Julie Lenzer Kirk
CEO and Chief Muse
Path Forward International, LLC
http://www.julielenzerkirk.com/
Julie Lenzer Kirk is CEO and Chief Muse of Path Forward International, LLC which is dedicated to igniting results-oriented sustainable innovation cultures and programs within companies and among entrepreneurs world wide. As a sought-after international speaker, Ms. Kirk has educated and empowered audiences on four continents around topics of entrepreneurship, business management and leadership, and balancing work and family. She is also the author of “The ParentPreneur Edge: What Parenting Teaches About Building a Successful Business” (John Wiley & Sons) and is a facilitator for the Women Presidents' Organization.
Ms. Kirk is in her fifth year with the NSF-funded ACTiVATE program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Through this program, which was named “Best Specialty Entrepreneurship Program” by the US Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, she helps experienced women start businesses by licensing technologies from universities and government labs. She is also an adjunct professor of Innovation and Technology Entrepreneurship at UMBC.
An award winning serial entrepreneur, Ms. Kirk founded her first company, Applied Creative Technologies, Inc. (ACT), in 1995 as an IT solutions firm focusing on manufacturing operations and inventory control. With Fortune 500 clients, she grew the company to multi-millions in revenues, winning several national awards for workplace excellence. Through her 10-year leadership, ACT developed and commercialized ACTrax , a leading-edge production and warehouse management system, for which she negotiated the sale in 2005.
Ms. Kirk received the Athena Award in 2004 as recognition for her contributions to other business women and the community and was named to Maryland 's Top 100 Women 2005 and 2008 sponsored by The Daily Record . She is a member of the National Center for Women and Information Technology's Entrepreneurial Alliance and a mentor for Count Me In's Make Mine a $Million Business program. Frequently quoted in the media – from Entrepreneur to Redbook and Family Circle Magazines - and having appeared in numerous broadcast interviews, she also writes a column for Enterprising Women Magazine.
Renee Lewis
President
Pensare Group
Renee Lewis has over 20 years of experience helping emerging companies succeed and grow. Ms. Lewis is the President and CEO of the Pensare Group dedicated to helping entrepreneurs outperform their expectations getting the right results at the right time. She has hands-on expertise in the technology, pharmaceutical technology, telecommunications, banking, eLearning, pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. She has held the position of CEO, COO, CTO, CIO and Director role for several technology-based start-ups developing skills in all areas of the business. She has also held senior positions directing large systems integration projects in organizations such as Cerner, Bell Atlantic, Citi-Street (previously Wellspring Resources), and Booz, Allen and Hamilton. She has experience raising money, selling companies and implementing successful mergers and acquisitions.
Ms. Lewis is a requested speaker at industry conferences including FOSE, Extreme Markup Languages, and E-Gov authoring papers and presentations on a wide range of topics from delivering on budget/on time to exploring the implications of semantic web technology adoption.
Ms. Lewis holds a BS from the Pennsylvania State University and an MS from George Washington University . She sits on the Advisory Board for the Graduate School of Education and Human Development (GSEHD ) at George Washington University focusing on the infusion of technology in education , supports several organizations as an advisor to the board, and is very active in the local community through her civic and PTA endeavors. She is certified by Achievement Seminars International (ASI) as a Facilitator and the Total Quality Institute (TQI) as a Quality Process Advisor.
Kären Olson
CEO
BioMarker Strategy, LLC
Kären Olson, the CEO of BioMarker Strategies, has more than 25 years of industry experience. Ms. Olson oversees all aspects of the company's management, operations and R&D program, including the development of the company's SnapPath™ tumor cell processing and testing system. Olson is the former President & CEO of Adhesives Research, a $115 million multinational specialty chemical and drug delivery company with more than 500 employees, headquartered in Glen Rock, PA. As CEO of this company, Adhesives Research created a new drug delivery system and became the first company to successfully develop medicated dissolvable thin strips.
Ms. Olson serves on the boards of directors of Main Tape, Inc and non-profit organizations, including Loyola College 's Sellinger Business School Board of Sponsors. She is an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Dingman Center of University of Maryland , College Park . In addition to holding an executive MBA from Loyola College , a BS in chemistry and a BS in medical technology from California Lutheran University , she is currently completing her MS degree in biotechnology at Johns Hopkins University .
Olson has received numerous honors for her professional achievements, including Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year, Greater Baltimore Committee's Leadership in Bioscience, Smart Woman's Woman of the Year and The Baltimore Daily Record's Healthcare Leader of the Year finalist.
ACTiVATE® ADMINISTRATION BIOGRAPHIES
Ellen J. Hemmerly
President & Executive Director, UMBC Research and Technology Park
Ms. Hemmerly is Executive Director and President of the UMBC Research Park Corporation and Special Assistant to the Vice President for Institutional Advancement at University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). She is responsible for managing the development of a 515,000 SF high technology research and technology park (bwtech@UMBC) which includes an incubator, accelerator and research park and is a co-principal investigator of ACTiVATE ® , a technology commercialization program. bwtech@UMBC currently houses 50 companies including 24 incubator companies and 9 emerging technology companies. These technology and biotechnology companies have access to faculty research collaborations, student workers, specialized technology training programs, and a full range of business services including access to experienced entrepreneurs and funding. ACTiVATE ® is a regional technology commercialization program geared toward professional women which produced 24 start-up companies in its first four years of operation.
Ms. Hemmerly sits on the boards of the Greater Baltimore Technology Council, Greater Catonsville Chamber of Commerce, Baltimore County Loan Board, New Markets Venture Fund, Maryland Business Incubator Association and Research Parks Maryland . Ms. Hemmerly is Past President of AURP, the Association of University Research Parks, and is a 2006 graduate of Leadership Maryland. In 2007, she was elected by The Daily Record as one of the Fifty Most Influential Marylanders and chosen by the Greater Catonsville Chamber of Commerce as 2007 Business Person of the Year. For three consecutive years (2007-2009), Ms. Hemmerly served as a judge for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year Awards. In 2008, bwtech@UMBC Incubator and Accelerator was honored with the County Executive 's New Direction Award given to an organization exemplifying the quality of Baltimore County Businesses in the future. In 2009, Ms. Hemmerly was elected by The Daily Record as one of Maryland 's Top 100 Women.
Prior to joining UMBC, Ms. Hemmerly was a Vice President at the Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC) serving as its Senior Lender and Director of the Enterprise Development Fund, the City's venture capital fund. While at BDC, Ms. Hemmerly successfully started up the city's first business incubator and spent two years as a business development officer marketing Baltimore to high technology businesses. Prior to joining BDC, Ms. Hemmerly was an Associate with K.S. Sweet Associates, a real estate advisory and development firm, and TDH, a venture capital firm. In addition, after graduating from Cornell University 's Johnson School of Management with an M.B.A., Ms. Hemmerly spent six years as a banker with Mellon Bank (formerly Girard Bank). Ms. Hemmerly has a B.S. (magna cum laude) in Mathematics from Moravian College.
Stephen P. Auvil
Assistant Vice President for Research
UMBC
Stephen Auvil is the assistant vice president for research at the University of Maryland , Baltimore County (UMBC). In this role, he assists the vice president for research's efforts to build and support UMBC's research efforts. He is also responsible for supporting UMBC's economic development mission as it relates to research, technology transfer, and new venture creation. Mr. Auvil, who was one of the architects of UMBC's ACTiVATE program, served as a co-principal investigator on the National Science Foundation grant that supported the program and continues to be involved with its management and expansion efforts. Between 2000 - 2008, Mr. Auvil served as the director of UMBC's Office of Technology Development (OTD). During his tenure, he oversaw significant growth in OTD's active license agreements, intellectual property portfolio, and licensing revenues. He actively promoted UMBC's research capabilities and helped to build ties with Maryland companies. Before arriving at UMBC, he worked as an assistant director in the Office of Technology Licensing at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where he evaluated inventions and negotiated license agreements for a variety of technologies. He has successfully negotiated dozens of license agreements including several agreements involving equity and a number of agreements with faculty initiated start-up companies. Prior to working at Johns Hopkins, Mr. Auvil worked for two small medical device companies where he had a variety of responsibilities ranging from rebuilding medical devices under GMP to setting-up and networking computerized accounting systems. He began his career as a laboratory technician studying ion channels in membranes. Mr. Auvil graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology and Engineering Science from Loyola College in Maryland, and went on to earn a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Baltimore and a Masters of Science in Biotechnology from the Johns Hopkins University.
David J. Fink, Ph.D.
Director of Entrepreneurial Services
bwtech@UMBC Incubator and Accelerator
David Fink 's career in biotechnology and biomedical product development spans over 30 years as a researcher, research manager, consultant, entrepreneur and officer of several start-up biotech companies. Dr. Fink was trained in chemical engineering at the Universities of Cincinnati and Michigan, and he was a post-doctoral fellow in biochemistry at Purdue University. He then joined Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio where he conducted and managed research on more than 100 projects over a 12-year period. In 1986 he founded his own biomedical consulting business, Bio-Integration Inc., which was active until 1997. In 1988 he founded and served as President of CollaTek, Inc., in collaboration with Gattefossé SA of Lyon, France, to develop and commercialize technology licensed from Battelle for manufacturing collagen-based medical implants. Dr. Fink became the second employee of Osiris Therapeutics at the time it was founded in 1993. Osiris is a Baltimore tissue regeneration company with a platform technology based on adult stem cells. Dr. Fink joined Chondros Inc., a start-up cell therapy company in Baltimore, as its first employee in 2001, and continued as its President and COO until November 2003. From 2005-2008, Dr. Fink served as Vice President for R&D of Cell Targeting, Inc., a cell therapy start-up in Cleveland, Ohio. He has authored 40 scientific papers and book chapters, and he has been awarded 22 US patents.
As Director of Entrepreneurial Services for bwtech@UMBC, Dr. Fink advises early-stage incubator companies and is Program Manager for UMBC's ACTiVATE® program.
Vivian Armor
Director, Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship
UMBC
Vivian Armor is the director of the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship and an adjunct faculty member at UMBC. She was actively involved in creating the Alex. Brown Center in 2000 and has worked closely with the Baltimore business community and UMBC faculty and staff to develop innovative educational programs and services to foster entrepreneurism in the region. She also teaches undergraduate management classes in the Department of Information Technology at UMBC. Prior to joining UMBC, Armor was an executive at the Northrop Grumman Corporation in Baltimore . She has a Bachelor of Arts from UMBC, a Master of Science from Johns Hopkins University and has completed an intensive executive management program at Harvard.