Cliff Holekamp '96 Honored
Ten years after the St. Louis Business Journal named Cliff Holekamp, a member of Washington and Lee’s Class of 1996, as one of its 30 Under 30 honorees, the same publication has tabbed him one of its 40 Under 40.
The honorees — all younger than 40, as you might guess — were chosen by a panel of Business Journal editors and former winners based on their career achievements and community work. A record number of nominations — more than 450 — were received for this year’s awards.
When he was first honored as a 30 Under 30, Cliff had left a sales executive position at IBM and had founded Foot Healers Podiatry Centers. He opened five locations in six years and sold a controlling interest in the company to an investor. In 2003, Foot Healers was named by Inc. Magazine as one of the top “Five Ideas to Watch.”
Today he is a member of the faculty at Washington University’s Olin School of Business, where he received his M.B.A. in 2001. Cliff is a senior lecturer in entrepreneurship at Olin, and he teaches courses in that subject, consults start-ups and small businesses, is a frequent guest lecturer, and is a judge and advisor in the Olin Cup business plan competition and the social entrepreneurship and innovation competition.
In the December 2010 edition of Octane, Cliff wrote that one of the keys to starting a successful business was to have an exit strategy in mind at the outset. “For me, the end goal was not to build a business that I would want to sell, but to build a business that others would want to buy,” he wrote.
In addition to being profiled in the Jan. 28 edition of the St. Louis Business Journal, Cliff and his fellow honorees will be recognized at a banquet on Feb. 17 at the Renaissance Grand Hotel.
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