The Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship has announced the selection of the 2021-22 Veale Entrepreneurship Fellows. This program supports faculty, staff or teams to create new initiatives, including specific types of engagement efforts, research proposals and formal or informal educational activities that advance the Veale Institute’s mission. The institute’s initiative is to be a catalyst for venture creation and commercialization, entrepreneurial learning and programming, and communication, by supporting new initiatives or expanding existing ventures that need resources to grow.
Read about the inaugural fellows and their projects below.
Alex Balogh: Sports Entrepreneurship Conference
Alex Balogh, a running-backs coach in the athletics department, will lead the Sports Entrepreneurship Conference project. This project will host an on-campus conference specifically geared towards student-athletes. During the conference, leaders and innovators in the sports industry will present on current opportunities or challenges they are facing (either via Zoom or in-person) and students will have the opportunity to work together to create possible solutions. The goal of the Sports Entrepreneurship Conference is to inspire students to view sports as an ever-evolving industry full of opportunities.
Michael Folise: IPVC Open Office Hours at think[box]
Led by Michael Folise, adjunct faculty/distinguished practitioner in residence at the CWRU School of Law, this project allows the law school’s Intellectual Property Venture Clinic (IPVC) to maintain an “open office hours” desk on the sixth floor of think[box]. Students, faculty, and alumni are welcome to visit the open office hours for assistance with patent, trademark, copyright and business formation issues. Folise’s project provides necessary services to inventors, entrepreneurs, and members of the campus community in monetizing their ideas and avoiding infringement, freedom to operate investigations and more.
Dan Pendergast: Technical Marketing Fellows for Technology Transfer Office
Led by Dan Pendergast, senior director of operations at the Technology Transfer Office, the Technical Marketing Fellowship will give two students (one engineering and one biomedical) the opportunity to provide technical writing expertise for the Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer offices. In this role, students are responsible for the commercial support needed to educate external audiences regarding the value of assets arising from university research and how these solutions can create new business opportunities.
Mindy Baierl: Prospecting Corporate Venture Capital for Investments at CWRU
Mindy Baierl is the senior director of corporate relations and strategic projects at CWRU. Her project aims to explore and expand corporate venture capital (CVC) at CWRU. Developing relationships with CVCs has the potential to accelerate venture creation, deepen relationships with corporate partners, and increase sponsored research. This project aims to expand corporate relationships to include CVCs, which will directly increase corporate funding at CWRU and corporate engagement on campus.
Cheryl Thompson: CWRU Translational Fellows Program
Cheryl Thompson, associate professor of nutrition at the School of Medicine, will lead the CWRU Translational Fellow Program (TFP). This project seeks to train individuals in entrepreneurship and the translation of innovation into commercial ventures by connecting them to programs and workshops around campus while protecting time for their entrepreneurial activities. The CWRU TFP supports fellows interested in entrepreneurship and biomedical translation for one full calendar year.
Katherine Gullett: Managing the Technology Portfolio of a Growing Center: A Review of Our Patents and the Creation of Technology Summaries
Katherine Gullett, executive director of the Center for Computational Imaging and Personalized Diagnostics (CCIPD), will lead this project to organize technology and data at the CCIPD. This project will create a relationship map of the technologies, as well as technology summary sheets that can be used when presenting to potential translation partners. The goal of this project is to better organize and group the CCIPD’s technologies, allowing the center to more nimbly respond to translation opportunities.
Karen Oye: Advancing Entrepreneurship Literacy–KSL Research Tools, Technologies & Techniques
Karen Oye, research services librarian at Kelvin Smith Library, will lead this project with the goal of improving CWRU students’ entrepreneurship literacy. This project represents a systematic way of approaching entrepreneurship research with varying degrees of concentration on markets and their industries, as well as companies and product development. An online resource for entrepreneurship will better aid students in developing their ideas into products and taking them to market.
Erika Howard: Start-Up Weekend for Women Entrepreneurs
The Flora Stone Mather Center for Women’s Start-Up Weekend for Women Entrepreneurs is a two-day entrepreneurship program led by Erika Howard, program manager of Women in STEM at the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women. This program will engage women across CWRU and Northeast Ohio to provide tools to successfully develop their entrepreneurial mindset, launch their businesses, and expand their overall network.
Tiffany McNamara: Design Services for Entrepreneurship and Commercialization
Tiffany McNamara, senior director of strategic partnerships and business development at Sears think[box], will lead this project to provide startups with engineering assistance. This project will launch a design services program at think[box] that will help students and campus community members with their startup’s first design and prototype. Prototypes are an invaluable tool for start-ups as they refine their product and seek funding. With this service, start-ups will get to the prototyping phase faster and at a lower cost.