(Full-length) Omar Garriott: Building a Thriving Innovation Ecosystem

What is a college actually for in the age of AI? That's the question running underneath my conversation with Omar Garriott, who leads the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology at UVA's Darden School of Business. Omar took the long way back to UVA — Teach for America, college-access nonprofit work, then 15 years in tech at Apple, LinkedIn (where he built school pages and made college students the platform's fastest-growing audience), Salesforce, and Qualtrics, plus a co-authored book on landing a job. Now he's making the case that entrepreneurship shouldn't be a niche major but a method we teach like the scientific method — and that it might be the most connective tool advancement and alumni teams have. We get into the existential moment higher ed is facing, the durable skills AI can't replace, whether other organizations will beat universities to the future, and why entrepreneurial alumni are a community to convene rather than a list to solicit. Chapters: 00:00 — Welcome + why Omar 01:20 — The circuitous path: Teach for America to Apple, LinkedIn, Salesforce, Qualtrics 05:25 — UVA's two business schools and the "intrapreneur" 07:18 — Why LinkedIn isn't "social media" — and what the Batten Institute does 14:30 — Driving innovation inside a tradition-rich university 15:11 — Higher ed's existential moment: enrollment, ROI, and trust 22:44 — Why Gen Z wants to build (and how work disengagement fuels it) 23:59 — From "finding a job" to "being the job" 25:14 — The durable skills AI can't replace 33:07 — "The future of college could look like OnlyFans" 35:12 — Personalized learning, AI, and Darden as a "membership" 39:32 — Brand power, and the graduation-day promise that no longer holds 42:15 — Entrepreneurship as the new connective tissue for alumni 48:23 — Winning the attention economy: peer voices, AI, and human stories 52:56 — How to follow Omar's workConnect with Omar: LinkedIn + batten.institute (subscribe to the Batten Substack there)