Elstrott has taught the fundamentals of starting a business to students in courses
such as New Venture Creation and Cases in Entrepreneurship since 1986.
In 1980, Elstrott left Celestial Seasonings and returned to New Orleans so that he and Patty could raise their children closer to family. Two years later, he landed a job as a visiting assistant professor of economics at Tulane, and two years after that, in 1984, he joined the Freeman School as a visiting assistant professor of management.
Elstrott originally taught microeconomics to MBA students, but in 1986 interim Dean Walter Burnett approved his request to introduce a new elective, New Venture Creation. Elstrott wasn’t the first professor to teach entrepreneurship at the Freeman School. That distinction belongs to Bill Bennett, a former marketing professor and associate dean, who taught a class in the mid-1970s. But Elstrott’s course was the foundation of what would soon become a full-fledged program.
In 1991, Mr. and Mrs. Paul S. Rosenblum, Mrs. Edward D. Levy, and Dr. Edward D. Levy Jr. pledged a gift to endow a new institute dedicated to the study and practice of entrepreneurship. For Elstrott, who became the institute’s inaugural director, that meant not just teaching entrepreneurship in the classroom but overseeing extracurricular programs for students and expanding entrepreneurship into the community.
Over the next several years, Elstrott unveiled a host of innovative new programs under the banner of the Levy-Rosenblum Institute for Entrepreneurship. He founded the Tulane Family Business Center, which has helped more than 125 companies manage generational succession and other issues unique to family-owned firms. He launched the TABA Community Service Program to put MBA students to work for local small businesses and nonprofits in need of business assistance. And he helped create the Tulane Entrepreneurs Association and the Tulane Business Plan Competition, the nation’s only business plan competition dedicated to the principles of conscious capitalism.
LRI also reached out into the community with financial literacy, anti-poverty and economic development programs. With Alfieri Stern, Elstrott helped establish the IDA Collaborative of Louisiana, which provided matched funds for low-income residents to purchase a house. Under the program, which also included financial literacy instruction delivered by MBA students, more than 400 New Orleans residents were able to purchase their first home, an essential step in breaking the cycle of poverty. The Levy-Rosenblum Institute also put students to work teaching entrepreneurship in local public schools. With the Idea Village, Elstrott helped create the IdeaCorps program, which brings top MBA students from across the nation to New Orleans to work on intensive consulting projects for local startups.
{ 0 comments… add one now }