Emma came to GW knowing she wanted to make a difference but without a clear picture of what that would look like. With an older brother who has Down syndrome, she has long been drawn to advocacy. She hopes to one day launch a nonprofit venture connecting people with disabilities to therapeutic resources and building support systems for siblings navigating similar experiences. 

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At GW Business, Emma discovered that entrepreneurship is less about owning a company and more about developing a mindset. The program has taught her how to think creatively to either launch a new venture or drive innovation within an existing organization. Equally important, it has taught her to get comfortable with failure, to try something new, tweak it when it doesn’t work, and try again. Emma credits the support she found in her GW Business community with giving her the confidence to step outside her comfort zone in the first place.

Through the New Venture Initiation course taught by Professor Jungho Suh, Project Director of the Korean Management Institute (KMI), Emma learned how startups take shape, from walking through early-stage pitch decks used by companies like Airbnb to developing ventures of her own. His support, along with management faculty Emma described as knowledgeable and invested in student growth, gave her the foundation to take her ideas further. That led her to participate in GW’s Pitch George Competition, a Shark Tank -adjacent experience where students build ventures from scratch and pitch them to real audiences. Emma founded Course Apply, a platform concept similar to eBay, but designed for college students, particularly first-generation students, to buy and sell school supplies at a lower cost. That experience carried into the McDonough Business Strategy Competition, where Emma and her team worked tirelessly through every practice presentation before ultimately finishing second overall, making connections with professionals at PNC and EY along the way. Through her time at GW Business, Emma has practiced her ability to:

• Think creatively about solving real-world problems and develop early-stage ideas into structured ventures.
• Communicate ideas with confidence through writing pitch decks and public speaking in competitive environments.
• Adapt to unfamiliar challenges and find practical ways to work through them.

For anyone considering the program, Emma’s advice is to take it one step at a time. Imposter syndrome can be real, especially when it feels like everyone is already a founder or business owner. But the program meets students where they are, and the process of launching new ideas, failing, and restarting is what builds self-assurance and confidence.