About
Our mission
We encourage all UCF students to become entrepreneurial leaders who solve problems and simply make things better.
What we stand for
The Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership helps UCF students succeed by empowering them with entrepreneurial mindsets and skillsets. Entrepreneurial leadership capabilities are essential to creating value, making a difference, and experiencing personal and professional fulfillment. Entrepreneurial leaders make things better by creating and leading innovative startups, corporate ventures, and government initiatives that enrich our lives, our economy, and our society.
Our belief is grounded in considering entrepreneurship as a method, analogous to the scientific method, that empowers our students to address uncertainty and change with creative solutions. Consistent with popular definitions of entrepreneurship, we teach students how to pursue opportunities that look beyond established job descriptions, practices, and accepted wisdom. These essential, modern capabilities allow our students and alumni to create value and thrive in a changing world.
Grow a Powerful Network
The LaunchPad network connects students with experienced entrepreneurs, business leaders, and industry professionals — explore career paths, meet potential employers, and gain insights to excel in your field.
Foster Skills for Career Success
The skills that make you stand out in the workforce — creativity, problem-solving, determination, clear communication — are the same ones that build a business. The LaunchPad helps you sharpen them.
Boost Your Earnings Potential
Explore internships, job opportunities, and competitions on StartupTree. Last year UCF’s Blackstone LaunchPad awarded over $45,000 in cash prizes to students — compete for funding to bring your business idea to life.
Back the next generation of founders
Gifts to the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership fund student ventures, confidential coaching, and the competitions that turn ideas into companies. Every gift goes to work in a student’s hands — give today.
Our impact
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AI Health Care Consulting & Tech Company Wins 2026 Joust New Venture Championship
CareFlo, co-founded by Jad-Alexander Shalhoub, Joshua Boloña and John Alex Kurutz, is a health care consulting and technology company that builds AI-powered systems designed to reduce administrative burden and prevent revenue leakage for medical practices. Its flagship tool, Deacon, helps health care practices improve revenue cycle management by streamlining complex administrative and financial processes.
Read more — AI Health Care Consulting & Tech Company Wins 2026 Joust New Venture Championship
Forbes 2026 30 Under 30 Winner: Capacitech
Capacitech Energy, founded by UCF engineering alumni Joe Sleppy, is an energy technology company making high-power supercapacitor systems practical for data centers, utilities, microgrids and other mission-critical infrastructure. Its modular C-Link systems provide millisecond-scale power protection and rapid-response energy storage, helping prevent downtime and equipment damage while offering a space-efficient, plug-and-play alternative to traditional energy storage systems.
Read more — Forbes 2026 30 Under 30 Winner: Capacitech
UCF Alum Offers Innovative Solutions for Classroom Struggles
Innovation Station, founded by UCF alumna Kelly Shea, is an education company creating hands-on invention kits that teach K–6 students how to identify real-world problems, develop creative solutions, build prototypes and pitch their ideas. Through a series of story-driven, screen-free activities, worksheets and crafting materials, Innovation Station helps educators and parents develop children’s creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving and confidence while introducing them to the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and innovation.
Read more — UCF Alum Offers Innovative Solutions for Classroom Struggles