“I felt like I was kind of just stuck on a hamster wheel,” McNary said. “My sister asked if I had thought about going back to school and I said, ‘Absolutely not!’”

He didn’t know how he could fit classes in around his full-time job, but his sister suggested he look into online programs that would provide more flexibility. What he discovered convinced him it could work.

A search led him to University of Louisville’s , a relatively new program at the time in the College of Business. He chose UofL over the two other programs where he was accepted because of the business networking opportunities UofL could make available to him.

“The vast network that University of Louisville has as a resource for job placement was the most appealing part for me,” McNary said, adding that he also was impressed by the exceptional helpfulness of faculty.

Eye-opening fellowship unleashes McNary’s potential

During his MBA coursework, McNary got a taste of the franchising industry while participating in the Yum! Franchise Accelerator Fellowship offered through the .

The three-month fellowship offered an elective curriculum in franchise management, key experiences and mentorship by Yum! Brands executives and franchise owners. The fellowship culminated in a pitch competition for seed funding and a path to franchise ownership.

“I always wanted to create my own restaurant,” McNary said. “That’s always intrigued me. So, I was thinking I could learn about the business and if I didn’t win, I would at least have the information to do my own thing.”

A trip to California during the fellowship offered an eye-opening look at the Taco Bell brand.

“Spending four days out there in Irvine with the team and the employees and going through the different departments solidified that it was something I wanted to do.”

McNary was a finalist in the competition, and Tacala, the largest Taco Bell franchisee in the U.S., offered him an opportunity for additional training and mentorship. McNary joined Tacala after receiving his MBA from UofL in May 2023, and he was put in charge of one of the lowest performing of Tacala’s 370+ locations, a store in Auburn, Alabama.

Under McNary’s leadership, that store improved month by month, consistently finishing in Tacala’s top 50 Taco Bell restaurants, and it finished as the number one Taco Bell store between Aug. 7-Sept. 3, 2024.

McNary believes he has found his calling in franchising.

“I find more satisfaction in this role than I have in all of my corporate roles,” he said. “There are some things that make it a little challenging, but I really appreciate the people part of it, I’m a people person.”

In January, McNary moved into the role of area coach nearby Tacala’s Restaurant Support Center in Birmingham, Alabama, working with a group of restaurant leaders to help them succeed in their stores. When his apprenticeship time with Tacala is complete, McNary hopes to work with Tacala to purchase and develop his own franchise locations.

“To be able to join and to learn the ropes from such a juggernaut, it’s been a real blessing,” he said. “I understand how lucky I am to be in this position, to be a part of this program and to get an opportunity to operate my own set of Taco Bell restaurants. I know this wouldn’t have happened without me attending UofL.”

Expanded opportunity for a thriving future 

College of Business Interim Dean Jeff Guan calls McNary an inspiration.

“Ethan’s journey is a shining example of the profound impact our programs can have,” Guan said. “Stories like his reaffirm our commitment to delivering a world-class education — one that not only prepares our students to navigate the complexities of the business world but also equips them to lead with purpose and make a meaningful difference.”

Kathleen Gosser, Yum! Brands Associate Professor of Franchise Management Practice and director of the Yum! Center for Global Franchise Excellence at the College of Business, mentored McNary during his time at UofL.

“Ethan is incredible and is learning all he needs to know about becoming a Taco Bell franchisee one day,” Gosser said. “His experience shows what a great opportunity franchising can be for entrepreneurs. And he is learning from the best. For the fifth consecutive year, Taco Bell is the number one franchise in the U.S. as ranked by Entrepreneur Magazine.”

Jamie Harrison, vice president of people & culture and interim chief people & culture officer at Taco Bell, sees Ethan’s journey as a testament to the brand’s people-first approach.

“Ethan’s dedication and passion for franchising are truly commendable, and we are proud that he is a member of our Taco Bell team. We applaud Tacala for sharing Taco Bell’s commitment to engaging top talent and delivering an environment where individuals like Ethan can achieve their full potential.”

“It’s exciting to be on this journey with Ethan. Since joining Tacala in 2023, he has enthusiastically worked through all restaurant positions to immerse himself in the business and prepare for management and ownership of a thriving business. Ethan’s passion for people and high standards combined with this experience will set him up for success in the future,” said David Morrison, chief operations officer of Tacala Companies.

McNary already is giving back to the program that injected fresh energy into his career, happy to mentor other students interested in franchising. He visited Louisville to speak to Gosser’s class and participated in the Online MBA program’s 5^th anniversary during Homecoming 2024.

“I just thought there has to be a better way,” said Eiferman.

In his seventies, Eiferman made the decision to embark on an online MBA program at the UofL College of Business to link his 40-year career in ophthalmology with his longtime research interest in developing a new medication delivery system.

“I’ve always been very interested in the business aspects of things, and we always had these research ideas that we’d never had the chance to bring to fruition, so I thought maybe we could put two birds together in one,” he said.

From his decades of experience with eye ailments, Eiferman recognized that a sustained delivery system was needed. “It’s particularly important in ophthalmology, because for example, if you have glaucoma, you have to take drops once or twice a day for the rest of your life, and compliance can be the biggest problem.”

Eiferman connected with a PhD chemist and the two investigated a long-acting sustained release way to deliver medication.

“We discovered a way to put drugs in a wafer that slowly dissolves over two-to-three months, so no drops,” said Eiferman. “It’s a totally new concept. We conducted tests on rabbits and sure enough, it worked beautifully.”

With the help of College of Business faculty, he submitted a proposal and won the top prize of $25,000 in a “Shark Tank” style contest sponsored by the American Academy of Ophthalmology in November 2022. That success led him to present at another contest in April 2023 at Yale University, and again he won the top prize, this time $265,000.  

Eiferman said that the UofL MBA faculty were incredibly receptive and supportive, teaching him a novel approach for his presentation to the Yale panel.

“This was different than any paper or lecture I’ve ever given,” he said. “Five slides and five minutes. I was fixated on the science and the chemistry, but they told me the panelists would want to know about  the market and how to make money from this idea,” he said. “They were 100 percent correct.”

With the patent and his newly formed company, Sustained Drug Delivery, Eiferman plans to use the prize money to fund a study at Michigan State involving beagles that have congenital glaucoma since the FDA requires two species studies, rabbits and dogs in this case. The experiments need to demonstrate the wafers are equivalent in efficacy to the traditional drops.

“We believe it will work and we can then ask for permission to test in humans and evaluate a certain number of people for a certain length of time,” he said. Once Eiferman completes that hurdle, the drug delivery system could be marketed as a device and not a drug, which can reduce the time between testing and approval.

Eiferman said he believes it could be a multi-million-dollar idea because of the technology’s broad applicability.

“In dentistry, for example, they could pack a socket following a tooth extraction or put it in sutures,” explained Eiferman. The other huge market is veterinary medicine to address a severe eye ailment that can make horses go blind.

In May 2023, Eiferman got to wear his green hood and walk at the university’s online MBA graduation ceremony.

“I never expected to be getting an MBA or starting a company in my 70s, but I wanted to prove I could still go to school and learn.”