Program Leaders

Participants network at a Mentorship Meetup event on the ASU Tempe campus. The Mentorship Meetup was created to help connect student entrepreneurs with local mentors. Photo by Safwat Saleem

Our expert network consists of experienced entrepreneurs, business leaders or nonprofit executives who can provide expert assistance with planned or established ventures.

Erik Johnston, School of Public Affairs, Center for Policy Informatics

Program Leader: Erik Johnston
Program: School of Public Affairs, Center for Policy Informatics
Years with ASU: 5

As an educator, I am fairly new the fields of entrepreneurship so I am learning the role of an entrepreneur as go.  The more I learn about this exciting field of practice and study, the more I notice ongoing conversations in the field.  An ongoing debate that continues to permeate the field is the discussion of the differences between social and business entrepreneurship.  Are all entrepreneurial endeavors truly social at the core?

Last week I received a great gift.

Amidst all of the voiced complaints about the prices of books for college courses, I received a box full of books to give away to my entrepreneurship students. No strings attached, simply the desire to educate aspiring entrepreneurs. Who would do such a thing, you ask? Carol Roth. Carol Roth did such a thing.

Ben Cameron of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundations discusses new pathways for the arts.

Last week, the p.a.v.e program in arts entrepreneurship hosted its second bi-annual symposium, “Creating Infrastructure for Creativity and Innovation.” The interactive format allowed for many different levels of participation by symposium attendees.  Although not an exhaustive list or description, here are some through-lines...

In his essay, "The Heritage of Storytelling" Robert Fulford states, "We humans are all storytellers, or story-listeners, or both."

I have distinct memories of sitting by the campfire as a child. My front feeling slightly singed by the flames that my brother stoked ever higher and my back feeling cold and exposed to the darkened forest that lay beyond fire light.  I loved being there.

Photo by Mark Henderson

This is more than a trip – it’s also a service to others. GlobalResolve is a social entrepreneurship program at ASU that creates sustainable economic development in poor communities by developing technological solutions to energy, health and water problems and helping to initiate startup ventures around the solution.

Because Creative Infrastructure is what my brother would call a “vanity blog” I’m going to use my space today to brag – not about me, but about the p.a.v.e. program in arts entrepreneurship and the creative, enthusiastic students who submitted proposals to it.  P.a.v.e. provides experiential learning opportunities for budding arts entrepreneurs through its arts venture incubator program, as well as public programming (like the “Creating Infrastructure” symposium later this week) and formal curricula.

Let's start our own March Madness at ASU - a tournament of entrepreneurship victory stories.

Sweet sixteen.  College basketball has given a whole new meaning to this phrase.  Sweet sixteen is no longer the purview of adolescent girls on the verge of womanhood.  It’s the first round of a frenzy-inducing basketball tournament appropriately nicknamed March Madness.  As I write, the nation is in the midst of March Madness.  But why?