Young entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of a growing community like Southwest Florida, and at Florida Gulf Coast University, Dr. Sandra Kauanui has fostered a breeding ground for those who hustle.
On a Tuesday afternoon, the recently opened Lucas Hall, a collaborative space for the Daveler & Kauanui School of Entrepreneurship, buzzes as students and faculty brainstorm in the glass-enclosed offices and incubator space on the first floor; tinker with 3D printers in the Rist Family Foundation Maker Space on the second floor and with greenscreens in the soundproofed third-floor labs; and collaborate in classrooms throughout. After longtime FGCU supporter David Lucas’ $4 million gift for the $10.4 million, three-story building that was funded completely through donations, Kauanui, the school’s founding director, helped stimulate support by pledging $200,000—a little more than a year’s worth of her salary—toward the effort.
Walking through the incubator with Kauanui—whose leadership won the school a Bronze Edison Award as an innovative model of entrepreneurship education (though she humbly omits that detail)—she greets every student by name and can brief you on their passion projects on the spot. “Kids from all over campus can come in and if they have a business idea, we can help them create it,” she says. For the students, it’s a chance for hands-on, mentor-focused learning to kick-start their careers; for faculty, it’s an opportunity to see their impact firsthand; for the community, it’s a catalyst for economic growth. For Kauanui, it’s simply “my baby.”
When she moved here from California 14 years ago, Kauanui had already raised a family and ran her own accounting and finance company, all while earning her bachelor’s, master’s and most of her doctorate degree. She was teaching at California Polytechnic State University and was considering retirement when FGCU recruited her to teach. Since then, she’s fueled the university’s entrepreneurship program, establishing a minor to complement the business school in 2014. As interest grew (“We had 500 kids in no time,” she says), Kauanui continued to expand the school’s reach. In 2016, she lobbied to create the school’s Runway Program, where students and alumni can access technology, seek faculty advice and even potentially secure seed funding to launch their businesses. In 2017, she established the program as a major; in 2019 she created the school; and this fall semester, there’s the Lucas Hall and a graduate program. Already, efforts have resulted in more than 500 mostly local startups created by students and alumni earning about $37.5 million in gross revenue. “The whole goal is to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem in Southwest Florida,” she says. —J.B.