On May 11, 2023, at the Boston College University Conference Center, Chris and Joe Popolo ’89, P’20, ’23, ’25, celebrated the naming of the Popolo Family Executive Directorship, a position in the Edmund H. Shea Jr. Center for Entrepreneurship that the family has endowed. Joe, himself a successful entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Charles & Potomac Capital, LLC, delivered remarks at the event. He reflected on his family’s long legacy of entrepreneurs—on both sides—and his belief in BC’s specific brand of education to help launch the next generation of entrepreneurial thinkers. Other event speakers included Provost and Dean of Faculties David Quigley; John and Linda Powers Family Dean of the Carroll School of Management Andy Boynton ’78, P’13; and the inaugural Popolo Family Executive Director Jere Doyle ’87, P’15, ’21. 

As executive director since the Shea Center’s launch in 2015, Doyle and his staff designed programming that is both popular among students and successful in drawing alumni entrepreneurs like Joe back to campus to enhance learning and provide mentorship to students. Joe has described entrepreneurship as a state of mind, one that he and Jere share. Jere’s focus as Popolo Family Executive Director is to help students, whether they are destined to launch a startup or are simply preparing for business careers in an increasingly entrepreneurial world, to be comfortable with concepts like curiosity, risk-taking, and data analytics. The Popolo Family Executive Directorship provides an injection of resources to help Jere teach these skills in the Jesuit, Catholic context while laying the groundwork for future executive directors to do the same.