Greg Van Kirk, Founder and CEO at ProjectX, Social Entrepreneur Corps, Community Empowerment Solutions, and Columbia Business School’s Venture for All, is among the members of the Insitute’s 2018-2019 Advisory Board.

Now a highly successful and creative entrepreneur, Greg got his start at the Farmer School of Business, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Marketing, and Economics.

His many ventures share one mission: to design and implement social innovation responses to long-standing development challenges. In alignment with that mission is his role as the principal designer of the MicroConsignment Model, which establishes profitable income generating opportunities (and the infrastructure and network for a social enterprise) for those living in poverty, especially for women in third-world countries. He has served as a consultant for organizations such as Levi Strauss Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, USAID, Chemonics, VisionSpring, Soros Foundation, Church World Service, Inter American Development Bank, Water For People and Fundacion Paraguaya in the US, Latin America, and Africa.

Greg contributes time as a Social Entrepreneur in Residence” at Columbia University, NYU, Marquette University, Indiana University, University of San Diego and Arizona State University and has taught social entrepreneurship courses at Columbia University and NYU. He is also an Ashoka Lemelson Fellow and was recognized as Schwab Foundation “Social Entrepreneur of the Year” for 2012 by the World Economic Forum.

The Institute welcomes Greg Van Kirk to the 2018-2019 Advisory Board!

Brian Tome, Founder and Senior Pastor at Crossroads Church, has become a member of the Institute’s 2018-2019 Advisory Board. Crossroads, a multi-site church based in Cincinnati, is considered the fastest growing church in America with the nation’s fourth-largest congregation. Within his Crossroads congregation, Brian has been able to foster an ever-growing passion for social entrepreneurship.

38,000 members in 16 sites across the country are actively engaged in combating generational poverty in Cincinnati’s urban core through CityLink Center as well as helping to create wealth upstream through OCEAN Programs, a faith-based business accelerator for venture backable businesses, and Unpolished, which helps traditional startups. Crossroads also supports ventures outside the country; supporting Entrepreneurship in South Africa, building homes in India for girls rescued from sex slavery, and feeding and educating children in Nicaragua.

In addition to his work at Crossroads, Brian has also authored three books: Welcome to the Revolution, Free Book, and 5 Marks of a Man.

Brian studied Theology at Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

The Insititute is excited to have Brian on board!

Tim Spence, Executive Vice President and Head of Consumer Banking, Payments, and Strategy at Fifth Third Bank, and Board Member, Executive Committee member at Cintrifuse, is a current member of the 2018-2019 Institute for Entrepreneurship Advisory Board.

Prior to joining Fifth Third, Tim was a Senior Partner in the Financial Services Practice at Oliver Wyman, a global leader in management consulting with more than 5,000 professionals worldwide where he advised large banks and insurance firms on issues of strategy and performance improvement.

During his time at Fifth Third, Tim oversaw the configuration of Agile teams to work on Fifth Third’s online banking channels and mobile apps in 2017. This initiative resulted in This resulted in a revamped bill pay experience, along with the addition of online branch appointment scheduling and the ability to withdraw cash at ATMs using the bank’s mobile app. It also enabled the launch of Zelle peer-to-peer payments and Momentum.

In 2018, Tim was named American Banker’s 2018 Digital Banker of the Year. He holds a bachelor’s in English Literature and Economics from Colgate University.

Welcome, Tim Spence to the Advisory Board!

Yet another distinguished entrepreneur and Miami graduate, Todd Schwarzinger, is a member of the 2018-2019 Advisory Board. Todd currently serves as the Managing Director of Life Sciences and Healthcare at Silicon Valley Bank.

Todd graduated from Miami University with a bachelor’s in Finance from the Farmer School of Business and received his MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Before he joined SVB, Todd was an Executive Director at Morgan Stanley in the healthcare and banking division, where he advised a broad range of medical device and biopharmaceutical clients on mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, and the equity and debt capital markets. His nine-year career at Morgan Stanley spanned across both New York and London, where he was responsible for life sciences M&A transactions totaling over $5 billion and raised over $3 billion in capital markets transactions spanning North America, Europe, and Asia.

As the current Managing Director at SVB, Todd and his teams focus on capital, banking, and relationship solutions for healthcare clients of all life stages spanning biopharma, medical device, digital health, diagnostics, and life science tools for the Bay Area and Pacific Northwest.

Welcome, Todd Schwarzinger to the Institute for Entrepreneurship Advisory Board!

As Miami University enters into a new semester, we continue to highlight the valuable members of our 2018-2019 Advisory Board. Today, our focus is on David Schwab, Executive Vice President at Octagon Sports & Entertainment Network, Founder of Octagon First Call, and Creator/Host of Beyond High Street Podcast.

David has strong ties to Miami. Twenty years ago, he graduated with a marketing degree from the Farmer School of Business. His love for the University and its alumni extended beyond graduation and was eventually embodied in his podcast, Beyond High Street. Weekly, David interviews highly successful Miami alumni, exploring the common traits that bring people to Oxford and how their education at Miami helped them with their professional successes.

In addition, he is the Executive Vice President of Octagon Sports & Entertainment Network, the world’s largest sponsorship consulting practice and a pioneer in athlete and personality representation and management. In true entrepreneurial fashion, David also went on to found Octagon First Call. This company focuses on celebrity strategy; educating companies, associations, and non-profits on the proper use of celebrity talent and how to get the most value out of a celebrity partnership. Their services include identifying the right talent, securing agreements, tailoring campaigns to fit both the brand and the celebrity, and managing the talent relationship throughout.

The Institute is excited to have David Schwab on board for the 2018-2019 academic year!

Yet another one of our amazing 2018-2019 Advisory Board members is Wendy Lea, former CEO at Cintrifuse, Board Director at Techstars, and former co-founder and CEO of The Sales Consultancy.

An accomplished Silicon Valley executive, Wendy has extensive experience in marketing, sales, and customer experience. She has a broad knowledge of business financing and is an expert at digital innovation, working with hundreds of companies around the world, from start-ups to large corporations.

In 2018, Wendy stepped down from her role of four years as CEO at Cintrifuse, a public-private partnership established to drive the next phase of growth for the Greater Cincinnati region through innovation enabled and delivered by startups. Now, she serves as a Board Director at Techstars, the top-ranked startup accelerator network in the world. Wendy also serves on several other boards, including Xyleme, a Learning Content Management System that empowers teams to centralize and manage content, author collaboratively, publish to multiple outputs and distribute to learning audiences, and San Francisco-based Get Satisfaction, a leader in online customer communities.

Wendy graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and marketing from the School of Business Administration at the University of Mississippi.

As our 2018 – 2019 Advisory Board gathers on campus for their Fall meeting this week, we’d like to take the time to introduce yet another wonderful member, Jeffrey Kadlic, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Evolution Capital Partners.

Jeffrey graduated from Miami University’s Farmer School of Business with a bachelor’s degree in business and finance. The first ten years of his career were spent making private investments in an institutional setting. From early on, Jeffrey embraced the entrepreneurial mindset within a corporate culture. Through working with and around small businesses, he began to recognize that growing small businesses needed more than just an influx of cash to scale operations, rather, they must leverage corporate practices within an entrepreneurial setting to achieve great performance.

His passion for growing small companies led to co-founding Evolution Capital Partners with his partner, Brendan Anderson, in 2005. The company focuses exclusively on advising and investing growth capital in Second Stage Companies nationwide and has generated at least $500,000 of EBITDA as of 2018. In fact, the company was named to Inc. Magazine’s 500 Fastest Growing Companies list in 2013.

Jeffrey himself has been recognized by EY as a finalist for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year for Northeast Ohio in 2013 and was named to the Crain’s Business Forty Under 40 List of leading business professionals.

In addition to his Managing Partner position at Evolution Capital Partners, Jeffrey is also a Board Member/Director of a number of portfolio companies and a Chairman of Miami University’s Cleveland Development Board.

Another outstanding member of the Institute for Entrepreneurship 2018-2019 Advisory Board is David Herche, Chairman and CEO at Enerfab Inc.

David is an alumnus of Miami University, with a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the Farmer School of Business. Early in his career, David served as a practicing accountant and a CPA at Arthur Anderson. Now, he holds many high profile roles within the world of business.

In 1988, David became Chairman and CEO at Enerfab Inc., which was, at the time, a small company of 150 primarily serving the brewing industry. Under his leadership the company flourished, becoming a world-leading supplier of engineering solutions serving the energy, environmental, chemical, pharmaceutical, food, and beverage industries employing over 3,000 people.

He also serves as Executive Chairman of West Chester Protective Gear, the largest importer of industrial work gloves in the United States, and Board Chair of Cincinnati Works, a non-profit organization that assists people living in poverty to advance to self-sufficiency through employment.

As a result of his extensive list of accomplishment and hard work, David was recognized by EY as the EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 1996 and 2008. He was also inducted into the Thomas C. Page Entrepreneurial Center Hall of Fame at Miami University in 2003.

We welcome David Herche to the 2018-2019 Advisory Board!

Another outstanding member of the Institute’s 2018-2019 Advisory Board is Stuart Frankel, co-founder and CEO at Narrative Science. Stuart is a Miami University graduate with a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the Farmer School of Business and a JD from Vanderbilt University.

Early in his career, Stuart was a practicing attorney and CPA. In 2000, he joined DoubleClick Performics and soon became President of the Performics Division and a member of their senior management team until the company was sold to Google.

He founded Narrative Science in 2010; the leading company in “transforming data into narratives” through the utilization of natural language generation. In his position as CEO, Stuart leads the company’s strategy and corporate vision, focusing on how customers can achieve better business outcomes by implementing artificial intelligence technologies.

He has been recognized twice by EY as a finalist for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year and was named to Crain’s Chicago 2015 Tech 50 List. He regularly contributes to industry discussions related to the future of work, technology innovation, and entrepreneurship.

The Institute of Entrepreneurship welcomes Stuart Frankel to the 2018-2019 Advisory Board.

Among the ranks of our outstanding advisory board members for 2018 – 2019 is consumer-centric financial services technology executive and Miami alum Lisa Dallmer.

Featured twice by Financial News as one of the “100 Most Influential Women for European Financial Services,” Lisa is an influential figure in the realms of finance and entrepreneurship. Her college education began at Miami University, where she received a Bachelor’s degree in Finance. She then went on to earn her MBA at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, spent a year studying at the London School of Economics, and participated in an executive leadership program at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.

She joined BlackRock, a global investment fund corporation and the world’s largest asset manager in 2014 as Chief Operating Officer of Global Technology and Operations. While in her position, Lisa worked across a $1.6 billion portfolio of global technology, client service, investment operations, and data services teams, leading operating model strategy to deliver enterprise value, set strategic investment criteria for adjacent business development, operationalize platform technology by driving tech-enabled transformation and lead operational M&A integration. She also served as a member of the BlackRock Global Operating Committee and the Technology & Operations Executive Committee, became the first executive to require diverse slates for every open role as a participant in the firm’s Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Circle, and established BlackRock’s Girls Who Code partnership.

Prior to her employment at BlackRock, Lisa served as COO and Executive Vice President for European Cash Markets at NYSE Euronext in Paris, France. There, she was responsible for all aspects of the commercial operating model and technology service delivery. From 2006 to 2010,  she was head of Global Exchange Traded Products, ETFs and Indices, leading the integration of the product teams, client-facing technology, and business model change following the New York Stock Exchange, Euronext, Archipelago, and Amex mergers.

Additionally, Lisa served as Co-President of the Women’s Bond Club from 2007 to 2009 and as a Board Member in various committee roles from 2003 to 2007.

The Institute for Entrepreneurship welcomes Lisa Dallmer to the 2018 – 2019 Advisory Board!