Valeria Brenner didn’t attend her University of Georgia graduation. She didn’t watch the fireworks, she didn’t wave to the stands, she didn’t surreptitiously take a piece of the Sanford Stadium hedges. It wasn’t a lack of school pride, nor was it a lapse in Brenner’s academics that kept her away from Athens. It was success.
Brenner was in Houston, winning $135,000 in investment funding at the Rice University Business Plan Competition, the latest victory for her business, Thryft Ship, which launched in 2021 and has already sold more than $560,000 in shipping labels to happy clients.
Brenner’s Thryft Ship success is a culmination of sorts, a beneficiary of a longstanding partnership that is yielding new and exciting results at a rapid pace. Through their deep and shared commitment to innovation, entrepreneurship and community engagement, UGA and Truist Bank are aiming to create stories like Brenner’s everywhere.
For much of the early period of UGA and Truist’s relationship, sourcing locally grown talent was the primary focus.
“Truist has had a longstanding relationship, especially with the Terry College of Business, in hiring students,” said Meghan Pietrantonio, head of strategy and community relations for the Truist Foundation. “We built on that by providing a lot of opportunities for UGA alumni to serve as mentors and career coaches. And from that, we have developed a closer relationship through our charitable contributions.”
Those contributions date back to 1967 and total over $2.5 million, supporting a wide range of areas at UGA from 4-H to Terry College to the Georgia Museum of Art to UGA Public Service and Outreach.
In the last five years, Truist made several major investments in UGA that align with their foundation’s focus areas—building career pathways to economic mobility and strengthening small businesses. The first of these came in 2019: a $500,000 gift to support the UGA Entrepreneurship Program.
“UGA has experience and real expertise in encouraging students to become entrepreneurs while they’re still in college,” said Pietrantonio. “They recognize that students don’t need to wait until they’ve had years of experience in the corporate world before they can embrace their entrepreneurial spirit and pursue their passion.”
Private support and external partnerships have proven to be crucial to the UGA Entrepreneurship Program, and Truist has provided both. This is perhaps why their name and logo overlook the main hall of the program’s headquarters.
“Truist was very instrumental in stepping up and providing funding to help us refurbish Studio 225,” said Bob Pinckney, the Milton Anthony (Tony) Greene Director of Entrepreneurship. “We couldn’t do this without private support, and Truist has just been a tremendous partner in helping us get this program off the ground.”
Thanks in part to Truist’s partnership, the program moved swiftly from off-the-ground in 2016 to soaring today. The UGA Entrepreneurship is currently the largest cross-disciplinary certificate program at UGA, with over 400 students and five instructors—a far cry from 33 students in a single class taught by Pinckney in 2016.
The program also operates six “accelerators” throughout the year, helping students with ideas develop them into business plans. There are also numerous pitch competitions hosted by the program. The Georgia Kickstart Fund, which Truist’s 2019 gift helped create, has also been a catalyst for enterprising students. In fact, companies that have received funding from the Georgia Kickstart Fund raised more than $7 million in venture capital last year.
Valeria Brenner’s Thryft Ship—which received a kickstart grant and won its accelerator—is one of the many success stories Pinckney points to when discussing Truist’s impact and the UGA Entrepreneurship Program’s work.
“Having a company like Truist supporting me and my fellow entrepreneurs at UGA is heartwarming and empowering. Knowing that they have the backs of all the Dawgs out there who are trying to pursue their dreams is amazing, and I truly am thankful that there are companies like Truist out there who are looking to make a difference.”
In the years since their gift helped launch the UGA Entrepreneurship Program, Truist also supported UGA’s Small Business Development Center with a grant to create the Truist Entrepreneurship Academy, a training and development program for small business owners and entrepreneurs in the Savannah area. Additionally, entrepreneurship students will be able to take a course on startup investing this fall that was funded in part by Truist.
Valeria Brenner works in her office in Studio 225, provided to her after she won her accelerator program.
In late 2021, Truist made its biggest gift to UGA to date: $1.25 million to create the Truist Community Innovation Initiative. This multi-faceted effort focuses on aspiring entrepreneurs in the Athens community, creating Innovation Bootcamps, making funds and UGA resources available to them, and educating and connecting community and university entrepreneurs.
Innovation Bootcamps welcome community members from in and around Athens-Clarke County to UGA’s campus so that they might use the university’s resources and connections to learn how to develop and communicate their business ideas.
Two alumni from the spring 2023 bootcamp provide a glimpse into the potential of the program. After completing the six-week bootcamp, they entered a pitch competition on campus and finished first and second—a victory for community entrepreneurs and a realization of the vision that inspired Truist’s latest investment in UGA.
“Because of Truist, because of the programs, these people got an opportunity that they otherwise wouldn’t have had,” said Ian Biggs, director of UGA’s startup program and director of programming for the UGA Innovation District. “They received money for winning that competition, and they’ve already said that money has actually allowed them to take the next big step in their business ideas.”
Past bootcamps have provided tailored support for female entrepreneurs, graduate students and faculty in computing and computer science, and artists, musicians and others working in the creative space. Anyone is eligible for the bootcamps, but the content speaks to the unique challenges and opportunities of various groups of entrepreneurs.
“For example, early on in a musician’s career, contracts can be very difficult,” said Biggs. “Very, very few people in the music world say ‘I wish I had another contract like my first.’ So, we brought in the manager of R.E.M. to explain how contracts have progressed and what one should be looking for in contracts now.”
That ability to speak from experience is key to the bootcamps, which is how Jamine Moton, founder and CEO of Skylar Security in Atlanta, came to lead one of the bootcamps. After hearing her speak at a UGA event about her experience starting Skylar, Biggs and others thought she would be a natural fit.
In Skylar’s infancy, Moton attended a number of bootcamps, which she credits for her entrepreneurial confidence, her ability to think big and her understanding of her market. These lessons played a role in Skylar’s tremendous success—the company provided security services for Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta and reported 800% revenue growth from 2020-2021.
So, when presented with an opportunity to share her experience with others, Moton leapt at the chance. Through every exercise, every pitch and every lesson, though, she was surprised at just how much she was getting back.
“Every single Thursday, I drove two hours up and two hours back because each session was like sitting under an IV, getting recharged and rejuvenated,” said Moton. “I looked forward to it every time, and I felt I graduated at the end of the program. I was pouring into them, but I didn’t realize how much they were pouring into me.”
To Moton, Truist’s investment provides entrepreneurs more value than just a space to meet, colleagues with whom they can network, or even knowledge to further their endeavors.
“For the entrepreneur, to see a brand that is almost bigger than life investing in your journey, it makes you feel seen,” said Moton. “It gives you that confidence, it encourages your tenacity and your ability to focus, commit and execute. That logo is bigger than life, but the investment they make in that entrepreneur lets them become bigger than life as well.”
Jamine Moton of Skylar Security, left, was the bootcamp co-host and facilitator for cohort 7, with Allyson Hester, the Innovation Bootcamp program manager.
