Tufts Entrepreneurship Center

At the Tufts Entrepreneurship Center, we provide robust academic instruction in entrepreneurship combined with the real-world experience of our highly talented professors, advisors and coaches. We prepare our students for impactful citizenship by developing their entrepreneurial skills for both for-profit corporations and not-for-profit social-impact businesses.

We develop innovative thinkers across all disciplines of the Tufts University community. TEC offers a wide variety of educational courses and experiential, hands-on resources, including competitions, workshops, and accelerators to grow our community’s entrepreneurial skills.

Learn what it takes to launch a successful startup. Engage directly with our professors, our coaches, and our qualified investors for hands-on experience. Gain job opportunities at both startups and in larger corporations.

The Entrepreneurship Minor offered by the Tufts Entrepreneurship Center is the largest minor on campus with more than 800 students taking our courses every year. To fulfill the minor, students take a total of 5 courses, including topics like Entrepreneurship & Business Planning, Leadership, and Marketing.

Launched in 2020, Tufts Entrepreneurship Center has created an Entrepreneurship for Social Impact Minor in partnership with Tisch College of Civic Life. This innovative minor will provide students with additional pathways to be civically engaged and support communities.

Entrepreneurship courses are open to students from all schools across departments at Tufts University. All of our students share a dynamic and exciting curiosity to discover entrepreneurship and innovation through both commercial businesses and social enterprises.

Tufts Entrepreneurship Center hosts four primary competitions providing students with academic and experiential startup instruction throughout the academic year, along with cash, in-kind services, and connections in order to support the launch of their startups. To ensure industry inclusion and market diversity, we have created three distinct tracks among these funding and experiential opportunities:

1. General Technology
2. Healthcare & Life Science
3. Social Impact

The Center additionally provides students and alumni with the tools and support to create and develop their for-profit business or not-for-profit social enterprises by offering:

• Founder's Workshops held in October and February
• Jumbo Cafés held on Wednesdays 
• Tufts Venture Accelerator hosted throughout the summer
• Venture Capital Roadshows
  • Boston: A two-day roadshow in October, hosted in partnership with Silicon Valley Bank and MassChallenge
  • New York City: A one-day roadshow in April, partnering with Lowenstein Sandler LLP
  • California: A one-day roadshow, designed in partnership with Joshua Goldman, a member of the TEC Board of Advisors

Our alumni are making an impact around the globe, working at startups, nonprofits and in venture capital. Many students have found success at corporations such as Hubspot, Google, Facebook, Fidelity, LinkedIn, Tesla, NEST, Goldman Sachs & more. TEC prepares students to make an immediate impact in their academic & professional careers by developing their entrepreneurial skillset.

Our faculty are leaders in their fields and bring decades of relevant, hands-on industry and social enterprise experience to their teaching. All are highly focused on providing not only excellent academic discipline and depth but also on providing students with connections to internships and jobs in both for-profit businesses and not-for-profit social enterprises.

Faculty include people like:

• Frank Apeseche, a partner and co-founder of J. Locke & Company, with three decades of deep business and financial expertise.
• Gavin Finn, President & CEO of Kaon Interactive a 3D interactive sales & marketing company.
• Beth McCarthy, a consultant, with more than 20 years of marketing and consulting experience at companies including C Space, Digitas and Epsilon

TEC's 30-person board is made up of industry leaders, including CEOs, senior managers, business founders, and experienced investors. The board provides a connection between successful Tufts alumni and aspiring entrepreneurial students.

Visit us at Tufts Entrepreneurship Center, CLIC Building, 574 Boston Ave, Suite 102.

Carol Denning, Program Administrator, carol.denning@tufts.edu