Courtney Cassidy never expected to get involved in academic research when she stepped into John Sebesta’s office the summer after her sophomore year.
But Sebesta, the Koch Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship and professor of the practice at the Daniels College of Business, saw an opportunity for Cassidy and pitched her on it.
While a surgery would make the logistics of a summer internship challenging for Cassidy, now a senior marketing major, research presented a chance to make an impact on her own time. Sebesta’s recommendation set off a chain reaction that is still positively affecting Cassidy today.
“I honestly didn’t expect much to come out of that conversation with Professor Sebesta, but suddenly I’m a published author, which is incredibly exciting,” she said. “And with my distinction project, I may have the chance to be published again.”
A journey into research
Sebesta and Cassidy worked together over the past year on research exploring how entrepreneurs in developing ecosystems, specifically Guatemala, build and grow businesses when formal support systems, funding and resources are limited.
Cassidy helped clean and transcribe interviews, identifying crucial themes and takeaways that she’d share with Sebesta. She also coded interview data and conducted thematic analysis, turning large swaths of interview text into usable research findings.
Sebesta said Cassidy was a true collaborator in the research, not simply a student completing assigned tasks.
“As the findings emerged, she became part of the intellectual process of figuring out what the data was actually telling us,” he said. “She also played an important role responding to reviewer feedback as we navigated the publishing process.”
This is the embodiment of The Daniels Effect. Students learn by doing and collaboration is a constant. Daniels is a working lab, where students like Cassidy can research alongside esteemed faculty, learning crucial lessons along the way.
Cassidy visited Guatemala with Professors John Sebesta and Bruce Klaw for an interterm travel class in December 2025. The research project offered an opportunity to push the work she started even further.
While Cassidy enjoyed the work of listening to and transcribing interviews, this project held a deeper meaning for her. She had visited Guatemala with Sebesta and Professor Bruce Klaw earlier this year, working with and learning from local entrepreneurs for the interterm travel class, Global Societal Impact and Social Entrepreneurship. This research project offered an opportunity to push the work she started even further.
The research, “Navigating Institutional Voids in Latin American Entrepreneurship Education,” was published in June by Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy, with Sebesta and
It found that Guatemalan entrepreneurs often succeed because they learn how to work around missing resources, leaning on relationships and adapting through trial and error. The duo argues that entrepreneurship education in Latin America must move beyond traditional Western models of teaching, instead embracing void navigation and hybrid financial literacy.
After more than a year as a research assistant, Cassidy is looking at her future with a new perspective.
“I feel like it taught me to approach things with more curiosity. Instead of just taking something at face value, I ask more questions and try to be more inquisitive in general,” she said.
Taking research experiences into the real-world
That has shown up both in the classroom and at her internship this past summer at Viega, where Cassidy worked as a segment marketing intern. She was surprised by how much of the research process translated into her internship, as she found herself developing campaign playbooks, messaging matrices and conducting background research.
“I didn’t expect to use so much of what I learned from research in my internship this summer,” she said. “But I think that research naturally shows up in marketing in a lot of different ways.”
Research also taught her what it meant to be independent and prepared her for professional work.
“I have to take accountability and ownership,” she said. “Research feels closer to the real world outside of school, while still being academic.”
The mutual value of research
This was Sebesta’s first time collaborating with an undergraduate student on research, but it reinforced how valuable the experience can be for both parties.
“One of the most valuable things research teaches you is how to be comfortable when the answer isn’t obvious. Real-world problems rarely come with clean information or an answer key. You have to gather evidence, recognize patterns, question your assumptions, and make thoughtful decisions amid uncertainty,” he said. “I hope Courtney leaves this project with the confidence that she can take on a complicated question, sit with that uncertainty, and ultimately contribute something new to our understanding of it.”
As she enters her senior year, Cassidy is working on her own research project, matching her marketing and entrepreneurship focuses. She’s exploring how marketing helps entrepreneurs build legitimacy, trust and credibility in developing markets for her distinction project.
Looking further into her future, Cassidy is drawn back to Guatemala and to research.
She’s applying to a Fulbright U.S. Student Program award in Guatemala, where she’d teach English, learn Spanish and immerse herself in the country’s culture more fully than she was able to on her interterm trip. All of this spawned from that conversation in Sebesta’s office more than a year ago.
“I’m still not sure exactly what I want to do in the future,” she said, “but this experience taught me to take advantage of the opportunities that come my way.”