While earning her PhD in marketing at the University of Arizona, Kelli Frias grew fascinated with entrepreneurship. She was inspired by how angel investors at her school helped drive the development of new technology and wanted to encourage the same innovation through her work.
To help broaden and diversify her thinking, Frias began taking classes in law, a discipline that provides essential context for product development. This, in combination with her primary focus on marketing and her public policy background, provided the interdisciplinary experience she needed to research and teach innovation.
“I saw a gap in how marketing is approached and wanted to fill it,” she says.