Spring 2026 – Allan Martinez Venegas ’14
From six Live It Fund projects completed around the world, to new faculty partnerships sparked by our Silicon Valley visit, to the launch of our very first E&I MacExplore trip to Denver and Boulder, this year is full of growth, experimentation, and new ways to learn by doing.Quote from Allan Martinez Venegas ’14 Letter
Dear Macalester Community,
As we begin 2026, I want to start by celebrating the momentum and imagination that continue to define our Entrepreneurship & Innovation community. This past season, students completed six Live It Fund projects across Minnesota, Indonesia, Chile, Bolivia, and Romania—each one grounded in curiosity, courage, and a deep commitment to learning through action and doing good by others. We also took an exciting step forward in building a stronger campus-wide ecosystem by expanding our work with faculty. A recent three-day trip to Silicon Valley brought together professors from Environmental Studies, Russian Studies, Computer Science, and Biology to explore how innovation shows up across disciplines. Thanks to the support of trustee Zia Yusuf, we met with leaders, including the Head of AI at LinkedIn, a senior Google executive, and the Executive Director of the Stanford d.school. These conversations reaffirmed what we already believe at Macalester: entrepreneurship and innovation thrive when diverse disciplines, perspectives, and questions come together.
This year also brings meaningful growth and new opportunities. We are launching our very first Entrepreneurship & Innovation MacExplore trip, supported by trustee Seth Levine, with an inaugural cohort of 14 students traveling to Denver and Boulder to experience entrepreneurial ecosystems firsthand. Alongside this, we continue to expand and strengthen our funded summer opportunities, which build on years of student-led projects and now offer even more pathways to start a venture, join a startup, or carry out a social impact project anywhere in the world. Internally, our team is deepening our shared methodology rooted in Human-Centered Design, refining our operations, and creating clearer pathways for students to take their ideas beyond Macalester and compete at the state level. My invitation to you is simple: stay curious, take risks, and engage deeply with us to take advantage of the opportunities that we offer. Whether you would call yourself an “entrepreneur or not”, there is a place for you in our department. Read closely, attend events, apply boldly, and let this be the year you turn an idea from possibility into action.
In partnership,
Allan Martinez Venegas
Director of Entrepreneurship & Innovation