Mays Impacts

The Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship (CNVE) has recently been restructured. Don Lewis has been appointed as director of the Blackstone LaunchPad Initiative at Texas A&M University.

Chuck Hinton, who works with the NSF I-Corps program at Startup Aggieland, will assume many of the responsibilities of the assistant director of Startup Aggieland. He will also continue to serve the National Science Foundation’s Innovative Corps (I-Corps) program.

Earlier this year, the Blackstone Charitable Foundation expanded its campus entrepreneurship program to include Texas A&M University along with the University of Texas at Austin and The University of Texas at Dallas. Established by the foundation’s three-year, $3 million grant, the partnership between the three institutions will introduce entrepreneurship as a viable career option and offer opportunities to the universities’ 130,000 students, regardless of major, with a network of venture coaches and an entrepreneurial support system. The CNVE was tasked with leading the initiative across campus.

The goals of the initiative are to identify 10 percent of the student body and engage them in a meaningful way in the entrepreneurial ecosystem on campus, from one-on-one mentoring to entrepreneurial-oriented events and more.

Sixteen veteran entrepreneurs from across several states spent hours last week studying and learning the ins and outs of launching their new business endeavors through Texas A&M University’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) program. After presenting their business plans to their peers and esteemed mentors, the participants each went home excited to begin their personal and professional passions, taking along with them the wisdom, advice and much-appreciated guidance shared with them over the eight-day residency.

In its ninth year to be hosted by Mays Business School’s Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship (CNVE), the 2016 EBV program once again served veterans with a military service-linked disability who have started or are interested in starting their own business. The national EBV program was launched in 2007 by the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, and in 2008, added Texas A&M University to a consortium that now includes 10 additional universities across the nation. Each university in the consortia makes a strong commitment to support this nation’s veterans and help to guide them down the path of starting and maintaining a successful business venture.

At Texas A&M, the EBV week is filled with expert lectures, one-on-one mentoring from volunteer entrepreneurs, access to tremendous resources, a lot of food and a full dose of the Spirit of Aggieland. …Read more

Lorraine Eden, a management professor at Mays Business School, is the first-time recipient of the Woman of the Year award from the Women in the Academy of International Business (WAIB). The WAIB executive board unanimously chose Eden for the award and presented it to her at the annual Academy of International Business (AIB) meeting in New Orleans in June.

The Woman of the Year Award recognizes a female WAIB scholar for her service to WAIB, to the AIB and for high-quality research in an international business discipline. 

The WAIB is a special-interest group within the AIB that promotes networking among members and supports global female talent through discussion and research. Eden founded the organization in 2001 at the annual AIB meeting in Sydney, Australia. The special-interest group has since grown to having over 800 members worldwide.

“I am honored and humbled to receive this award,” Eden said. “You could knock me over with a feather when I found out about it! I’m not sure I have done anything to deserve this, but I am delighted to have been selected.”

Amanda Bullough, President of WAIB (right), presents the first Woman of the Year award to Lorraine Eden.

Eden has been an active member of the AIB for many years. She held the position of track chair at the 1998 Vienna meetings, AIB Vice President from 2000-2002 and Program Chair of the 2002 Puerto Rico meetings on Geography and International Business. She was elected a Fellow of the AIB in 2004 and has served on several Fellows committees. She also served as chair for the 2010-11 AIB presidential committee. In 2012 she received the AIB President’s Award for her contributions to AIB and the field of international business.  

“We are all quite excited about presenting this award to you,” Amanda Bullough, president of WAIB, told Eden at the conference. “We all admire what you’ve done for women in the AIB over the years. I for one am certain that many junior and mid-career women scholars look up to you.”

This award comes just after Eden’s appointment as president to the AIB board. She will serve as as president-elect for the 2016-17 year, president from 2017-18 and past president from 2018 to 2019. 

At Mays Business School, Eden holds the Gina and Anthony Bahr ’91 Professorship in Business in the Department of Management. She teaches courses on Transfer Pricing, Multinational Enterprises and the Economics of International Business.