Meredith College to Hold 2026 Entrepreneurship Challenge March 6-7

Meredith College will hold the 2026 Entrepreneurship Challenge, March 6-7. The competition is open to all majors at Meredith.

Participants will work in teams to tackle real-world problems through the lens of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The teams will build venture concepts with guidance from Triangle entrepreneurs and business leaders, competing for $5,000 in prizes.

The schedule is as follows:

Launch Night on Friday, March 6, from 4-5:30 p.m. in Harris Room 214. Learn about this year’s challenge themes, form teams, and start working through a design thinking exercise. Students do not need a team to sign up. Organizers will match participants with a group that has shared interests at the beginning of the launch night event.

Challenge Day on Saturday, March 7, from 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Each team will build a venture concept with guidance from Triangle entrepreneurs and business professionals, then pitch to a panel of judges.

Prizes
The first-place team will receive $2,500 and advance to compete at the First Flight Ventures March Madness Pitch Battle alongside Duke, NC State, UNC Wilmington, and East Carolina University. Other cash prizes are $1,500 for second place, $700 for third place, and $300 for the Impact Award.

The Entrepreneurship Challenge is organized by Molly McKinley, Meredith’s entrepreneur-in-residence, who encourages any interested student to participate.

“This is the kind of thing that changes how you see yourself. It also happens to look excellent on a resume,” McKinley said. “Pitching to real judges, building a business model under pressure, working with professional mentors, collaborating across disciplines on a tight deadline are all skills that show up in interviews and set you apart in job applications and graduate school.”

Sign Up
Students can register to participate by completing a short online form.