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UNE’s Outdoor Business and Innovation program puts student marketers to work
Aimee Vlachos, Ed.D., is building a workforce pipeline between UNE's College of Business and the state's eco-tourism industry — one class project, client pairing, and investor pitch at a time.
When Aimee Vlachos reached out to Maine outdoor business owners to ask if they needed help with their branding after she launched the University of New England’s Outdoor Business and Innovation (OBI) program, she half expected the offer to be met with skepticism.
Instead, her inbox was flooded.
"I got inundated with emails," said Vlachos, Ed.D., a teaching professor in UNE’s College of Business and the founder and director of the OBI program. "I had to respond: ‘I don't have students yet — hold your horses.’"
That early enthusiasm from Maine's outdoor industry has only grown since UNE’s OBI program launched two years ago. Now, the young program is building what Vlachos describes as a workforce pipeline between UNE and the state's eco-tourism industry — one class project, client pairing, and investor pitch at a time.
It’s a pipeline Maine needs. The state’s outdoor recreation industry contributes an estimated $3.3 billion annually to Maine’s economy, according to the state. Yet, the Maine Outdoor Economy Summit in Portland in January reported that as many as 43% of Maine's outdoor employers are drastically understaffed.
Vlachos, who was named the Maine Outdoor Industry Leader of the Year at the summit, said the OBI program is narrowly focused — and deliberately so. While other outdoor recreation programs around the country train students for careers in parks management or ski resort operations, OBI targets a different kind of student: one who wants to start their own business outdoors — ideally, in Maine.
The closest comparable program in the country, Vlachos said, is an online MBA program at Western Colorado University. At the undergraduate level, she said: “This is it.”
Brendan Curley (OBI, ’26) hopes to launch a saltwater charter business.
Curley is part of the OBI Program’s first graduating class.
Vlachos, who bootstrapped her own surf school on $100 before eventually being named Surf School of the Year in a national publication, draws directly on that experience when teaching about the realities of entrepreneurship.
"When I teach marketing, I'm coming from the experience of a very grassroots, limited budget. How do we get the word out?” Vlachos said.
In order to streamline the connection between OBI students and internship and job opportunities, Vlachos partnered with Maine Outdoor Brands, which represents roughly 200 outdoor businesses and organizations across the state and helped produce the economic summit.
On a day this spring, students in the OBI senior seminar class met with leaders of the Biddeford Recreation Department to offer suggestions for the management of a 200-acre urban park, a popular mountain bike destination.
From left: Fritz Van Winkle (’26), discusses his marketing ideas with Biddeford’s Deputy Director of Recreation Erika Dube, center, and the city’s Outdoor Recreation Program Coordinator Brian Dunphe; Dube and Dunphe assit in an OBI senior seminar discussion about how best to market Biddeford’s Clifford Park.
Many of the students’ ideas will be used, said Brian Dunphe, the city’s coordinator of outdoor recreation programs.
“Several of the students delivered great ideas on managing the environmental impact of e-bikes in our trail system,” Dunphe said. “We certainly have the opportunity to use that content to raise awareness on social media and for policy development as we move into this next phase of development of park usage.”
In Vlachos’ outdoor entrepreneurship course, students develop business plans while simultaneously building a working prototype of an outdoor product in UNE's P.D. Merrill Makerspace.
The semester ends with a pitch to a panel of three real angel investors — Maine business executives Vlachos calls "the sharks." And the stakes feel high.
One shark is now known famously among OBI students for saying he doesn't enter a room for less than a million-dollar ask.
Vlachos believes that when students receive this kind of tough financial feedback, they’re ready for anything.
"That's reality. That's how this is,” Vlachos said.
For the students, the array of real-life experiences in the OBI class build confidence they’ll need to succeed on their future entrepreneurial paths, said one of the program’s inaugural students, Fritz Van Winkle (’26).
“At the MOB outdoor summit, we met with real people in high profile positions. It was a high-value event,” Van Winkle said. “There were CEOs who presented, but they weren’t giving TED Talks. I could see myself doing that. I learned a lot about the certifications I now want to get. I have a running list.”
Currently, there are 12 students enrolled — already surpassing the program's initial targets — and Vlachos hopes to keep it small and intimate by design. Three OBI students, including Van Winkle, are on track to earn bachelor’s degrees this spring, making up the program's first graduating class.
Left and right: Vlachos’ OBI student majors in her Brand Design class take photos of camping gear from UNE’s gear room to help better promote the University’s on-campus recreation center on Instagram.
Their post-graduation plans reflect the breadth of what an outdoor business career can look like: Van Winkle hopes to eventually take over his family's 120-year-old summer camp and expand it into a four-season destination, another senior is pursuing his captain's license in order to launch a saltwater charter business, and a third is eyeing a summer delivery service by boat out of Chebeague Island.
"They're all going to go in very different directions," Vlachos said. "I love that, because they feed off each other."
Read press coverage by the Portland Press Herald (April 1, 2026).