Wisconsin innovation leaders to be honored at Ideas to Profits conference

15 Sep Wisconsin innovation leaders to be honored at Ideas to Profits conference

Whitewater, Wis. – Five individual Wisconsin innovation leaders will be honored for their outstanding work in promoting entrepreneurship and supporting inventor and entrepreneur clubs this year at the Oct. 1-2 “Ideas to Profits” Conference. The conference is sponsored by the Wisconsin Innovation Service Center (WISC) at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and will be held in Appleton, Wis., at the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel.
“The `Champion Awards’ are presented to individuals who have had a significant impact on entrepreneurship in the State of Wisconsin,” said Ronald Gayhart, director of the Center for Innovation and Business Development at UW-Whitewater. “All of these people have contributed to economic development within the state and for that we applaud them.”
The 2008 Innovation Champions are:

• Mark Burwell, executive director of the Urban Hope Entrepreneur Center in Green Bay, WI. Burwell is committed to empowering people and their community through entrepreneurship. His innovative model for building communities of entrepreneurs includes youth, peer-to-peer mentoring and engaging entrepreneurs by “cupiding” (connecting). This includes more than 400 business launches and more than 2,000 jobs for the New North area.
• Jacqueline Moore Bowles, president and chief executive officer of Creative Marketing Resources (CMR). CMR is a full-service advertising and public relations firm that specializes in marketing to urban and ethnic audiences. Under her leadership, CMR has received numerous awards for its outstanding accomplishments and contributions to Wisconsin’s minority business development, including the prestigious “National Supplier of the Year” award in 2006 from the National Supplier Development Council.
• Guy T. Mascari, director of development for the Milwaukee County Research Park and director of the Technology Innovation Center. He has provided mentoring and advice to many of the successful entrepreneurs in the Technology Innovation Center and to many of the 70 graduates of its incubation program. Mascari has developed an extensive national network of resources in financing, intellectual property, technology transfer, marketing, strategic planning, and other fields vital to the success of rapidly growing technology businesses.
• Russ Roberts, Small Business Center manager at Waukesha County Technical College. As the Small Business Center manager, he provides individual counseling, oversees program development and teaches small business courses. The community-focused Small Business Center opened its doors in 2001 and now serves about 1,500 entrepreneurs each year.
• Wendy Katherine Baumann, president of the Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative Corporation (WWIBC), a statewide economic development corporation. Prior to WWIBC, she served as the executive director of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin, director of development and research for the Council for the Spanish Speaking, and a job placement program coordinator at Goodwill Industries.

The “Innovation Champion” awards began in 2005. Since then nearly 30 individuals have been honored.
WISC is a national service that offers new product assessment, competitive intelligence searches, current and potential distributors and consumer assessments. They have also earned a national reputation for helping inventors, entrepreneurs and companies make product and market decisions.