Georgetown Entrepreneurship Founder Helps Students Become Entrepreneurs for Good

This story is part of Georgetown Faces, a storytelling series that celebrates the beloved figures, unsung heroes and dedicated Hoyas who make our campus special.

Jeff Reid is the founding director of the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative and a professor in the School of Business.

On a bookshelf in his office, Jeff Reid keeps a smiling, cushy empanada on display.

"It's a good reminder for me of the people who I get to work with," he said.

The empanada was knitted by Margarita Womack (EMBA'19), an alumna who founded the frozen food company, Maspanadas, while at Georgetown. Her empanadas are now sold in Whole Foods, Giant, Wegmans and Walmart.

Womack is one of hundreds of student entrepreneurs Reid has worked with since founding the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative, a hub that trains students in entrepreneurship through programming, pitch competitions, incubators and events.

Reid himself is an entrepreneur of sorts in higher education.

Margarita Womack, an alumna who founded the frozen food company, Maspanadas, knitted a toy croissant for Reid, which he keeps in his office.

The North Carolina native founded and led the Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), his alma mater for business school, in response to the growing field of entrepreneurship education. The center later earned UNC the No. 1 national ranking by Forbes and Princeton Review for entrepreneurship.

"I was able to use the entrepreneurial skills and mindset that I had to build a program. It's not the same as running your own business, but it has some similarities."

After leaving UNC, Reid worked at a DC law firm, a start-up and then a nonprofit that teaches students from low-income communities about entrepreneurship. In 2009, he joined Georgetown and built Georgetown Entrepreneurship from the ground up.

In the years since, Georgetown Entrepreneurship has supported 500+ student and alumni startups, which have raised at least $9.6 billion collectively in the last five years. Reid has also started an annual student pitch competition and a network for entrepreneurship centers at Jesuit universities, mentors students across the university, and teaches entrepreneurship as a professor of the practice.

Seventeen years later, he still feels energized by entrepreneurship education.

"What I get really excited about is helping Georgetown students develop an entrepreneurial mindset," Reid said. "Entrepreneurship is an act of creating something; it's solving a problem; it's making the world better when you do it the right way. It also is a calling for a lot of people. This is what I personally feel called to do."

Learn more about what fires Reid up about entrepreneurship, his own plucky side-hustle in high school and why every student should learn about entrepreneurship.

My first love: has always been education. I didn't know entrepreneurs growing up. My parents were school teachers. I wanted to be a high school English teacher. It was only by taking an entrepreneurship class in college and then other entrepreneurship classes in graduate school that I've found that second interest in entrepreneurship. I have thought about joining start-ups over the years or starting a company, but what I love more than anything is helping our students find their passion. If I can help them find that, then that makes me happy.

But I do have entrepreneurial tendencies: When I was in high school, I went to a football game and saw it was about to start raining. So I got a $20 bill from my mom, and I went and bought every poncho I could afford. I sold them to people in the stands. Once it started raining, they were willing to pay a lot more. Then it stopped raining, they threw them on the ground, and I picked them up and tried again in the next game. I never thought of any of these as a business or a sustainable kind of venture. Sometimes I would see a need and think, Hey, somebody should fix that, or somebody should solve that. Every now and then, that somebody might be me.

It's important to teach entrepreneurship because: The world is changing so rapidly, there's disruption all around us, and the most valuable thing any of our students can do is develop an entrepreneurial mindset so that they can learn to deal with disruption and change. Maybe they find a startup someday they want to either launch or join, or maybe they're just finding ways to be entrepreneurial and creative in their existing career. I get excited to help students recognize that, yes, they can be entrepreneurial even if they're not starting a business today.

The essentials of a great pitch are: The number one thing is to get somebody excited. The person making the pitch has to appear to really, really love what they're doing. If you're not enthusiastic, then nobody else will be. And I think convincing your audience of the context of who's got this problem, and is it a big enough problem, is more important than actually convincing them that your solution is perfect. If you're working on solving a big enough and important enough problem, then you can find different solutions.

My elevator pitch for the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative: In a world full of disruption, everyone needs to be entrepreneurial. There's no better place than Georgetown to develop the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders.

There's no better place than Georgetown because: For centuries, this university has attracted brilliant, ambitious people who want to change the world. I think that desire to make a positive impact in the world and be men and women for others is a perfect recipe for entrepreneurship. The technology side of things is getting easier and easier. But now the harder part is understanding the human condition, where there are real problems, where ethics and values matter, solving things that are difficult for society. That's where the real entrepreneurial opportunities are, and that's where Georgetown students and alumni have a real advantage.

In 2024, Georgetown Entrepreneurship received the Nasdaq Center of Entrepreneurial Excellence Award from the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers.

Outside of work, you'll find me in a gym: I have two boys, 11 and 13. They're both really good athletes and love basketball. I played a lot of basketball growing up, and I enjoy watching them. So I spend it seems like every night and every weekend chasing kids around, driving them around and sitting in gyms.

I like to watch: stand-up comedy. Hoya alums Jim Gaffigan and Mike Berbiglia are my two favorites. But yeah, I'll watch a lot of comedy shows. My kids and my students will tell you I deliver too many "dad jokes" of my own.

What gets me out of bed in the morning: I still feel like we're just scratching the surface. We might have reached about 25% of the students at Georgetown last year, which in some ways is a lot, but there's still 75% that we're not getting to. I think that with the world changing, traditional jobs and industries are going away and our university needs to adapt. Our students, our graduates all need to adapt. That's what we're teaching, and that's what we want to help people learn. The future is entrepreneurial, and we want to help more people embrace that.