A recent Princeton Review ranking quantifies something already well-known in entrepreneurial circles: The University of Miami Patti and Allan Herbert Business School excels at teaching students how to own and operate businesses.
This is evidenced by the Princeton Review ranking Miami Herbert 19 among its top 50 schools offering undergraduate Entrepreneurship studies for 2024, a 20-place jump from last year. Miami Herbert’s latest ranking was also featured in Entrepreneur magazine.
“We’re looking at entrepreneurship through a couple of different lenses,” said David Soto, senior director of data services for the Princeton Review, a tutoring, test prep, and college admission services company not affiliated with Princeton University. “One: Is there academic support around entrepreneurship on campus? Two: Are there courses for students, how many students are participating in those courses, and what type of faculty are teaching those courses?
“A whole slew of data points go into the undergraduate Entrepreneurship rankings,” Soto said. “The University of Miami showed really well, particularly in terms of businesses started and funding raised. I got some pretty spectacular numbers in that area, so I think that may have propelled them from their previous spot of 39 to 19. Usually, we see a move of a couple of spots.”
Miami Herbert student Jade Maya Abramson, a sophomore entrepreneurship major, knows what Soto means. A New York City native who has “wanted to be her own boss” since high school, Abramson now divides her time between Miami Herbert classwork and running Lions & Willows, her swimwear company.
“It’s been my dream since I was 15 to start a swimwear brand,” Abramson said. “I came to the University of Miami because I heard it has great entrepreneurship programs. Also, what’s a better place to start a swimwear brand than Miami?”
When it comes to entrepreneurship support, Abramson said Miami Herbert has more than lived up to its advanced billing, particularly due to the school’s Director of Entrepreneurial Initiatives, Associate Professor of Professional Practice Susan Amat.
“With the classes that I have had with her, we started off creating pitch decks and similar materials, along with tackling subjects like accounting—topics entrepreneurs typically prefer to avoid,” Abramson recalled of Amat, who is a triple ’Cane, as well as a serial entrepreneur who started her first business at 15. “I just wanted to do the fun part, the designing and the selling!” Abramson said of her mindset before she began interacting with Amat.
The wisdom of Amat’s approach became clearer to Abramson during a conversation she had with potential Lions & Willows investors. “I had everything I needed, and they were really impressed,” Abramson said of the business session. “I ended up being much happier at the end of the call than I thought I would be.”
Amat has been pivotal to Miami Herbert's rise in entrepreneurship rankings. Prior to joining Miami Herbert she was instrumental in turning Greater Miami into a technology center and in creating entrepreneurship accelerators, incubators, and corporate innovation initiatives worldwide.
However, she modestly claimed that the burgeoning reputation of the school’s Entrepreneurship Initiatives Program, UVenture, is due to the 109 hard-working Miami Herbert students under her tutelage, and the largesse of donors who are entrepreneurship supporters.
“Under the UVenture umbrella, every fall, we do an elevator-pitch competition offering $15,000 in cash prizes in preparation for the Business Plan Competition in the spring, with $65,000 in awards,” Amat said. “A lot of this is only possible because of alumnus Dean Fogel, who made a legacy gift to us last year that allowed us to open the Dean M. Fogel Entrepreneurs Hub. That’s where all these serious entrepreneurs who are focused on building their businesses work, day in and day out, supporting each other.”
Business technology junior Gonzalo Waisman has dropped by the Dean M. Fogel Entrepreneurs Hub to refine the operations of an international educational technology company he co-founded.
“The main product we sell is a software-as-a-service solution for HR,” said Waisman, the CEO of Hashi Inc., a 3-year-old company whose name means bridge in Japanese. Hashi has 26 employees, offices in Argentina—Waisman’s home country—and works with banks, construction companies, and real estate companies in Argentina, Chile, Panama, Guatemala, Colombia, Uruguay, Peru, Mexico, and China.
“When I got to the United States three years ago, I was eager to get involved with the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Miami,” Waisman said. “I took a management class and Dr. Amat was my teacher. She has been an amazing mentor and professor, and my journey as an entrepreneur would have been much more complicated without her.”
The scope of businesses getting support from Miami Herbert’s UVenture program runs the gamut from international to local. Reliabowls, which has been open for a few months and serves meals to students at the University of Miami’s Coral Gables campus, is the brainchild of marketing junior Aidan Friedson and entrepreneurship sophomore Noah Gaudet.
“I’m in Dr. Amat’s Intro to Entrepreneurship class,” said Friedson, who’s been cooking since he was 3 and can usually be found in Reliabowls’ commercial kitchen, while Gaudet focuses more on the business side of things. “When Dr. Amat teaches that class, everyone is super engaged. I can tell that she deeply cares about her students and the well-being of their companies.”
“She’s guided us in so many right directions,” Gaudet said of his and Friedson’s mentor. “She tends to manage Aidan and me very well, and she’s the perfect sounding board.”
Kyle Levy, who graduates in a few months with a degree in business administration and finance, owns and operates a delivery logistics company called UniHop. For Levy, Amat has “been a huge turning point in my perception of the University. I think one of the most difficult things about building a business in college is finding people who will take you seriously, and who understand you’re not just another kid trying to be a Mark Zuckerberg.
“Dr. Amat really understands that scaling, and even the foundation of a business, starts with having lots of support,” Levy said. “She really does care about us, and she loves to see our growth.”
From students to donors to the Princeton Review, there’s a growing consensus that Miami Herbert has built a valuable enterprise when it comes to undergraduate entrepreneurship.
