Keough School of Global Affairs Professor of the Practice Michael Morris has devoted his entire life to entrepreneurship as a means of empowerment and a pathway out of poverty. On February 15, the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship recognized his work with the Max S. Wortman Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship is a business approach that solves big social issues while being financially sustainable. Unlike traditional businesses that prioritize profit, social entrepreneurs aim to create positive societal change through innovative solutions.

"Receiving the Max Wortman Award is so very special and personal for me. I know what Max stood for and what a difference he made. It is people like him who inspired my passion for transforming lives through the empowering potential of entrepreneurship,” said Morris.

Established in 2004, the Max S. Wortman Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship was instituted on the 22 anniversary of the founding of the Association. The award is presented to a worthy recipient in recognition of a lifetime of entrepreneurial achievement that encompasses the ideals of entrepreneurial activity.

Morris carved a path for himself teaching entrepreneurship when the concept within universities was in its infancy. He persevered by challenging the traditional way people viewed business and championed it as a means of social change. He explains, “In the early days, there were no textbooks on entrepreneurship — you had to create your own content and pedagogy. We were creating a new academic discipline.”

In the true spirit of entrepreneurship, Morris created and led three award-winning programs at different universities as an endowed entrepreneurship chair—Ohio’s Miami University, Syracuse University, and Oklahoma State University—prior to joining the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs as a professor of entrepreneurship and social innovation.

Morris also organizes the annual Experiential Classroom, which is the leading program to help faculty members from around the world learn how to teach entrepreneurship. He is the author of eighteen books and over 150 scholarly journal articles. His latest book, co-authored with Susana Santos, is Poverty, Disadvantage and the Promise of Entreprise: a Capabilities Approach (Lexington Press, 2024). It captures many of the insights learned from over 40 years of work with disadvantaged entrepreneurs.

In his acceptance speech for the award, Morris emphasized embracing the potential of entrepreneurship as empowerment and as a force for integral human development.

“The ability for entrepreneurship to make the world a better place is why I've dedicated the back end of my career to entrepreneurship and poverty. I hope others of you will do that, but it doesn't need to be poverty. Our ability to change the world through entrepreneurship is something as educators where we’ve only scratched the surface”. Morris provided the example of Notre Dame’s Urban Poverty and Business Initiative, which now operates in 46 cities around the world, helping over 3,000 low income people start and grow businesses of their own.

In South Bend, Indiana, the program works with 70 low-income people a year, helping them start and grow ventures—with a waitlist to get in. Morris explained, “There's just this wealth of entrepreneurial dreams amongst the most disadvantaged in our society, and we can help tap the magic of those dreams. We need to stop looking at a venture simply as an economic unit and start to understand that venture as a vehicle for human development.”

Originally published by Kirianna West at mckennacenter.nd.edu on February 20, 2025.