As an agricultural powerhouse, Uruguay is best known for raising cattle. But over the last decade, its capital, Montevideo, has become known for cultivating startups.
Through marketing and materials science companies, students from the Terry College of Business learned the international aspects of entrepreneurship this winter in one of the most prosperous South American markets — Uruguay.
“One thing I learned is that there are opportunities anywhere you are in the world,” said Neha Eloore, a junior studying marketing and management information systems who was one of 14 students to travel to Uruguay during the study away program’s inaugural year. “With a small country, you may not expect them to have a lot going on, but there are huge opportunities for growth for someone with a business mindset.”
The study away program in Uruguay was developed in 2024 with the help of a $33,000 grant from the U.S. Department of State’s Increase and Diversify Education Abroad for U.S. Students (IDEAS) Program.
In addition to allowing students the chance to visit a location that’s off the beaten path for most Americans, the new study away program allowed undergraduate students to work as consultants with local startups. The problem-based learning approach, often limited to graduate students, was another aspect that won the IB team IDEAS funding.
That chance to gain real-world experience while seeing a new country is exactly what attracted Lukas Cornish, a junior studying finance and management information systems.
“I saw Montevideo, and I saw that I was going to be able to work with a startup company in a country I’d never visited before,” said Cornish. “I wanted to try something that would get me out of my comfort zone and would benefit my career. This was exactly what I was looking for.”
Cornish and fellow students worked with their assigned companies throughout the fall semester. They traveled to Uruguay during winter break to gain firsthand context for their projects and present findings to their clients.
Cornish’s team worked with bioplastics startup Polymara; other student teams worked with marketing firm Drumyn International and consulting group Leap | Thinking Partners.
For the three companies, students were challenged to find strategies to help their clients expand beyond the Uruguayan border.
Uruguay is a strong market, but with only 3.4 million people, most businesses must expand outside the country to grow.
“If you have a startup in Mexico, they can stay in Mexico City and grow,” said Eloore, comparing Montevideo to a study away trip to Mexico City she took in March 2025. “But in Uruguay, founders were telling us that if you have a successful startup, the only way to grow is to go international. There’s only so much growth you can have in Uruguay, so I think it offered us a different perspective and a different way of thinking about business.”
That international piece was one part of what made the course so challenging and rewarding, said Brad Bartel, whose team worked with consulting firm Leap | Thinking Partners.
“We were consulting for a consulting firm,” Bartel said. “They had done well in Uruguay and expanded to Argentina and Paraguay. We helped them develop a strategy for moving to the United States.”
Jennifer Chapman, director of Terry’s International Business Programs, championed this trip as a chance for undergraduate students to challenge themselves and gain experience working with a consulting team. That’s what students such as Cornish, Bartel, and Eloore liked most about the program, they said.
“It was interesting to work with students from across Terry and see their different viewpoints and how they each would tackle a challenge,” Cornish said. “Being together in a foreign country, meeting with the clients in person for the first time … we were all experiencing the same thing at the same time. It really bonded us; it helped me grow my team-building skills, my leadership skills, and my soft skills. It was a life-changing experience.”
