This story originally appeared in the spring 2025 issue of Our Tennessee, a systemwide magazine for alumni of all University of Tennessee campuses and institutes.
Mike Bradshaw, director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, started the Urban Vision Initiative to connect entrepreneurs from underserved communities with UTC business students.
One entrance to the James R. Mapp Building—which houses the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE)—faces the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga campus. The opposite entrance opens to downtown Chattanooga’s MLK Boulevard, a street sprawling with local businesses.
To Mike Bradshaw, CIE director, this is symbolic of the Urban Vision Initiative—a CIE program that links entrepreneurs from underserved communities with UTC student consultants to support their journey toward economic success.
“I wanted people who were stressed and worried and felt out of control in their businesses to understand what their businesses were doing and to bring some clarity,” Bradshaw says. “So much is up to the entrepreneurs, and you’ve got to be humble approaching folks in the nuts and bolts of the business.
“I wanted to help. I wanted to be able to use what I believe is the strongest asset that the university has, which is our students.”
The Urban Vision Initiative (UVI) is modeled after the Urban Poverty and Business Initiative at the University of Notre Dame. The program began in 2022, funded by support from the Chattanooga-based Jack and Charlotte Frost Family Foundation. Part of that support allows the program to recruit and pay student consultants to assist participating business owners.
“We started UVI with the goal of helping businesses who had achieved their first revenue but probably hadn’t chosen their first employees,” Bradshaw says. “They were just out there scrambling for what they could get.”
Each year, the program supports 12 to 20 local business owners; this year, 18 Chattanooga entrepreneurs are participating. For six weeks, the entrepreneurs partake in a boot camp to learn how they can strengthen their business plans. Bradshaw then pairs his students with one or more entrepreneurs, based on their skills, interests and the business owners’ needs.
The UVI program provides business owners with support in areas that can make or break an entrepreneur’s success. The program tackles challenges such as addressing accounting issues, managing social media and developing marketing strategies. “Things are so intertwined,” Bradshaw says. “Problems are connected to other problems. One of the simplest things is a lack of handling of accounting; that’s where a lot of uncertainty lies.
“Small business folks have a tendency to concentrate on just getting action going. When the action happens, it creates a lot of artifacts that go behind you.”
Calvin Woods, founder of Cal’s Headlight Restoration, left, receives his graduation cord from Urban Vision Initiative mentor Bill McDonald.
One of the current UVI student consultants is Graham Davis, a junior business management major from Knoxville. He has been collaborating directly with business owners since September 2024. For one entrepreneur whose business involves taking women into the outdoors as a self-care practice, Davis has been brainstorming new revenue streams and developing strategies to scale the business. “We’re working on a survey that she can put on her Instagram and other socials to garner interest about products,” Davis says. “We are also working on a user manual so that other women can guide hikes.
“It’s been a really cool experience because I’ve been able to do some prototyping, which is what I want to do in my future career.”
Davis explains that the value of UVI lies not only in students assisting local business owners but also in providing them with the opportunity to apply their skills in a real-world setting. “You can pick how you help,” he says. “You get to build on your skills in business. You’re not playing with people’s money, but you are affecting somebody who is actually working with real money and their real business. You have a pretty significant effect on what they’re putting out.”
Bradshaw says that this is part of UVI’s mission—to give students insight into often overlooked challenges of running a business. “Providing them exposure to entrepreneurship in its very raw form—in its most difficult, under-resourced, terribly uncertain about whether it’s going to work—is important,” Bradshaw says, “and there’s no greater, no stronger predictor of post-graduation hiring success than a paid internship.”
Before his role as CIE director, Bradshaw was the director of The Company Lab, a nonprofit that supports Chattanooga’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. One of his primary goals was to “create a city where people’s children didn’t want to leave at the first opportunity they had.”
He carries that philosophy with the UVI program. “If you’ve got the heart and the drive, we will help you channel it to something that would be highly rewarding for you—creating these experiences here and providing the opportunities for young people to do things they would never get the opportunity to do otherwise.”
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Shateria Smith, left, founder of Simply Props, and Ella Livingston, founder of Cocoa Asante, at the Urban Vision Initiative graduation ceremony. Photo courtesy of Gary W. Rollins College of Business.
