A Catholic entrepreneur starts a business start-up program for teens

Unexpectedly, Luke Burgis traveled to Silicon Valley to build a company. Little did he know, he would eventually become a seminarian and start entrepreneurship programs for Catholic students.

Before Burgis realized he was looking for more meaning in his life, he had attended NYU, worked on Wall Street, founded many companies in Silicon Valley and moved to Las Vegas. He was inspired by a friend to renew his Catholic religion. Although after five years in seminary he finally realized that he would not become a priest, he still felt that his work had no greater meaning.

For example, in 2020 he founded the Catholic Entrepreneurship and Design Experience (CEDE, pronounced “seed”) to help students across the country bridge their professional and religious lives.

After four years, CEDE has grown into a vibrant organization with programs and educational resources available around the world. Headquartered at the Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, DC. Burgis is a CUA assistant clinical professor of business administration and local entrepreneur. In addition to teaching business classes at CUA, he has created instructional materials that are shared with homeschooling communities and Catholic schools.

“Even after I had that reconversion experience, I didn’t understand how I could actually live my values ​​and be Catholic in the business world I was in,” Burgis said when asked what motivated him to start CEDE.

“But I knew that in Catholic education there was a gap that we needed to close between the theoretical or the principles of Catholic social teaching and the way that plays out in practice, if you’re trying to start something,” he says. explained. “We launched CEDE to try to reintegrate these disciplines.”

Burgis is launching a summer entrepreneurship program for high school students this year as a new project for CEDE. High school students learn how to launch a business through the 10-week virtual Startup Venture Challenge.

Burgis stated that CEDE “introduces students to the basic principles of entrepreneurship within the context of Catholic social teaching and helps them understand that whether they ever start a business or not, they are the entrepreneurs of their own lives.”

“We are trying to train young Catholics to think more like entrepreneurs, which means finding creative ways to solve problems or see solutions where other people only see problems,” he said. “We think this is very important for all Catholics, period, and that if we had a more entrepreneurial church, we would have a more adaptive and creative church.”

“Our goal here is not really to create more entrepreneurs,” he explains. “Our goal is to help more young Catholics in Catholic schools enter the world equipped and confident, whatever their vocation.”

Burgis wanted to make a connection between commercial knowledge and Catholic doctrine.

“(At NYU) I just learned, ‘This is what profit is. The profit is good. Chase it,’” he recalled. “Most of my classmates just wanted to make as much money as possible.”

“When I left seminary, I realized that there was a real disintegration or disconnect between what I had learned in my Catholic schools… and what things actually look like when you’re actually out in the world trying to do things,” he explained.

“Experiential learning,” “creative problem solving” and independence are key components of CEDE’s educational paradigm, which is “different” from the rules-based education system to which many American students are accustomed, Burgis said.

“That’s largely what it feels like to be an entrepreneur,” he said of the model. “You’re not given a road map, you’re not told what to do, you have to figure things out, and you have to make decisions and take responsibility for those decisions.”

According to Burgis, it will feel like ‘a challenge’.

“You are challenged, you are given this mission,” he said. “We want to empower 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. Actually, we want to make it a little bit uncomfortable for them.”

Because the first three weeks will be dedicated to developing an idea, students do not need to have business ideas to participate. A discernment phase, launch, testing, and a resource and community phase are all included in the schedule.

“We want them to feel what it feels like to have a fire lit within themselves, to be able to exercise their own creativity, to take ownership of it, to take full responsibility and be proud of it, and to help others can serve through their gifts and talents,” Burgis said.

The program is completely virtual and flexible to fit students’ work schedules; it runs from June 10 to August 12. The age range for teens who want to sign up is 14-18 years old.