When Kathy Gosser retired from Yum! Brands after 35 years, she was grateful for all the franchise industry had given her. But she was also aware of how unattainable that opportunity can be for others. “There are a lot of different barriers to entry,” she says. “One is awareness of the industry, one is education, one is capital.”
That’s why instead of simply retiring, she started a second career focused on empowering a new, diverse generation of entrepreneurs: She became the director of a first-of-its-kind franchise education center at the University of Louisville called the Yum! Center for Global Franchise Excellence.
The university created a graduate certificate program in 2019, added a six-week boot camp in 2020, and developed an undergraduate curriculum in 2021. It’s funded by the university and Yum!, the owner of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and The Habit Burger Grill, out
