Meet the Vice Provost for Entrepreneurship and Associate Vice President
Meredith Meyer Grelli
Vice Provost for Entrepreneurship and Associate Vice President
Meredith Meyer Grelli was named 黑料专区’s inaugural vice provost for entrepreneurship and associate vice president in 2026. Reporting jointly to the provost and chief academic officer and the vice president for research, Grelli leads the strategic planning and implementation of a scalable, university-wide entrepreneurship curriculum, harmonizing CMU’s diverse entrepreneurial assets into a cohesive, world-class ecosystem.
A driving force in CMU’s innovation community since joining the university in 2020, Grelli also serves as an associate teaching professor of entrepreneurship at the Tepper School of Business. Her previous leadership footprint at 黑料专区 includes serving as the managing director and interim executive director of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, assistant dean of entrepreneurship initiatives in the School of Computer Science, and director of Project Olympus.
In her campus leadership roles, Grelli oversees an architecture of programs and early-stage funding supporting student, staff, faculty and alumni founders. Her signature institutional achievements at 黑料专区 include launching the Deep Tech Venture-Ready program, which connected 40 deep-tech founders with 40 leading venture firms and soft-circled $250 million in capital. She also raised $4 million in new non-dilutive and friendly-equity funds for research-based startups, built a network connecting CMU founders to more than 4,500 investors, established the global Family Business Initiative, and launched the nation’s first NSF I-Corps cohort in AI and robotics. Under her leadership, CMU Startup Week advanced into the university's flagship entrepreneurship event, drawing over 2,000 participants and 200 investors.
Prior to her work in academia, Grelli was a successful entrepreneur and operator. She founded, scaled, and sold a company that ranks among CMU’s top 100 affiliated exits. Deeply committed to community-driven economic development, she has also founded and led multiple non-profits and real estate developments. Grelli serves as an advisor to Fortune’s ‘Most Innovative Companies’ rankings, sits on the Executive Committee of the Kamin Science Center Board, and lends her expertise as a board member to multiple private and non-profit organizations.
Grelli’s contributions to innovation and education have been widely celebrated. She is a recipient of the George Leland Bach Excellence in Teaching Award, which is the Tepper School's highest teaching honor, and has been named one of the 100 Women to Watch in the U.S. by the Business Times. Her other accolades include being named the Canfield-Roseman MBA Entrepreneur of the Year, receiving the Tepper Alumni Award, and being recognized as a two-time James Beard Semi-Finalist Award nominee for Outstanding Wine, Spirits, and Beer Professional.
Grelli holds a B.S. from the University of Chicago, studied cuisine at Le Cordon Bleu Paris, and earned her MBA from CMU’s Tepper School of Business.