Growing up, issues like poverty, inequity and polarization were dinner table conversations for Arya Diwase, MPP/MBA ’24. She came to Fuqua wanting to make a difference for her community in India — following in the footsteps of her father, who has worked in the public service sector for more than 30 years. 

Despite already having successfully launched her first venture, the Jazz Hands Foundation, an English-language program supporting underprivileged students in India, Diwase was uneasy about spending her time at business school focusing on her next social entrepreneurship idea. 

"I saw everyone around me land incredible summer internships as I read the abysmal stats about women founders receiving the capital and support they needed to succeed,” she said.

By holding no preconceived notions about what her MBA experience would look like, Diwase left room to build exactly what she needed to launch her next venture: an entrepreneurial mindset.

“The entrepreneurial mindset is about acting on the desire to solve real challenges and creating a systematic approach to deliver a solution,” she said.

Cultivating an Entrepreneurial Mindset With Diverse Perspectives

Rather than a roadmap to follow, the entrepreneurial mindset is about establishing a way of thinking and taking action in different situations. Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship (Duke I&E), housed at Fuqua, aims to help students across Duke transform into creative innovators who act on their ideas with a proven approach to problem-solving.

“Successful entrepreneurs must understand and genuinely care about what drives their stakeholders and manage uncertainty through disciplined action,” said Professor Jamie Jones, executive director of Duke I&E. “Many people have great ideas rooted in passion. Sparking a meaningful change lies in their ability to identify assumptions, eliminate risk, build resilience, and bring those ideas to action in an intentional and ethical way.”

Education not only exposes students to different disciplines but also creates an environment where their point of view is challenged — encouraging them to develop an entirely new way of thinking rooted in intention and curiosity. When students walk into a Duke I&E course, they enter an interdisciplinary learning environment with undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. students from across the university. For a Fuqua student, this means gaining exposure to people who speak different professional languages and come from extremely diverse fields. 

“Being in a room with all of these students with different areas of knowledge, ideas, and passions is truly powerful. Everyone has something they want to change — that change happens through an entrepreneurial approach,” Jones said. “Diverse experiences help you create innovative solutions. We are not going to solve anything without working together.”

Learning From Failure Makes Way for Success

Hands-on opportunities to put ideas into action can be a difference-maker in failing or succeeding as an entrepreneur or on-the-job innovator. Diwase spent months in the New Ventures: Develop course, the second in a series of courses giving students hands-on experience in launching a venture, devising and testing assumptions that are critical to business success that she could later replicate.

“At Fuqua, I strived to soak in the experiences that are going to help build up that confidence, rather than staying within my comfort zone,” Diwase said.

Instead of an internship, Diwase spent the summer between her first and second year at Fuqua working on her startup, Himayat, a digital platform offering human resource support and benefits for domestic workers in India. She spent that time bringing what she learned in her New Ventures courses to life, this time with a venture that she believes creates a path toward financial security for domestic workers, many of whom are women.

"I know what I need to succeed, and have no sense of fear — but instead it’s a challenge,” Diwase said. “The challenge of entrepreneurship is more exciting than it is scary because I feel prepared to face the challenges.”

An Ecosystem of Support

Diwase is the first to admit she wouldn’t have gotten this far alone. In addition to being a member of the Melissa & Doug Entrepreneurship accelerator, she also relied on the mentorship of Erin Worsham, executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE), her Himayat team, and others. Diwase was that mentor for some students, serving as a student leader in various MBA student clubs.

“I want people to feel confident in pursuing ventures and not feel like they have to follow the same paths as their peers who go into consulting or investment banking,” she said. “I want to share Duke I&E and CASE resources with other MBAs.”

From private equity to entrepreneurship and family business, clubs create sought-after communities for MBAs, and they are an outlet for entrepreneurs like Diwase to share their passions. Josh Cohen, director of MBA entrepreneurship programs and startup recruiting, says this outlet is exactly what entrepreneurs need.

“The most successful entrepreneurs are a part of a community,” Cohen said. “The value of an MBA is the people you meet.”

Gregg Bordes, MBA ’12, certainly agrees. Now a co-founder of a venture capital firm, Bordes met his co-founders, Joe Mancini and Nikin Shah, in his class at Fuqua. Even the firm’s name, Front Porch Venture Partners (FPVP), can be traced back to a group project from their time in the Daytime MBA program. 

FPVP aims to increase access to venture capital investing for individual investors or family-run offices. In addition to his partners, Fuqua introduced Bordes to the entrepreneurial community in Durham and North Carolina’s Research Triangle. 

“Over the last 12 years, the maturation of the ecosystem here in the Triangle, and more broadly, in North Carolina, it's just been wild,” Bordes said. “There is a great community here, and it grows every year.”

Bordes is a board member of the Center for Entrepreneurial Development, a nonprofit organization that connects entrepreneurs to the resources they need to grow their businesses. As part of that role, he has met with venture capitalists from around the country interested in connecting with local entrepreneurs and who often comment on how much the local community has developed. 

“People know there is a lot of talent in the Triangle, and there are so many different organizations here locally,” Bordes said. “It’s a locally-supported ecosystem that makes it much easier and much more fun to grow and build a business.”

That ecosystem extends beyond North Carolina and into a network of hubs across the Southeast, creating another level of community for entrepreneurs. Bordes said the community in the Southeast can compete with cities like New York and San Francisco by coming together and being collaborative. 

“With the right resources and support system, pursuing entrepreneurship doesn’t seem scary — it’s empowering,” said Diwase.