Dale Eesley’s Entrepreneurial Enthusiasm Drives Community Engagement

Dale Eesley, Ph.D., professor and director of the Center for Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Franchising has dedicated his life and career to promoting and cultivating a culture of entrepreneurship among students and business owners in Nebraska and beyond.

Eesley has taught and consulted in the field of entrepreneurship for over 18 years. He is currently the John Morgan Community Chair in Entrepreneurship, founder, and professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategy at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) College of Business Administration (CBA).

“I was recruited at UNO in 2008 to start an entrepreneurship center. I founded the Center for Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Franchising,” Eesley says. “My job was to bring opportunities and training to students in order to expose them to the benefits of self-employment.”

Eesley says he has aimed to add one program each year from the time that he founded the center.

“We added a pitch contest, a Maverick Business Plan contest and a student conference that brings in between 300 to 400 students from 30 universities, with guest speakers from around the country,” Eesley says.

Eesley adds that he introduced a summer camp for junior high students and then worked with other faculty members to develop some major programs for the College of Business Administration.

“The first program we developed was Stedman’s Café, which is a student-run café right here in Mammel Hall in 2016,” Eesley says. “In the same year, we also started an entrepreneurial living learning community which recruits eight young men and eight young women whom as a cohort, take classes together and then later travel to entrepreneurial hotspots around the country.”

Eesley says he is quite proud of the center and the work that they do because it gives students an opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship and engage with it by making contact with business community members that can help them.

Most recently, Eesley introduced the Maverick Venture Fund, which is one of the programs that exemplify community engagement in the city. Students listen to business pitches, conduct research, make investment decisions and become engaged with founders and entrepreneurs. The majority of investments of the fund have come from within Omaha.

“I started a student-run venture fund called the Maverick Venture Fund that has so far invested around $200,000 into 10-12 startup businesses,” Eesley says. “It is a really exciting program because very few schools like ours have a student-run venture fund that actually makes investments.”

Eesley says that the Maverick Venture Fund is a great program for community engagement because not only do students learn how to talk and engage with real-world companies, but working in business provides an opportunity to give back to the local community in meaningful ways.

In addition, the center runs a Maverick Technology Venture Alliance program where students are hired to do due diligence on intellectual property. The program works mainly with UNeTech, the intellectual property arm of UNO and the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC).

“This entails that if somebody invents something over at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, these hired students on the program write a report on how it can be used in the world and the report is then shared with potential entrepreneurs who want to license it.” Eesley says.

Other than their work with students, Eesley, along with other faculty members at the College of Business of Administration, often spend time encouraging and coaching local business owners on entrepreneurship skills that they can utilize in their businesses.

“I run a 12-week certificate program with a cohort of about 20 minority business owners from all over the midwestern region. The program is conducted over Zoom and I along with six or seven other faculty members teach different topics to these business owners,” he says, “And the engagement has been great.”

As a business owner himself, Eesley notes that he uses the skills and principles that he teaches in the classroom and applies them to his own businesses. He describes his teaching style as ‘very hands on’ and oftentimes uses his business as a teaching example for his students.

“About five or six years ago, I decided it will be helpful to take what I know and buy a business that I could use as an example in my teaching. …. My motivation was how can I make things more interesting for my students and for myself,” Eesley says. “One important lesson that I always teach my students is the importance of prioritizing people, not just customers, but employees too. Do not focus on maximizing profits before you maximize what you can do for your employees and that is something I wouldn’t have taught with the same authenticity had I not experienced it in my own business.”