Graduate and PhD Students

Business Consulting

The Polsky Center connects graduate students with entrepreneurs and small business owners on Chicago's South and West sides. Students play an important role in advising community business owners on a variety of topics including growing their business, improving sales and marketing, increasing revenues, improving operations, and more. In addition, the Polsky Center has a variety of programs where students can gain hands-on experiences as fellows, interns, and associates to add to their resume.

Polsky Small Business Growth Program

The Polsky Small Business Growth Program supports small businesses owners to help them grow and scale their businesses to the next level of success. By pairing highly-skilled University of Chicago students with small businesses on the South and West Sides of Chicago, students can help the business owners address key business challenges and determine new strategies for growth. The program is funded by JPMorgan Chase as part of the nationwide Ascend program, which partners with top universities to provide business assistance and opportunities for minority-owned, women-owned, and veteran-owned businesses in major metropolitan areas.

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Innovation Fund Associates

The Innovation Fund Associates (IFA) program works alongside the Polsky Center’s George Shultz Innovation Fund. Student associates are trained to act as venture capitalists, performing due diligence on innovative ventures coming out of the University of Chicago ecosystem. The program is structured as an apprenticeship, where associates learn by doing as part of an interdisciplinary team. Associates deep dive into one investment opportunity per cycle and get a close-up look at the commercialization process and what it takes to move a technology from the lab into real real-world application.

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