Entrepreneurs Panel Discussion
3 Entrepreneurs come to UMBC to answer your questions
Location
University Center : 312
Date & Time
April 20, 2016, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Description
ENTREPRENEUR 1: Stephanie Day '96
Owner and CEO, Stephanie Day Events - Masters in Management, University of Maryland,University College, B.A. Psychology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
After graduating from UMBC and spending a short time as a corporate recruiter, Stephanie Day began her event planning career back at her alma mater UMBC managing many of the Alumni Association events and communications. This provided her many years of hands on experience developing, planning and managing events of all sizes.
After planning her own wedding and anticipating the arrival of children, Stephanie began working with a wedding planner to gain additional experience in the wedding industry. In 2004, while working full time and completing her master's degree, Stephanie launched her company, originally called Dream Day Planners, and has been planning weddings, corporate and social events ever since. In 2006, she resigned from her full time job to fully focus on her company and growing family. In 2014, she decided to rebrand and expand her company into travel and increase social and corporate events by adding staff. She renamed her company Stephanie Day Events to support that expansion. She now plans honeymoons, vacation travel and destination weddings in addition to the on-site event planning and management services her company provides.
ENTREPRENEUR 2: Perry Ogwuche '14
Co-founder and CEO, Shypmate - B.S. Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Perry is co-founder and CEO of Shypmate, a company located in Silicon Valley. He graduated from UMBC with a double major in Mathematics and Computer Science. While at UMBC, Perry led a team and put together UMBC's first ever 24 hour hackathon. After graduation, Perry worked at Jawbone, a consumer technology and wearable products company headquartered in San Francisco. Having had a great deal of exposure to startups while at Jawbone, and having a desire to solve a problem he and many others had faced, he decided to found Shypmate with three friends. Shypmate is a platform that lets people in Ghana and Nigeria buy products from the US and get them delivered in 5-10 days using travelers who are headed to the same destination. Shypmate started as a project Perry would work on during his evenings after working his full time job. Today the company is part of the Winter 16 batch of Y Combinator, a prestigious startup accelerator that has seen the likes of great companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, and Stripe emerge from it. As an entrepreneur, Perry admits that he does not have all the answers, but running quick experiments to test ideas and quickly iterating based on metrics and learnings has taken him and Shypmate a long way. Perry believes in paying it forward and is always looking for ways to help the next generation of entrepreneurs.
ENTREPRENEUR 2: Scott Townsley
President and Co-Founder, The Center for Innovation, Inc., Principal, CliftonLarsonAllen, LLP, and Adjunct Faculty, UMBC, The Erickson School - B.S. Business and Administration, Drexel University, Juris Doctorate, Villanova University
Scott is both a teacher of Entrepreneurship and a practitioner. Focused exclusively on the longevity economy and senior living options he cut the tether to traditional employment back in 1985. Since then he has created both for-profit and non-profit enterprises with the latest being the Center for Innovation, Inc., a multi-dimensional start-up social enterprise that has taken over the sponsorship of The Green House Project (largely recognized to be the most significant innovation in the long term care arena for the past 20 years.) Prior to the Center for Innovation, Scott scaled Third Age, Inc. (a senior living strategy and consulting firm) into one of the largest consulting firms focused exclusively in the aging services/senior living space. He sold that company to what is now Clifton Larson Allen, LLP in January of 2010. As he reminds his classes at UMBC's Erickson School of Aging Services Management, there is tremendous reward from being both a capitalist/entrepreneur and being a social entrepreneur.