Five Tufts Students Redefine What Entrepreneurship Means

A Tufts student team placed second in the SharkNinja Innovation Challenge without a working prototype. The machine they pitched would make preparing matcha easier. What carried them to the stage was not hardware. It was more than 30 customer interviews conducted in eight weeks, guided by an entrepreneurship professor's advice that the team's strength was genuine care for the product's users.

Nancy Yang, A26, EG28, told Tufts Now the interviews gave the judges "stories and quotes from actual people" that "really connected with them." Yang studies human factors engineering at the master's level after a bachelor's in human factors psychology with an entrepreneurship minor. She sees one discipline in both fields. "You have to fall in love with the problem, not the product," she said.

Yang learned the pivot lesson early. Her first entrepreneurship class team spent most of a semester on a business plan, absorbed tough professor feedback, pivoted anyway, and delivered what she calls a "phenomenal" final presentation. A later assignment—to ask for something you would not normally ask for—taught her the cheapest lesson of all: a classmate walked into Starbucks, asked for a free chocolate croissant, and got it. Yang now assumes "the worst someone can say is no."

What does social entrepreneurship look like in practice?

Jahir Islam, A27, started a nonprofit in January 2021. It built a digital marketplace connecting high school and college students in Bangladesh with job opportunities. An International Earth Science Olympiad and Bangladesh Physics Olympiad awardee, Islam shifted focus after COVID exposed economic vulnerability beyond health risk. He joined an incubator for founders building businesses aligned with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

Islam, now a quantitative economics major, leads Jumbo Ventures, Tufts' student entrepreneurship organization, and has worked through the Tufts Venture Accelerator and the Derby Entrepreneurship Center. His core takeaway: "There's no magic wand. No amount of science, or any one discipline, can accomplish that alone." Large-scale change, he argues, is collaborative by nature, with stakeholders who each carry their own interests.

Can a van teach brand strategy?

Sophie Carpenter, A27, spent a summer driving a van across New England for Tracksmith, a Boston running apparel company. She turned the van into a pop-up store at races and sponsorship events and gauged how New England runners perceived the brand. The environmental studies major, with an entrepreneurship for social impact minor, calls Tracksmith "a cool intersection" of her interests in running and communications.

Her introductory entrepreneurship class built a wearable health-tech concept, complete with business model, budgets, branding, and a pitch to a mock investor panel. Course connections took her to Greentown Labs, the climate-tech startup hub, and to a climate communications company. Her summer verdict is simple: she wants to work somewhere she feels inspired.

How do classroom projects mirror real deals?

Caleb Quartey, A27, defines being entrepreneurial as "to do." In a science of sales class, his team built a go-to-market strategy for a company acquisition in the IP address space, producing a 60-page report and a two-hour presentation after weekly meetings with senior leadership. The economics major interned at Google on the Google Ads team and is now pursuing a graduate certificate in global business through The Fletcher School. He now interrogates friends' startup ideas with questions about market size, operating costs, competitors, and customer acquisition. His long-term target is venture capital.

Why start with why?

Trace Norwell, E27, learned the Golden Circle on day one of an entrepreneurial leadership class: start with why, not what. The mechanical engineering major is redesigning a lifeguard rescue tube for his senior project. "Our why is pretty clear: We want to save lives," he said. "That's a pretty admirable cause to get behind, and then you figure out how to design it."

The five students span engineering, economics, psychology, and environmental studies. Their shared conclusion: entrepreneurial thinking transfers across fields, and the Derby Entrepreneurship Center, Jumbo Ventures, and the Tufts Venture Accelerator are the connective infrastructure making that transfer possible.