My conversation this week was with Omar Garriott, a UVA grad who took the long way home. Before he came back to lead the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology at Darden, he taught with Teach for America, helped low-income kids get to college, built school pages and grew the college-student audience at LinkedIn, and did tours at Apple, Salesforce, and Qualtrics. For all the turns that path has taken, it never really left education's orbit. These days his focus is building a thriving innovation ecosystem inside the university, making the case that entrepreneurship belongs at the center of higher ed rather than off at its margins.
Listen to the full-length version on YouTube (58 mins)
Omar described sitting at his own UVA graduation, the first in a lower-income family to make it there, certain he’d just been handed a guarantee. “I will never be unemployed,” he remembers thinking. And then, plainly: that’s not true anymore. Coming from someone who spent his early career as a true believer, someone who literally hung his diploma in his Teach for America classroom, this is quite the statement even if he’s right! The promise he built a life on has changed, and he refuses to pretend otherwise.
If the old compact is gone, what replaces it? Omar’s bet is entrepreneurship, not as a major but as a method we teach the way we teach the scientific one, and as the most connective thing an advancement shop has after athletics (perhaps). It raises real questions for our work.
If alumni light up around building things, why do we still mostly approach them as donors? What would it take to convene entrepreneurial alumni as a community instead of working them as a list? And if nimbler organizations can move faster than we can, what’s the durable thing only a university can still offer? I think people connect to Omar because he’s an optimist who won’t look away, which is exactly what this moment asks of the rest of us.
Follow Omar on LinkedIn and subscribe to his Substack, “Deepfake it Till You Make It.”
Big Themes This Week
The old college compact — “get the degree, get the job” — has quietly broken, and even brand-name schools can’t rest on their laurels.
Entrepreneurship as a method, not a major — something we should teach like the scientific method, for every student.
AI fluency is fast becoming table stakes; the real edge is durable human skills like curiosity, resilience, creativity, and empathy.
Lifelong learning is the real frontier — education delivered when you need it, not all front-loaded by age 22.
Entrepreneurial alumni are among the most engaged people in our communities — yet we still tend to approach them as donors.
Team Discussion Questions
Where are we still treating alumni transactionally when they actually want to build alongside us?
What would it look like to convene our entrepreneurial alumni as a community instead of working them as a list?
Which of our “tried and true” engagement tactics deserve to go under a microscope this year?
How are we finding and elevating authentic alumni and peer voices, versus relying on top-down brand campaigns?
If a nimbler organization tried to out-engage us tomorrow, what’s the durable thing only we can offer?
Coming Up:
The Next Agora: Developing Leadership Presence
Our next Agora will be about these themes and more plus a moderated networking session.
Title:
Developing Leadership Presence: Inspire with Confidence, Credibility, and TrustDate & Time:
Friday, June 26 from 12-1 pm ET.Speaker:
Mo Cotton Kelly, Chief People Officer and Senior Vice President, Alumni Relations at the UConn Foundation.
