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OMAHA — A $4 million gift has launched a new Creighton University center that will help develop young entrepreneurs and their creative ventures.
The Greisch Center for Enterprise Value was established with a donation from the Diabetes Care Foundation in honor of foundation board member and Creighton alumnus Jim Greisch, the private downtown-Omaha based Creighton University announced Tuesday.
The investment provides for new staff positions, programming and seed money to support student and faculty entrepreneurs. It will be housed in the Heider College of Business but will partner with innovators throughout every school and discipline at Creighton.
Nathan Preheim, the center’s director, said in a statement that he believes the center will put Creighton “on the map as the entrepreneurship hub of higher ed” and attract “out-of-the-box thinkers and doers to Creighton.”
Anthony Hendrickson, dean of the Heider College of Business, said students across all disciplines want more entrepreneurship courses and application opportunities. The new center will support research, help secure publishing and commercialization opportunities, host speaker series and other events and continue JayTank, an annual student-led idea-pitching competition rewarded with thousands of dollars in donor-funded awards. It will also feature a yearlong, postgraduate “flight school” to help bring innovations to market.
“Omaha is the ideal incubator for everything that Creighton, the Heider College of Business and the Greisch Center for Enterprise Value are looking to achieve,” Hendrickson said in a university statement. “The partnerships between the city and the university make both stronger and the center will only deepen those ties.”
Creighton since 2024 has had a student-led Entrepreneurship Club in the business college, which has grown to more than 150 members. Many have launched their own ventures and the new Greisch Center is expected to boost momentum.
Student startups so far have included a mobile barbershop, an eco-friendly fishing tackle, AI automation solutions, indestructible dog beds, businesses that make smoothie bowls and a firm that helps student athletes secure Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) sponsorships.
Before coming to Creighton, Entrepreneurship Club co-founder Mary Margaret Mellen started a cake-making nonprofit whose sales went to children by funding meals, medical research and life-changing surgeries.
“We’re excited that Creighton is now rolling out even more resources for entrepreneurship,” Mellen, a junior, said in the statement.
The Rev. Daniel Hendrickson, Creighton’s president, said the university was grateful for the Omaha-based Diabetes Care Foundation gift and said the new center would take a Jesuit approach to innovation that builds on Creighton’s strengths — “exploring not only how ventures can be profitable but also beneficial to the communities we serve.”
Though the foundation’s priority remains diabetes care, it supports a range of organizations that enhance innovations in patient care and community well-being.
Greisch, a retired Nebraska market managing partner and North American leader for Financial Services for RSM, was one of the founding partners of the Diabetes Education Center and the Diabetes Supply Company, predecessors to the Diabetes Care Foundation.
He said that beyond making money, he sees the entrepreneurship center capturing “every variety of intrinsic value that makes communities, employers and individuals prosper.”
“As a Jesuit university, Creighton is particularly good at translating mission into real-world application and creating value for the communities it serves,” Greisch said in the statement.
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