When Luke Burgis moved to Silicon Valley to start a business, he never expected he would become a seminarian and then start an entrepreneurship program for Catholic students.
Burgis attended New York University, worked on Wall Street, started several businesses in Silicon Valley, and moved to Las Vegas before deciding he wanted more meaning in his life. With the encouragement of his friends, he rekindled his Catholic faith. After spending five years at his seminary, he ultimately realized that he would not become a priest, but he still felt that his work needed a deeper meaning.
So he founded the Catholic Entrepreneurship and Design Experience (CEDE, pronounced “seed”) in 2020 to help students across the country connect their professional lives with their faith.
Four years later, CEDE has grown into an organization based at the Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, D.C., offering programs and materials around the world. Burgis is CUA’s resident entrepreneur and clinical assistant professor of business. In addition to teaching business classes at CUA, he has developed teaching materials to share with his community of Catholic schools and homeschoolers.
When asked what inspired him to found CEDE, Burgis said, “Even after my reconversion experience, I didn’t know how to actually live out my values and be a Catholic in the business world I was in.” he said.
“But if we are going to start something, there is a gap in Catholic education that needs to be filled between the theories and principles of Catholic social education and the way it is actually deployed in the field. “I knew it,” he says. He explained. “He launched CEDE so that we could reintegrate these fields.”
This year, Burgis is launching a new project for CEDE: a summer entrepreneurship program for high school students. The 10-week virtual Startup Venture Challenge will teach high school students how to start a business.
“CEDE introduces students to the basic principles of entrepreneurship within the context of Catholic social education, helping them understand that whether they start a business or not, they are ultimately entrepreneurs in their own lives. “It will help us,” Burgis said.
“We try to train young Catholics to think like entrepreneurs, which means finding creative ways to solve problems and finding solutions where others only see problems.” “It means finding a solution,” he said. “We think this is really important for all Catholics, and if we had a more entrepreneurial church, we would have a more adaptive and creative church.”
But being a “Catholic entrepreneur” doesn’t necessarily mean starting a business, Burgis pointed out.
“Our goal here is not really to create more business owners,” he explained. “Our goal is to help more young Catholics attending Catholic schools feel prepared and confident to go out into the world, whatever their profession.”
Mr. Burgis wanted to combine what he learned about business with Catholic teachings.
“[At NYU] I just learned that this is what profit is. The profit is good. Go after it,” he recalled. “Most of my classmates just wanted to make as much money as possible.”
“When I graduated from seminary, I realized that there was a huge disconnect and gap between what I learned at Catholic school and what it was like to actually go out into the world and do something. ” he explained.
CEDE’s educational model emphasizes “experiential learning,” “creative problem solving,” and independence, and is “different” from the rules-based form of education that many American students are accustomed to, Burgis said. Stated.
“That feels like a lot of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur,” he said of the model. “You’re not given a roadmap, you’re not told what to do. You have to figure things out, you have to make decisions, and you have to take responsibility for those decisions.”
Mr Burgis said it would feel like a “challenge”.
“You are challenged by being given this mission,” he said. “We want to enable students to accomplish that mission by working together and finding creative ways to solve problems on their own without being told how to do it. In fact, I We want to make them a little uncomfortable.”
Students do not need to have a business idea to participate, as the first three weeks are spent building the idea. The complete schedule includes an identification stage, launch, testing, and resource and community stages.
“We encourage children to ignite a fire within themselves, to unleash their own creativity, own it, take full responsibility for it, be proud of it, and through it inspire others. We want them to feel what it feels like to serve, their gifts and talents,” Burgis said.
The program will run from June 10th to August 12th and will be entirely virtual and will be conducted around students’ work schedules. The cost is $250 and scholarships are available. Applications are open to youth between the ages of 14 and 18.
