, and real opportunities to build.
“None of this would be possible without our alumni,” adds Hershatter. “A few of this year’s participants attended the very first Entrepreneurship Summit while others were here for the first time, but each of them is fully committed to helping entrepreneurship at Goizueta grow. When they get in a room together the energy and enthusiasm is magical.”
At its core, the Entrepreneurship Summit reflects Goizueta’s belief that innovation is best learned by doing: through real conversations, real iteration, and real stakes.
As students left this year’s final pitch round, they carried with them more than business ideas. They left with a deeper understanding of what it takes to test a concept, refine a vision, and build something with momentum. A number of them also left with alumni supporting their initiatives—a deeper roster of support, mentorship, and investment than they brought coming into the week’s events.
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