Two decades ago, Jamie Kutch made a bold and life-changing decision. The 1996 Fordham grad quit his job as a trader with Merrill Lynch on Wall Street and headed to northern California to become a winemaker under the mentorship of Michael Browne, co-founder of the award-winning Kosta Browne Winery.

Kutch has since built a reputation for signature vintages from grapes harvested across 25 acres, including his 12-acre estate vineyard in Sebastopol, California. His pinot noir and chardonnay have earned high scores from critics. Antonio Galloni, CEO and founder of the world-renowned wine publication Vinous, scored Kutch’s 2021 Bohan Vineyard Graveyard Block pinot noir 95 points, calling it “seriously impressive” and “a gorgeous wine.”

Today, Kutch wines are sold directly to consumers, distributed throughout New York, New Jersey, and Europe, and featured in many Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris.

What inspired your career change from finance to fine wine?
When I left Fordham, I began my career on Wall Street and developed an interest in wine as a hobby. I read the wine chat boards and that led me to connecting with Michael Browne of Kosta Browne Wine. I told him he was living my dream. When I offered to come out to California for a week or two to help with the harvest, his response was, “Why don’t you leave your job and come out for a year? If it doesn’t work, you can always go back to Wall Street.” So, I packed a bag and got on a plane. That was in 2005. I made six barrels of wine, which equates to about 150 cases. This year, I’ll make 150 barrels—about 4,000 cases.

Now, instead of commuting four hours a day to and from work, my “office” is outdoors on vineyards under the sun. It’s hard work, but I love it. There’s something magical about watching the vines grow and creating fruit and picking it.

Napa Valley Wine Academy once praised you for becoming one of the most respected producers of pinot noir and chardonnay in California by refusing to give in to market trends. What have you done differently?
That first year, the market wanted big fruit-driven, California rich, dark, heavier wines. But I started making the style of wine I like and that is lower alcohol, food friendly, high in acidity, fresh tasting. I pick early and leave the stems on with the grapes. That’s called whole-cluster fermentation, and it gives a very different aromatic and taste profile. At the time, it wasn’t the norm to make wines that are 12% alcohol. When you pick grapes late, the sugars are much higher, so they’re much sweeter and that leads to higher alcohol. I find that it doesn’t pair as well with food.

Today, the pendulum has swung way back and there are more natural wines, low alcohol wines, and whole-cluster wines, so that’s exciting to see.

How are you adapting to climate change and the risk of wildfires?
In older Napa and Sonoma, people would plant corner-to-corner grapes, and they’d plant according to how their land ran, so they would look for the longest-distance rows that they could create. Today, with global warming, it’s about figuring out the angles of the sun and the way the sun travels, then planting accordingly to keep your vineyard cooler. I planted 20 degrees off north-south, which creates a cooler climate and more shade.

We have an irrigation system that we can operate remotely, so we can water the vineyards on a moment’s notice if the temperature spikes. We also prune early so the new growth starts earlier in the springtime. Sometimes getting your fruit off the vine even a week early can make the difference in avoiding smoke damage from wildfires. Most of the time, you’re not going to lose your vineyard to fire because the vineyards act as a fire break, but if smoke permeates the skin of the grapes, the wine will smell and taste like it. That’s the problem.

How do you integrate sustainability into your winemaking process?
I have a battery-operated tractor. I also reuse barrels and use lighter glass for bottles. If you make 36,000 bottles, and each bottle is half a pound or a pound lighter, that has a big impact on the footprint.

We also plant cover crop—such as barley, rye, peas, and clover—which sequesters carbon. We try not to till our soils, which releases carbon into the atmosphere. We have native bee boxes, raise worms, and plant butterfly milkweed. We’re also planting different species of fruit trees. It’s been an adventure to work with others to figure out the best ways to plant and respect the land.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Claire Curry.

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.”

“Artists are entrepreneurs. We are our own business.” That’s what Fordham Theatre grad Marjuan Canady, FCLC ’08, says when she teaches creative entrepreneurship at places like Georgetown University and NYU. Her words ring true for many Fordham alumni who have cut a professional path with their arts and business acumen.

“There’s creativity in everything that is going on in the room, whether it’s the business side or the actual creative side,” said Canady, who founded Sepia Works, a multimedia production company, and Canady Foundation for the Arts, a nonprofit that creates educational and career opportunities for youth of color by connecting them with professional artists. “That’s what makes it fun.”

SaVonne Anderson, FCLC ’17

Founder and Creative Director, Aya Paper Co.

After graduating from Fordham in 2017 with a degree in new media and digital design, SaVonne Anderson worked at the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she had interned as a student. Being around inspiring art got her gears turning, and she decided to start her own greeting card and stationery business, Aya Paper Co., in 2019. The following year, she decided to focus on Aya full time. Since then, her work has been featured in Time, Allure, and Forbes magazines, and carried in stores like Macy’s, Nordstrom, and Whole Foods. And while it can be difficult to balance her design and illustration work with the demands of running a business and the challenges of parenting a toddler, Anderson feels it’s all worth it.

Martha Clippinger, FCRH ’05

Artist and Designer

Like many textile artists, Martha Clippinger, FCRH ’05, was greatly influenced by the Gee’s Bend collective, a group of African American quilters whose work she first saw at the Whitney Museum as a Fordham student. “It ignited a desire to explore color and shape and rhythm,” she says. More than 20 years later, Clippinger has made a career out of that artistic exploration, displaying her work in museums, galleries, and corporate collections, and selling bags, rugs, and tablet covers on her website. Some of those items are woven by her professional partners in Oaxaca, Mexico, where she spent time on a Fulbright-Garcia Robles grant in 2013.

Katte Geneta, FCLC ’06

Founder, Narra Studio

Katte Geneta grew up thinking she was going to become a doctor. But when she arrived at Fordham and took a fine arts class, she discovered a talent for drawing. After graduating in 2006, she exhibited her paintings and later pursued a master’s degree in museum studies at Harvard. Soon, she took up weaving—the smell of oil paint made her nauseous while she was pregnant. Motivated by a conversation with a weaver in the Philippines who was hoping to find broader exposure, she started Narra Studio. The studio sometimes designs goods and sometimes just works on distribution. It partners with upward of 15 weaving communities in the Philippines and sells the pieces—from jewelry and blankets to jackets and traditional barong tops—through its website and at markets.

Bryan Master, FCRH ’99

Composer; Founder and Executive Producer, Sound + Fission and Partner in Crime Entertainment

Bryan Master has been writing and playing music for as long as he can remember—he apologizes to any Fordham neighbors who may have heard his frequent drumming at Rose Hill. But when he graduated in 1999 with a degree in communications, his passion took a backseat to his job in advertising—until 2022. That’s when his side hustle—a music, production, and creative services company called Sound + Fission—became a sustainable, full-time endeavor, thanks, he says, to a boom in audio storytelling listenership. Along with his other company, Partner in Crime, which focuses on creating and developing series, Sound + Fission was behind Can You Dig It?, an original Audible series about the birth of hip-hop that featured narration from Public Enemy’s Chuck D.

Courtney Celeste Spears, FCLC ’16

Co-Founder and Director, ArtSea

Courtney Celeste Spears had achieved many of her dreams as a dancer: She began dancing with Ailey II—Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s second company—while she was still a student in the Ailey/Fordham BFA in Dance program, and she joined the main company in 2018, two years after graduating. Last summer, though, she made the leap to devote herself full time to ArtSea, a Bahamas-based arts organization she founded with her brother, Asa Carey, in 2017. Now living on the island, where she spent time visiting family as a child, Spears works to bring high-level dance education and entertainment to the Caribbean and expose young artists to the wider dance world.

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.”

Anthony Ambrose, a junior majoring in business administration at the Gabelli School of Business, spent his break trying to see how many times he could get rejected.

As part of a Gabelli School of Business course called Innovation and Resilience, taught by Julita Haber, Ph.D., Ambrose visited numerous places around his hometown of Moorestown, New Jersey, with the goal of hearing the word “no” at least 10 times.

Could a local pretzel shop make him 500 pretzels in 10 minutes? No. Could he use a leaf blower inside a friend’s living room? No. He even asked an employee at Target if he could display clothes as a living mannequin. Also, no, but with a giggle.

“That was very uncomfortable for me. I even shed a tear when I asked for it because I felt I would be rejected. But before the Target employee rejected me, she smiled and giggled because I had that ounce of hope,” he said.

“I’ve never done anything like it before. It was pretty crazy.”

As part of her course, Haber required students to reach out to friends, family members, and strangers and make 21 bold requests that would result in at least ten rejections.

Because 7 in 10 new businesses will fail within three years, she said, entrepreneurs need to be accustomed to hearing the word “no”.

“Students sometimes have a hard time giving or getting feedback. They avoid a lot of confrontation, and they perceive the word no as negative. We need to strengthen them to be more capable to take no,” said Haber, an associate clinical professor.

“That is the foundation for entrepreneurship.”

Saying ‘No’ as Well as Hearing It

In a separate exercise, Haber pitched business ideas to students to get them used to the idea of saying “no” as well as hearing it.

“Students can have a really hard time both giving and receiving feedback. They’re very kind, and they avoid a lot of confrontation, so they perceive ‘no’ as a negative thing,” said Haber, who credited Gabelli School assistant professor Sophia Town, Ph.D., for the idea.

The exercises are part of an emphasis on learning five “discovery skills” described in The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators  (Harvard Business School, 2011), which students read for class. Those skills include associating, questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting.

Sometimes ‘No’ Is Really ‘Not Now’

For Ambrose, the exercise was illuminating. Occasionally, the “no’” he was looking for never came, such as when he went to a local Wawa and asked if he could have a free cup of coffee instead of paying $1.89. The clerk told him to go ahead and take it. And when he asked if he could intern over the summer at a local real estate brokerage, the answer was more like “not now” than “no.”

“The woman at the brokerage took my email, and she said she would keep me in mind if any internship came up elsewhere at any other company,” he said.

“I thought that was pretty cool. Just because you get rejected doesn’t mean that you’re totally cut off from something; it could open up more doors down the road.”

The annual competition featured eight companies—four “general track” businesses and four social impact organizations. The Fordham-connected teams pitched their ideas to a panel of judges and more than 200 members of the Fordham community during the event, where $25,000 was distributed among the winners to provide seed funding and support for early-stage businesses.

Al Bartosic, director of the Fordham Foundry, said that this was “the largest field ever—we started off with 186 teams.” Through the mentoring process, the field was narrowed down to the eight finalists that made an official public pitch.

General Track Winner

Mila Mend Inc., a women’s health company that provides community and “comprehensive solutions for women seeking to balance their hormones.” The company also features multiple social media platforms with more than 600,000 members.

Founders: Lucas Labelle, GABELLI ’20 and Camila Magnan

Labelle said that one of the key strengths of the company is the accessibility of its products.

“We provide access to reliable information, we bring science-proven solutions to market and we also innovate,” he said, adding that they work with two medical advisors to create effective products.

Magnan said the idea for the company came from her own experiences trying to treat PCOS and other health issues caused by hormonal imbalances.

“My voice was not being listened to by doctors and this is where my boyfriend came to my appointments—and having a male present, I finally got listened to,” she said. “Something that he says is, ‘This affects 50% of the population but also the other 50% that live with that person—this is as much our problem as it is a woman’s [problem].’”

“It’s incredible that a male committee of judges believed in a woman-focused product, and it just shows how the space is evolving,” Magnan said.

General Track Finalists

Second Place: Spike Cover, a magnetic product that covers the bottom of track and field spikes, founded by Anya Alfonsetti-Terry, a junior in the Gabelli School of Business

Third Place: Credentialed, a vendor that offers streamlined media credentialing services, founded by David Skinner, a sophomore in the Gabelli School of Business

Fourth Place: Libri di Lucciola, a dark romance publishing house, founded by Isabella Frassetti, FCLC ’20

Social Impact Winner

Alliza, a recruiting service that brings people with autism into the workforce and provides them with ongoing training and resources

Founder: Shoval Liel, who will be graduating from the Gabelli School’s MBA program in May

“[The recognition] means a lot; it means that we can help more people. And I believe that what we are doing is really changing lives for autistic individuals, which is something that not many companies are doing. We’re providing help and employment opportunities …. Think about how important and critical it is to have a job.”

Social Impact Finalists

Her Migrant Grounds, a coffee cafe and community-building space that enhances the work of Fordham’s Her Migrant Hub—a resource by and for women asylum seekers that provides them with access to health care resources. Her Migrant Grounds was born from the current group involved with Her Migrant Hub, due to the leadership of women activists Sara Tekle, Marthe Kiemde, Christiane Keumo, and Nneka Ugwu; and Graduate School of Social Work students Catilin Kreutz and Jake Schefer.

Kids Building Wealth, a Bronx-based nonprofit that provides financial education to underserved children. Founded by Olga Baez, MC ’05, GSE ’16

Tap Thread Count, a digital platform that connects designers, seamstresses, tailors, and dressmakers to clients looking for diverse clothing offerings. Founded by Babalwa Nogwanya, GSAS ’24

People’s Choice Winner

Credentialed, a vendor that offers streamlined media credentialing services,

Founder: David Skinner, a sophomore in the Gabelli School of Business

“The Foundry’s an incredible resource that has been there through every aspect of my entrepreneurial journey,” he said, adding that the process of participating in the Pitch Challenge was “exciting, fulfilling, and unbelievably beneficial.”

Fordham grads are at the heart of a new collective giving artists and audiences space to develop and discover new works.

How do up-and-coming artists break through, and how do people discover new and exciting art?

A group of Fordham graduates thinks they have an answer. The Village is a new collective that the graduates created to support artists through live events that create community, similar to what they experienced as students at the University’s Lincoln Center campus.

“Our [art and media] consumption has become very individual and yet so impersonal because all of our feeds are just churning out more of what we already like,” said Marc David Wright, a 2019 Fordham College at Lincoln Center graduate and co-founder of the Village. “Our events provide a bit of excitement and surprise.”

Wright launched the collective a few years ago with Caroline Potter Shriver, a 2019 graduate of the Ailey/Fordham BFA in dance program, to give artists a place to share their work—or works in progress—with engaged audiences through live events called salons.

Singers, dancers, poets, writers, and visual and performing artists of all kinds can apply to be a part of the events, which are held four times a year and typically feature about 10 artists a night. The next one is scheduled to take place at Ideal Glass Studios in Greenwich Village on March 25. The salons are broken into three parts—a visual arts showcase, performances, and an after party featuring a DJ and an opportunity for artists and attendees to mingle.

Art for Humans, Curated by Humans

Shriver said that they curate the events so there’s a “diversity of artists and art types,” and people leave the events “feeling so inspired to create.” The mix of genres is designed not only to entertain audiences but also connect artists across disciplines.

“If they’re a painter and they saw an actor do something really cool, and now they’re thinking about how they can bring their art into the performance art space—just the creativity and the inspiration that comes from being celebrated is really impactful,” Shriver said.

Wright said he, Shriver, and Dana Seach, FCLC ’19, GABELLI ’20, the third member of the team, work to foster that kind of cross-pollination.

“We have preliminary artists’ socials before every salon in which just the artists present their work for one another, and we ask specific feedback of each other,” he said. “And it really just took me back to Fordham Theatre’s cultivating of community and of collaboration, which I think has greatly influenced the vibes of the Village.”

Shriver and Wright got the idea for the Village when they were working together on The Stella Show—Shriver’s one-woman performance piece exploring “sisterhood, grief, and the unpredictable magic of memory.”

The pair had developed a 15-minute segment in 2021 and wanted to get some feedback on it. At the same time, coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, they sensed a desire among artists to reconnect. That fall, in a friend’s Tribeca loft, they shared their work with some friends who were also “working on things that weren’t really ready, but were ready for some kind of audience,” Shriver said.

After it was over, Wright and Shriver said everyone immediately asked, “When are we doing this again?” And like that, the Village was formed.

A Growing Community

After that initial gathering, Seach reached out and said she wanted to get involved. Seach, who earned a bachelor’s degree in film and TV and a master’s in media management at Fordham, now serves as the group’s managing director, with Shriver and Wright as artistic directors. Wright also handles marketing and social media, and Shriver works on fundraising, sponsorships, and community outreach.

The Village has hosted eight salons in the past two years in Manhattan, selling out small studio spaces. The co-founders expect the upcoming Salon 9 to be their biggest event to date, as the group has continued to grow. The collective is fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas, a nonprofit arts service that allows them to take in donations that support the events and some of the artists’ works.

While most salons have been in New York City, in February the team expanded to the West Coast. Working with fellow Fordham alumni David Kahawaii IV, FCLC ’18, and Elizabeth Kline, FCLC ’19, the group produced its first event in Los Angeles.

“I feel like every salon improves from the last one, and I felt that was still the case with this, even though we were starting fresh out there,” Seach said. “I think just the opportunity to expand our community is so exciting and great for us.”

Directed by serial entrepreneur and executive director Al Bartosic, GABELLI ’84, the Foundry also oversees the Fordham Angel Fund, which offers investments of up to $25,000 to the University’s active student and alumni founders.

Fordham Magazine caught up with a handful of alumni who received funding, coaching, or other support from the Foundry to find out where they—and their businesses—are now, and how they got there.

Mary Goode, FCRH ’20
Founder and CEO, Nantucket Magic
Fordham Degree: B.A. in Economics

The launch: I grew up on Nantucket Island and watched the tourist landscape change dramatically over the years, becoming increasingly popular yet harder to navigate. The company uses local expertise to offer hotel-like concierge service and amenities to vacationers in Nantucket, Massachusetts, and Palm Beach, Florida, including pre-arrival fridge stocking, dinner reservations, private chefs, backyard movie nights, beach picnics, wellness experiences, and more.

The challenge: Our biggest challenge has been navigating how to scale the business while maintaining exceptional service. To surmount this, we have recruited hospitality experts to work seasonally in both locations.

The assist: The Foundry has played a huge role in the success of my business! I learned so much during the process of the pitch competition alone. The actual funds I won helped us pay for marketing campaigns as well as expand our team, among other things.

The goal: I have been trying to broaden the definition of what success means to me. No matter what happens in the future, what I have created so far feels like an immense personal success, chiefly because of the incredible people I have worked with over the past three years.

Marquice Pullen, GSE ’21
Co-Founder, DAB Pickleball
Fordham Degree: M.S.E., Curriculum and Teaching

The concept: DAB Pickleball is a one-stop shop for pickleball players worldwide. Comprehensive infrastructure, certified coaching tips, quality equipment, competitive prices. Events, tournaments, and a thriving community. Your ultimate pickleball resource. I can’t take credit for the idea. My business partner and brother, Antonio, stumbled upon the sport at Acworth Community Center in Georgia.

The process: We participated in three pitch challenges: Fordham Foundry Rams Den, Fordham vs. Bronx, and Black Ambition, all within one year, and were successful in all three, thanks be to God. Social media marketing, risk management, inventory management, tax filing, bookkeeping, and opening our first facility in July 2023 were all challenging aspects of the process. However, we found our momentum in late December 2023.

The foundation: Initially unfamiliar with Fordham University, my enrollment through the Army Civilian Schooling (ACS) program, driven by my aspiration to become an instructor at the United States Military Academy, inadvertently initiated our entrepreneurial journey. Rooted in Jesuit principles, my education at Fordham eventually led me to the Fordham Foundry. Without Fordham University as a catalyst, I might not have discovered the Foundry or ventured into entrepreneurship.

The win: Success is evident through our community of players and dedicated volunteers and supporters. Seeing the smiles on our consumers’ faces as they enjoy the game of pickleball and, more importantly, witnessing the competitive spirit of our elderly pickleball players, is a success story in itself.

Rachel Ceruti, GSAS ’20
Founder and CEO, Reclypt
Fordham Degree: M.A. in International Political Economy and Development

The vision: I kind of fell into the sustainable fashion scene in New York City and upcycling—when you or designers take something that was going to be thrown away and repurpose it, diverting textiles from landfills. I started a blog that transitioned into a marketplace for fashion, but our community told us they wanted to do the upcycling, not just buy it. We listened, and our mission is to use our platform to explore circular economy structures, with Reclypt as a hub that explores how we create change.

The challenges: Funding really comes to mind. You can’t rely on unfair wages and volunteers. Another challenge, too, is letting people know why circular fashion is needed and what it is.

The assist: I would go into the Foundry space and pop ideas off of the other entrepreneurs and the Foundry team. I benefited from the free office hours with a lawyer. The business aspects that are behind the scenes, I would have never been able to navigate without the Foundry.

The next step: We want to host consistent events; be able to grow and hire, including start monetizing my team’s time; gain more visibility; and establish a steady revenue stream.

Usman “Ozzy” Raza, PCS ’14, GABELLI ’21
Founder and CEO, Equepay
Fordham Degrees: B.A. in Economics, Executive M.B.A.

The concept: Equepay is at the forefront of simplifying billing and payment processing, not just in health care but extending our innovative solutions beyond. We aim to convert the complex financial operations in hospitals and clinics into streamlined, user-friendly processes, ensuring easy and efficient financial management for all involved.

 The launch: Equepay was born out of discussions with friends in the health care sector who highlighted ongoing challenges with payment processing and collections. Recognizing the untapped potential in this underserved market, I founded Equepay. Since launch, Equepay has been expanding its solutions across various hospitals in the U.S.

The foundation: My EMBA from Fordham has been crucial in shaping my entrepreneurial journey. The knowledge and skills acquired laid a solid foundation for Equepay’s strategies and operational methodologies.

The goal: Success is an evolving target. Our immediate goal is to integrate our platform into 196 hospitals by the end of the year, continuously enhancing our services to meet the growing needs of the healthcare sector.

Emmit Flynn, FCRH ’21
Co-Founder, Awful Cloth
Fordham Degree: B.A. in English

The brand: We started Awful Cloth to be an online apparel company for street and lounge wear, with a lot of colorful designs and bright, vibrant ideas. All of them were hand-drawn original designs and I was the designer.

The launch: For eight or 10 months, it was all planning. We got all the domains, Twitter, and Instagram very early on before we had anything produced. That made all the difference when we finally did start to get traction. Then it was a lot of workshopping and pushing it out to our friends and family to see what the response was.

The hurdles: The true hurdles were things that are intangibles. It wasn’t “where do we find this factory” or “how do we do this.” Those things were small hurdles, but we were so driven that there was nothing like that that would stop us. It was more about the mental hurdles: having patience and confidence and being sure of ourselves. Especially early on when things were slow, and we weren’t making any sales, and we weren’t making any profit.

The win: We recently sold the business to a medium-sized retail group called Lilac Blond. We were very happy to do it because selling was a goal of ours and we knew these people—and we were sure that they wanted the best for the brand.

One of history’s great startup success stories, the nearly 500-year-old Catholic religious order built a global network and helped create higher education as we know it.

Founded in 1540 by the former soldier St. Ignatius Loyola—and starting with little more than a mission to help souls and do it heroically—the Jesuits quickly established themselves around the world and became known as the finest educators of their day. Today there are more than 180 Jesuit institutions of higher learning—including Fordham—on six continents.

How did the Jesuits succeed? For one thing, they believed in the ultimate importance of their mission, which “breeds a level of resilience and determination and creativity,” said Chris Lowney, FCRH ’81, GSAS ’81, a former Jesuit, former managing director at J.P. Morgan, and author of the 2003 book Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company That Changed the World. In interviews, Lowney and other Fordham alumni spoke to the parallels between the Jesuits’ mindset and the entrepreneur’s approach to startup success.

Lesson #1: They didn’t carry the mental baggage that can hinder entrepreneurs.

The Jesuits made a virtue of detachment—that is, detachment from things like status, possessions, and settled ways of doing things, which enabled risk-taking. Asked by Ignatius to depart for India, Francis Xavier readily responded “good enough, I’m ready”—and took it on himself to establish Jesuit outposts not only in India but across Asia, Lowney writes in Heroic Leadership. Offering a present-day interpretation, he noted that attachments like greed or pride can hamper entrepreneurs by breeding a fear of failure and a reluctance to try new things.

Lesson #2: They led with love.

Unlike Niccolò Machiavelli, one of his contemporaries, Ignatius counseled Jesuits to lead with “greater love than fear,” tapping the energizing power of mutual affection, Lowney writes. Traveling in Asia, Francis Xavier carried papers bearing his fellow Jesuits’ signatures as an inspiring reminder of their love for him. For modern-day entrepreneurs, this might mean wanting one’s team members to flourish and reach their potential—which could mean challenging them when necessary, Lowney said.

Lesson #3: They adapted to new environments.

The Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci made inroads in China, after so many Europeans had failed, through enculturation: He learned Chinese, adopted Chinese dress, and shared his knowledge of geometry and astronomy, Lowney writes. Ricci’s predecessor in Asia, Francis Xavier, also “showed a remarkable respect for the cultures he was meeting” when he traveled to Japan, Lowney said. “He was way, way ahead of his time.”

Lesson #4: They reflected deeply on their purpose.

Former Jesuit Sal Giambanco, GSAS ’90, sees parallels between the entrepreneurial mindset and the self-knowledge fostered by the Spiritual Exercises, the four-week system of meditation and prayer created by Ignatius. “It’s about seeing things and patterns that haven’t existed before,” said Giambanco, an early employee and senior executive at four startups, including PayPal, where he was the first head of human capital, administration, facilities, and security. “You go into the silence, [and] you embrace that silence, such that you can then bring those insights into having effective change in the world. And if you think about it, that really is the mindset of the entrepreneur.”

Lesson #5: They sought input and brought out the best in others.

Contrary to the idea of the solo creative genius driving an enterprise, the best leaders foster collaboration—and innovation—by stepping back and “leaving the room” after posing a tough question to their teams, said Angelo Santinelli, GABELLI ’84, an entrepreneur and business educator who co-chairs the advisory board for the Fordham Foundry, the University’s entrepreneurship hub.

He often saw the Jesuits take that approach in the classroom when he was a student at Fordham, he said. In a collaborative workspace where everyone feels valued, “you’re constantly pushing the envelope and getting something better,” he said.

That’s the philosophy of Albert Bartosic, executive director of the Fordham Foundry, a hub where Fordham community members learn how to launch and grow their own businesses. 

Most people already use the skills required for entrepreneurship in their daily lives, including pitching new ideas and working in a team, said Bartosic. What most people don’t know is that we are all capable of coming up with the next big idea—and bringing it to life. In a recent interview with Fordham News, Bartosic explained how to get there: 

Answer three key questions: What problem are you solving? How is that problem being addressed now? And why is your idea new, different, and better? “Why are people going to change their behavior and take your solution, as opposed to the solution that they’re using now?” 

Narrow your market. “The least successful thing you can do is say that your idea is for everybody. This won’t be successful, at least initially. Focus on a market that really needs this solution and is willing to pay for it.” 

Present something tangible. “If it’s a product, you can construct something using a 3-D printer. If it’s a service, you can try offering it to people on a test basis. You could use a GoFundMe or Kickster campaign if you need some money to put this together.” 

Survey your target demographic. “One shortcut is to construct a three-question survey and share it with your social media followers. You might get a small response rate, but you’re going to start to gather some data. That’s going to tell you if you’re on the right track. But don’t just talk to friends and family. They’re going to tell you, ‘You are brilliant, and this is the best thing I’ve ever heard of.’ You really want to speak with people in your target demographic who are friendly-adjacent—willing to give you both time and honest, valuable feedback.” 

Learn from the feedback—and try again. “It’s an iterative process. Take what you’ve learned and try it again, adjust it, and keep trying until you either know that you have a product that makes sense, or you don’t.” 

Learn from the process. “The skills and tools that you learn through entrepreneurship—how to sell an idea, how to get people to work with you, how to build a team, how to deal with setbacks, how to stay resilient in the face of failure—will help you, no matter what.” 

Finally, you need to convince the world that your idea is worth investing in. Watch a brief crash course video featuring Bartosic and other experts from the Fordham Foundry—Associate Director Shaun Johnson and alumna and Entrepreneur-in-Residence Lauren Sweeney—on how to pitch your idea to the public.