Crosby Newbill came to Lowell to visit his daughter and grandchildren. Along the way, he found a plan for his next chapter.
After retiring from the U.S. Air Force following 21 years of service, the Maryland resident realized during the visit that he still had two years of Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits available — and that UMass Lowell’s Manning School of Business wasn’t far from his daughter's home.
“Why not go to school up here and help with my grandkids?” Newbill thought.
So he moved to Lowell.
Today, Newbill is pursuing an MBA with a concentration in entrepreneurship while developing a venture through the Rist DifferenceMaker Institute that could help families across the country preserve inherited land and create generational wealth.
“I'm watching my grandchildren during the day, and I’m a full-time student at night,” he says.
Returning to college more than two decades after earning a bachelor’s degree in biblical studies from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago was an adjustment. Newbill, who also directed community-based programs for his local Boys & Girls Clubs in Maryland for a decade after leaving the military, says he’s almost always the oldest student in the classroom.
“The young people keep me motivated,” he says.
His DifferenceMaker venture, Stewart-Ship, grew from a challenge his own family faced after his father died without a will. Ownership of the family’s six-acre property in Virginia became divided among multiple relatives, preventing Newbill from obtaining the farm number needed to access U.S. Department of Agriculture programs or begin the farming operation he envisioned.
“The idea started with my little plot,” he says. “But when I got here and started taking classes, I saw the effect of it nationally.”
As he dug deeper into his DifferenceMaker research, Newbill discovered that heirs’ property — inherited land passed down without a clear legal title — affects hundreds of thousands of families across the country. His research estimates that more than 440,000 underutilized properties worth roughly $32 billion remain tied up by ownership issues, limiting families’ ability to access financing, agricultural programs and other resources.
His venture provides a road map for families to stabilize ownership, establish governance and connect with the legal, financial and agricultural resources needed to put inherited land back into productive use. Newbill believes the impact could extend far beyond individual families.
“If we stabilize the American land and get city people back into the country, we won't have as many food deserts,” he says.
Competing in the DifferenceMaker program changed Newbill’s approach to entrepreneurship. During the Idea Challenge, judges repeatedly pushed him to define exactly what problem he was solving and what value his venture would create.
“You can't just feel good about it and walk out there. You've got to do your research,” he says. “I learned that in the DifferenceMaker competition, because if you're not solving a problem, what are you doing?”
DifferenceMaker Director Richard Juknavorian encouraged Newbill to continue refining the concept and present it at the Rist Institute for Sustainability and Energy’s inaugural Sustainability Innovation Showcase and Challenge, where he gathered additional feedback from faculty, entrepreneurs and industry professionals.
Newbill also participated in UMass Lowell’s Global Entrepreneurship Exchange, a two-week summer program in which he worked with students from Japan, Taiwan and Italy to develop commercialization strategies for a university technology startup. Working on a multinational team broadened his perspective on entrepreneurship in a global marketplace.
“It made me realize that I need to get better at preparing presentations for global markets,” he says. “I have to develop my technology skills, as well as my understanding of the customs abroad.”
Every MBA assignment — from accounting and finance to marketing and operations — has helped Newbill develop another piece of his venture.
“I use my land for every project in this school," he says. “That way, I'm working everything out as a student.”