For more than 20 years, the Gillespie Business Model Competition has provided student entrepreneurs at the University of Mississippi with professional feedback, mentoring and financial capital to pursue their dreams. An Ole Miss alumna hopes to help expand those opportunities with a new endowment.
Katherine Avery, a financial services consultant in Houston, Texas, gave $50,000 to establish the Avery Family Entrepreneurship Award Endowment in the School of Business Administration. The endowment will provide financial awards to students who place in the Gillespie Business Model Competition each spring.
“Establishing the endowment is our family’s way of giving the next generation of students the foundation we were fortunate to have,” Avery said. “Entrepreneurship runs deep in our family, as it is how we were raised to see the world, and we hope these awards help students who have that same spirit but need someone to believe in them first.”
The possibility of financial incentives helps motivate students for the competition, said Clay Dibrell, professor of management and co-director of the university’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
“Money changes behavior,” Dibrell said. “When students know there’s real money on the line through the Avery Family Entrepreneur Award, they refine their business plans more rigorously, do the customer research more seriously and treat the venture like a business rather than a class project.
“But what makes the Avery award distinctive is what it rewards: specifically, collaboration and sustainability. Students competing for the award learn to pull in other students, who may be stronger marketers, coders or understand finances better, and to think about whether their venture creates lasting value.”
Even small prizes can provide a crucial edge for budding businesses, Dibrell said.
“We’ve seen students go from a rough idea to a functioning company because winning awards like the one endowed by the Avery family through our business venture competitions gives them the runway to figure things out,” he said. “These aren’t just cash checks.
“The Avery Family Entrepreneur Award adds something further by telling students that the entrepreneurial spirit is worth recognizing and the one that builds with others and builds to last can succeed. That’s the Avery family legacy, and our students carry it forward.”
Several students have used the feedback and financial support from the competitions to launch successful businesses. Some notable successes include:
- Curtsy, a mobile application that makes it easy to thrift and sell clothing, shoes, accessories and more, launched in 2015 by William Ault, his sister, Clara Agnes Ault, and Eli Allen
- Rumie, a mobile app that allows students to safely buy, sell and trade merchandise, co-founded in 2022 by Tanner McCraney
- Automatic AI LLC, a sports training mobile app, co-founded by Julien Bourgeois in 2023
- Godors, an odor-eliminating spray for athletic gear, launched by 2025 by Cole Piotrowski.
Another company, Marelle, which produces custom mahjong tile sets and accessories, is opening in August. Founder Margaret Ellen Maturin, a mechanical engineering major from Lafayette, Louisiana, placed third in this spring’s Gillespie competition and used her prize money to buy equipment for the start-up.
Avery said her gift is a way of giving back to Ole Miss while encouraging aspiring entrepreneurs.
The 2005 graduate grew up in the Arkansas Delta and earned a degree in managerial finance. Following graduation, she built a more-than-20-year career in risk and operations within the financial services industry.
Earlier this year, she launched Chimayo Consulting, a firm focused on supporting risk and business transformation, in Houston, Texas. She credits her Ole Miss education as a formative foundation for her career in entrepreneurship and business strategy.
Her professional trajectory reflects both her education and a deeply rooted family legacy of enterprise. Avery’s grandparents built independent businesses in accounting and industrial services. Her parents also forged entrepreneurial paths in law and accounting, further shaping the family’s business ethos.
That tradition extended into agriculture as well, with Avery’s father leading operations on the family farm where she was raised. Her siblings have continued that agricultural legacy through their own ventures, while Avery carries it forward through her professional services career.
“This endowment honors that legacy and bets on the next generation of students who have the drive to build something meaningful of their own,” she said.
The financial support promises to make a sustained difference for Ole Miss student entrepreneurs, Dibrell said.
“The Avery Family Entrepreneurship Award Endowment provides our students with both validation and opportunity,” he said. “It encourages collaboration and helps turn innovative ideas into sustainable businesses.”
Such contributions enable the center to elevate its programming and expand possibilities for student entrepreneurs, he said.
“Support of this kind allows us to redefine the standard for student entrepreneurship both at Ole Miss and nationally,” Dibrell said.
To make a gift to the Avery Family Entrepreneurship Award Endowment, send a check with the fund’s name written in the memo line to the University of Mississippi Foundation, 406 University Ave., Oxford, MS 38655, or give online here.
For more information on supporting the School of Business Administration, contact Molly Armitage Francis, development associate, at mollyc@olemiss.edu or 678-920-4202.
By Andy Belt/UM Foundation