This was the first time the Gabelli School has been named in this ranking, and its inclusion reflects investments Fordham has made to nurture an entrepreneurial spirit, said Dennis Hanno, Ph.D., who leads the school’s entrepreneurship programming.

“We are gaining momentum,” he said. “We’re dedicating more resources both in our curriculum and in places like the Fordham Foundry,” Hanno said. He noted that the Foundry, which helps students and alumni start viable, sustainable companies, recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. 

Hanno cited The Ground Floor course as one example of how first-year students are exposed to entrepreneurship. Every student who takes it pitches a new business idea to a panel of judges at the end of the semester.

The Princeton Review entrepreneurship rating follows other impressive rankings for Fordham’s business school. Poets & Quants ranked the school 21st among the best undergraduate business schools in the country for 2024. In September, U.S. News & World Report ranked the Gabelli School 77th in the country. It also singled out specific undergraduate business programs: The school ranked 13th for finance, 17th for international business, 14th for marketing, 21st for accounting, and 21st for entrepreneurship. 

Hanno also noted that entrepreneurship at Fordham extends beyond the Gabelli School. The Fordham Foundry, for instance, holds a separate pitch challenge that is open to all students.

“Whether you’re in business school or not, you’re going to have opportunities here from day one to connect with people who have been entrepreneurs and have worked with entrepreneurs of all different kinds,” said Hanno.

He noted that an expansive view of entrepreneurship can be seen in the work of faculty such as Gabelli School professor Michael Pirson, Ph.D., whose research encompasses humanistic management and sustainable models of business. 

“We embrace a broader definition of entrepreneurship to include social impact as a major focus of what we do,” said Hanno, who created a Fordham course called Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Rwanda. He took a group of students to the African nation last spring. 

 “So if you want to change the world, Fordham is the place for you.”

This spring, a dozen Gabelli School students learned what it takes to sustain a small business in a country where entrepreneurship is tied to recovery from genocide and civil war.

“Rwanda is a vivid example of the power of entrepreneurship and how it can change not just individuals’ lives, but can actually have a deeply profound impact on the whole country,” said Dennis Hanno, Ph.D., an associate clinical professor who created the course Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Rwanda at Fordham.

Hanno, the founder and CEO of IDEA4Africa and a former president of Wheaton College, has visited the central African country with students on similar trips more than 20 times.  He said entrepreneurship has been a healing force for the country in the 30 years since the 1994 genocide that killed nearly one million Rwandans. 

The class paired teams of two students with six businesses in and around Kigali, Rwanda. The students were given background information before they departed for the nine-day April trip, but it was the in-person meetings where they learned whether the business owners needed help with financing, marketing, or expansion.

Kyla Hill, a Gabelli School student pursuing an M.S. in management, and Jaden Chocho Anaya, a junior majoring in business administration, were paired with Gloria Girabawe, the founder of Flove, a social enterprise that hires single mothers to manufacture sustainable fashion accessories such as tote bags, laptop sleeves, and wallets.

Hill said working with Girabawe to expand her company’s presence in New York City and locate a local source for vegan leather was the highlight.

“I had a little bit of imposter syndrome because as a student, I’m thinking, ‘What could I possibly bring to the table for her when she already has a business that is pretty successful?’” said Hill, who graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill last year with a degree in economics.

“I found myself asking Gloria, ‘Do you feel like you’re getting value out of this?’ And she very adamantly would say, ‘Yes!’ The encouragement that I got from her made me feel like I was helping to make a difference.”

For Anaya, the trip was her first out of the country, and just being exposed to a different culture was deeply moving.

“It really made me think differently about just the way we live in the U.S. and how people decide to take on entrepreneurship here based on the freedom to be able to experiment and innovate. In Rwanda, entrepreneurship and innovation are seen as more of a necessity,” she said.  

Anaya was also moved by Girabawe’s support of women who are abandoned by their families when they become pregnant, a growing problem in the country.

Girabawe said the fresh perspective the students brought with them was invaluable. Flove has been in business for three years and boasts 14 employees who manufacture 15 collections, so she feels she’s ready to expand to overseas markets like New York City.

“If I’m going to expand, then I have to really understand the user.  I can’t use the same insights of a person in Rwanda and think that it’s going to be the same as the person who’s in New York,” she said.

“They learned a thing or two from us, and we learned from them as well.”

He’s also a self-described Swiftie.

”That’s an entrepreneur. Taylor Swift fits all the parts of my definition,” Hanno said, adding that her creativity and innovative thinking are just as central to her brand as the music itself.

According to Hanno, entrepreneurship isn’t just about starting businesses—it’s a holistic mindset that can influence how someone approaches anything they do.

“It’s about looking at the status quo and saying, ‘How can we do things differently to achieve even greater success?’” he said.

Rather than looking to solely benefit oneself, Hanno stresses that true entrepreneurship is all about finding a problem that needs solving, and tackling it in a way that is unique to you.

The Entrepreneurial Checklist

What makes a successful entrepreneur? Hanno breaks it down into four parts.

1. Act on Your Ideas

“There’s so many people that have great ideas. There are so many times where people say, ‘Oh, those are great ideas, I wonder who’s going to do something about that.’ The entrepreneur has to act.”

2. Identify Opportunities

“Seek ideas wherever they are. Figure out a way to take action that aligns with your own values and skills so those become opportunities for you. How does that map with what your community needs or wants? An opportunity for you is going to be very different from opportunities for me.”

3. Analyze Everything

“Sometimes people think the Elon Musks of the world wake up in the morning and say, ‘I’ve got an idea, I’m just going to dive into it.’ And I would argue that Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Bill Gates—they’re not that kind of person. They actually do analyze—and probably their greatest skill is to be able to analyze quicker than you and I can, to look at the landscape and say, ‘If I do this, I have a greater likelihood of success than if I do that.’”

4. Find Your Passion

“In both my undergrad and grad classes, we spend three hours talking about basically yourself—‘What’s really important to you? At the end of the day, what do you think about in terms of what you want to achieve?’ I think that helps people to focus on their values.”

“When I was a college student, I didn’t spend any time thinking about it. It was maybe 10 years later, I really thought, ‘You know what’s really important to me? Education.’ That’s when I shifted my pursuit because I had identified what my passion was, so I’ve never looked back.”