Recent Entrepreneurship News
Kogod professor Danielle Vogel joined the Start Up Builders and Backers podcast to discuss...
The Kogod School of Business at American University is preparing MBA and graduate students in...
With the entrepreneurial mindset at the core of their approach to learning, Kogod and American...
Kogod's Veloric Center for Entrepreneurship connects students to DC’s innovation, AI, and...
Director of the Veloric Center for Entrepreneurship and Kogod School of Business Professor Tommy...
Sustainable entrepreneurship combines business innovation with environmental and social impact....
Professor Danielle Vogel is the Interim Director of the Veloric Center for Entrepreneurship. She teaches courses at both Kogod and WCL focusing on the intersection between sustainability and entrepreneurship. Prior to joining the Kogod faculty, she founded Glen's Garden Market, a climate-motivated grocery store in Dupont Circle. Before that, she spent a decade on Capitol Hill working to pass comprehensive climate legislation. She also served as a Trial Attorney, enforcing the Clean Air Act for the U.S. Department of Justice.
Tommy White is a Senior Professorial Lecturer (formerly “Executive-in-Residence”) at the Kogod School of Business at American University. In this role, he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on introduction to business, introduction to entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship business planning, revenue/financial forecast modeling and start-up launch, and venture capital.
Professor White is also the Director of the Veloric Center for Entrepreneurship, where he works promotes/directs entrepreneurial experiential learning activities throughout the AU campus and directly works with student entrepreneurs launching companies.
Professor White is an entrepreneur with 3 successful exits and 2 failed ventures. He is an active angel investor and coaches/mentors 20 – 25 startup ventures annually throughout the DC Startup Ecosystem.
Professor White received his MBA in Marketing from the Kogod School of Business, American University (1995) and his BA in Economics and History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1986).
Alison Chrisler is the Director of Undergraduate Programs in the Department of Health Studies. Dr. Chrisler is a Certified Child Life Specialist at Children's National Hospital. She has over a decade of experience in program evaluation within the non-profit sector. Dr. Chrisler's research and evaluation expertise focuses on working with children, youth, and families that are often overlooked, with a special emphasis on hospitalized children, LGBTQIA people, and the aging community. Currently, her research focuses on developing a cost analysis of child life programs. Additionally, Dr. Chrisler is examining parental advocacy efforts when they have a child that identifies as lesbian, gay, or bisexual.
Dr. Chrisler holds a Ph.D. in Human Development and Families Studies and M.A. in Youth Development from Michigan State University. She was previously a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Faculty Fellow analyzing the identity development of undergraduate students in her queering health course. She was previously a DC Humanities Truck Fellow developing an intergenerational playgroup as an innovative community activity that promotes the health and wellbeing of seniors, as well as build community and reduce ageism among families who have children from birth to 5 years old. Additionally, Dr. Chrisler serves as the Executive Editor of The Journal of Child Life.
Shawn Janzen is a information scientist with expertise in information behavior, data analytics, sociotechnical cybersecurity, cognitive security, public administration, public policy, and technology policy.
Mr. Janzen's research interests span managerial information behaviors, particularly how senior leadership decision-making translates into organizational behaviors. He is also broadly interested in how individuals and organizations create, choose to share, and adopt information that becomes part of institutional knowledge, engagement, and administration. He focuses these interests on issues related to disruptive and emerging technologies, cybersecurity, ethics, and public policy. Mr. Janzen is also interested in helping advance data analytics instructional content and tools to make the user experience more inclusive and accessible. Some of his recent work appeared at the Academy of Management, the Association for Information Science and Technology, and the International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction.
Outside Kogod, Mr. Janzen is Affiliated Faculty at The Shahal M. Khan Cyber and Economic Security Institute and member of the AU Cyber Community.
Prior to joinging AU, Mr. Janzen was a researcher at the Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS). At ARLIS, Mr. Janzen helped lead research projects on global IT assessment and mission assurance related planning, as well as participated in research teams pertaining to mis-/disinformation, cognitive security, knowledge production, and insider threats on behalf of the US Department of Defense. Select other professional experiences include the U.S. Peace Corps, the European Parliament, and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He also served on several nonprofit boards and consulted on organizational management, international affairs, and institutional sustainability. Mr. Janzen continues to regularly serve as a judge at various data challenge competitions.
Dr. Octavian Ionici is a finance professor in the Department of Finance and Real Estate at Kogod School of Business and the Director of the Financial Services and Information Technology Lab. He currently teaches Financial Modeling, Private Company Valuation, Investment Banking, Real Estate Modeling & Valuation and Money Matters courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. His research interests cover all areas of finance, in particular financial and real estate modeling, corporate valuation as well as the developments concerning integrating reporting as a process for companies to enhance their ability to create value and achieve greater sustainability. He also specializes in conducting training seminars and workshops on using state-of-art software applications and databases, such as Bloomberg, LSEG Refinitiv, S&P CapIQ, WRDS and @Risk for risk analysis which develop essential skills and hands-on experience in finance and allied fields. In addition to being involved in academia for more than 20 years, he worked in the US and abroad in various managerial positions in the financial economics areas where he was responsible for corporate finance, research and private equity investments.
Bill Bellows currently supports the Kogod School of Business as a member of its Core Curriculum Committee, through guest lecturing and counseling with the Professionalism program and through interactions with entrepreneurship faculty and alumni. He is also a guest lecturer in bioentrepreneurship with the College of Arts and Sciences. Prior to retirement, his area of focus centered on innovation and entrepreneurship. He helped develop the school's first classes using Design Thinking, Customer Development, and Business Model disciplines, and led cross-campus entrepreneurship efforts.
Bellows' classes included:
* Disruptive Innovation, focusing on the socioeconomic impact of technologies like AI, robotics, and autonomous vehicles
* Entrepreneurship and Innovation, an experiential class where students developed startup business models
* Design Thinking for Innovation, an AU Core class exploring collaborative human-centered solutions to complex problems, and
* Introduction to Business, a survey course for first-year business students
Bellows also served as a business mentor for student teams in AU's NSF I-Corps site program, and was co-Director of the AU Entrepreneurship Incubator (now the Veloric Center for Entrepreneurship).
Bellows received Kogod's Faculty Award for Outstanding Service and the Ann S. Ferren Curriculum Design Award.
Prior to his time at Kogod, Bellows was an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and Northern Virginia, co-founding and leading a global consulting firm that worked with Fortune 500 and emerging tech companies and venture capitalists. The firm was later acquired by Omnicom Group. He also was a co-founder of One White Pixel, an early mobile application development company and served as a C-level executive in three other early stage companies.