The Business Track is new this year to the Create WV Conference. There were business sessions in other tracks last year, but we had requests for more. It was felt that a creative new economy economic development conference needed to talk a little more with the creative community about business, especially since we got the lowest entrepreneurship rate (ranking) in the country this year. It’s a tough job to lead this track, but it’s not rocket science – or is it!
Our Business Track Leader, Grethe Lindemann, could be called a rocket scientist. At least her first job out of college was with NASA’s Langley Research Center, where she worked on advanced instrumentation development. And, she is quite the over achiever too, with a doctorate, two masters degrees, and two bachelors degrees covering English, writing, physics, biophysics and cognitive science. Now before you start to worry that she is a theoretical academic without any practical experience let’s talk business.
Grethe is a 20 year veteran of leading creative, cutting-edge technology-based startups as well as organizations in transformation or growth. She has had hands-on responsibility for all aspects of executive management including setting vision, operations, finance and intellectual property. During this period she was s successful fundraiser (up to $450M) for the start-ups, companies and organizations she was leading. She has personal experience forging and maintaining partnerships and support of all types — public and private, high-profile or otherwise, often from personally made “cold calls” — at all levels from local, regional, national, to international. When you add in her experience of mentoring startups and launching bold new economic development initiatives in extremely disadvantaged urban and rural regions you have yourself, what I call, a rocket scientist Business Track Leader.
Please join me in welcoming Grethe to the Create WV team and please send her challenging ideas for the Business Track.
–>Rob
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