Entrepreneurship has taken Maia Donohue (BA ’05, MS ’13) all over the world—but there’s nowhere he’d rather be than his home state of Wisconsin. The founder, educator, and two-time UW–Madison graduate joined WSB in 2025 as the school’s director of student engagement-entrepreneurial mindset. In this new role, he’s helping students across campus discover and embrace entrepreneurship, build critical skills, and turn their wildest dreams into reality.
WSB: What does it mean to have an entrepreneurial mindset?
Maia Donohue: When students hear the word entrepreneurship, they might think it’s only for somebody looking to launch a startup. Sure, we want to see students start companies, but having an entrepreneurial mindset is something that’s applicable to just about any career. Students in every discipline need to be able to pitch and share ideas, build social capital, and discover what’s important to their customers. Having these skills is going to pay huge dividends in any industry.
I’m focused on getting entrepreneurship out there to more students, making it more accessible, and trying to help them understand how an entrepreneurial mindset applies to whatever they might be doing.
WSB: How are you achieving those goals?
MD: I’m teaching the new Wisconsin Applied Ventures in Entrepreneurship (WAVE) course for undergraduates. But I also work with graduate students here at WSB, as well as students across campus, because entrepreneurship is one of the few areas that truly touches every department and school at UW–Madison.
What’s great is that there are other entrepreneurial units across campus, including the new Wisconsin Entrepreneurship Hub, and we’re all connected and support each other. At the end of the day, students interested in entrepreneurship don’t care about campus divisions; they just care about whether a resource can help them.
“Having an entrepreneurial mindset is something that’s applicable to just about any career.”
—Maia Donohue (BA ’05, MS ’13)
WSB: In 2025, you helped organize the first-ever Idea to Aisle Pitch Competition. What were your takeaways from this event?
MD: We hosted this event in partnership with Happi Co., a company founded by WSB alums. It gave over 100 students an opportunity to form teams, come up with new ideas for a packaged food product, put together a business case for their company, and then pitch it to guest judges. It was a great learning experience, and the students did extremely well.
But what really struck me was how many students took the initiative to go and talk with Happi Co.’s founders, who were extremely generous with their time. The students realized this was a great opportunity, and many asked the founders to grab coffee after the event.
Seeing students understand the power of social capital and not letting an opportunity go by was amazing. We also found that while some students didn’t intend to pursue the companies they were pitching, others absolutely wanted to go forward with theirs, and so we’re now working with those students. As we look to this year’s competition, we plan to build on this success by giving students more tools to continue launching their companies beyond the event.
WSB: What other opportunities or resources are available to help students bridge the gap between theory and real-world startup experience?
MD: We launched a new venture creation badge for any UW–Madison student seeking entrepreneurial skills without having to commit to a full certificate program. I’m also the advisor for StratoVC, our first-ever student-led venture capital fund, which is making actual VC investments in other student companies.
I’m also working with students on how to use AI productively for entrepreneurship. AI can be a powerful tool for developing a startup plan, but students need to be careful because AI can be sycophantic. If you throw your startup idea into ChatGPT, it’s likely going to butter you up and say your idea is great and people will love it. But as an entrepreneur, you need it to challenge you and tell you why you’re wrong. So, it’s important for us to demonstrate constructive ways to use AI.
There’s just so much going on here at WSB, and for me, it really feels like the right place to be. There are brilliant founders here, and I love being surrounded by them and working with them. That really gets me geared up for this work.