\n\tBy MARTY LEVINE<\/p>\n
\n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe help students start startups and that’s not a bad goal, but it’s not the goal of every student,\u201d said Rhonda Schuldt, director of the Big Idea Center<\/a>, at Staff Council\u2019s latest Coffee and Conversation event on October 15.<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe Big Idea Center, in the Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship, runs competitions and workshops, offering mentorship and funding to develop student business ideas. Last year, Schuldt said, the center surveyed a swath of students about its services, and a significant number answered, \u201c\u2018I don’t really have an idea, but I’m curious\u2019\u201d \u2013 they were \u201cnot yet at the stage where they want to explore the center,\u201d she said. Then she realized: \u201cThere is an audience here that’s looking for something. We’re not drawing them in. What is it that we need to know about them, so that we can we can figure out what it is that they’re looking for and we can create\u201d resources for this group as well?<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe center already knows \u201cour Startup Sams,\u201d she said \u2013 those raring to take a business from idea to commercialization \u2013 \u201cbut we also have the Curious Caseys who wanted to dive in, but they didn’t have a place to figure that out, and that drove us to create our new ChangeMaker program,\u201d a five-session class that includes guest speakers and the chance to work with other students at this very early stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAs a result, she said, \u201clast year, we saw an incredible increase in student participation, almost double what we’ve seen in the past. We typically, over the last five years, have had about 14-1500 student engagements per year. Last year was 2600. \u2026 We have a different way of talking about the opportunities that exist for students when they step into innovation and entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cOne of the things that we also see is, when the world changes in ways that create uncertainty, students are looking for a way to give themselves power and agency over what their future looks like,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tSchuldt has had a passion and talent for entrepreneurship for many years. \u201cI was led here just by choices over the course of my career,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was not something that was planned or destined. I didn’t intend to teach, to educate, to help people be innovative and entrepreneurial. but I had a thread through my career where everything that I really got involved in, that I loved doing, had purpose, meaning and was trying to make change in various different ways, to have a greater impact. At the end of the day, that’s really what innovation and entrepreneurship is. It’s creating new ways of solving problems, doing so in a way that can be sustained\u2026\u201d\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBorn in Louisiana, Schuldt moved with her family to several parts of the U.S., following her father\u2019s Air Force service and then his business career. She grew up in the Midwest, mainly in Kansas City. When she married and her husband was transferred here several decades ago, Schuldt landed in Pittsburgh. \u201cWe didn’t figure we were going to stay here,\u201d she said. \u201cWe figured we were here five to seven years.\u201d But eventually, \u201cwe decided this was home.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tStarting her own company came as an outgrowth of a temp job she took with the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, now called the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance. The conference was undertaking a regional economic revitalization strategy. Five years of overseeing the implementation of that effort taught Schuldt \u201chow do you bring disparate people together around a common vision to create something and create change. When I left there, I’m like, that’s what I want to do, but I want to do it for a lot of different organizations.\u201d So she created a consulting company, Synergos Group, which for more than 20 years advised for-profit companies and nonprofits as well as civic organizations \u201cwho were either starting something new or going through change, where you really had to look at what needed to happen and for whom and why, and work to build that common vision.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAsked for her top advice for those wishing to advance in business, she offered: \u201cDon’t stop connecting with people. Networking isn’t where you go up and shake hands and hand out business cards and all of that kind of thing. [It is] staying connected to people and finding out those points of intersection that you might have in common and how you can support each other in small ways, big ways or other ways.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThat\u2019s how she ended up at Pitt: \u201cThere were a lot of people that I had worked with when I first moved to Pittsburgh. We did a lot of amazing things together, but we kind of lost track of each other and I just wanted to reconnect. I made a promise to myself to reach out and have coffee with people.\u201d That included an individual who had become one of the first entrepreneurs-in-residence at the School of Business. At the time, she explained, the school\u2019s dean was beginning to bring in more individuals with whom undergraduates could work, should they desire to create a startup business.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI stepped in at a time that the innovation institute was just forming and student programming was just coming on to campus\u201d through the new Big Idea Center, being led by Schuldt\u2019s predecessor, Babs Carryer. Working with students beginning in 2015, Schuldt noted, \u201cI just fell in love with their enthusiasm and their promise and their energy to do really impactful things.\u201d As an entrepreneur-in-residence herself, she \u201cagain got to work with the students and the amazing things that they were trying outside of class, which blew me away, and had the opportunity when [Carryer] was retiring to consider the role. I never had to be responsible to a giant organization in a very long time, but I said yes, because the pull of the opportunity was so much that I had the opportunity to work with students in a very deep way, every single day.<\/p>\n \tCOMING NEXT<\/p>\n \n\tThe next Staff Council Coffee and Conversation is with Matthew Sterne, vice chancellor for Business Services, Nov. 19, 10:30 a.m., at the University Club.<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tMarty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.<\/p>\n \n\tHave a story idea or news to share? Share it<\/a> with the University Times.<\/p>\n