Building Bridges and Strengthening Connections between ESO's and Academic Centers

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Hey everyone, welcome back to our second annual SBA Innovation Ecosystem Summit. I think we have some new faces, so allow me to quickly reset the room. My name is Jimmy Lecorbat, Engagement Director at Established on behalf of the sba. This event has closed captions. If you need it, just look at the bottom of your screen, click the CC button. We also have two chat options. Most of us are hanging out in the Stage chat, so find the tab on your screen that says Stage. Go ahead and click it and start engaging with everyone in the comments. If you experience technical difficulties, maybe you can see us but can't hear us. Or you hear us or can't see us, try refreshing your screen. That usually takes care of the problem. However, if you're still having problems, go ahead and email us at Support what is the email address? Supportst us. We're going to put it in the chat for you to easily access. We also encourage you to share your learnings and highlights from this conference on social media using the hashtag eso summit22 that's my hashtag. Sign you like it. And also if you're on Twitter, go ahead and Tag us at SBIRgov. Okay, let's resume the party. In this next session you'll hear ways entrepreneur support organizations and academic centers have successfully collaborated to address the gap and foster stronger community ties. To lead this discussion is Megan Anstuss. Megan is a Licensing and New Ventures Manager for Kentucky Commercialization Ventures. In this role, Megan is responsible for outreach and education on matters related to commercialization, along with assessing, managing and licensing intellectual intellectual property development at KCV Partner institutions. And with that said, over to you Megan.

Thank you so much Jamila and I'm so thankful to be here today to speak with all of you with a fantastic panel. We are excited to share what you all can do to build bridges and strengthen those connections. So My name is Dr. Megan Enstuss and I use she her pronouns. I am as Damila mentioned at Kentucky Commercialization Ventures, you heard from one of our other colleagues from the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation earlier today, Maria Lapavo and KSTC is a private nonprofit corporation committed to the advancement of science, technology and innovative economic development. Founded on Kentucky's know how and technical advancements, KCV is Kentucky's unprecedented engine for statewide innovation where we fuel economic growth and ignite life changing impact for individuals, business and communities within the academic sector. We provide resources to 22 of the state's public universities, colleges and technical institutions to transform services, products, ideas, processes into startup investments. All supported by intellectual property. And today we're going to have a discussion about some of the ways that ESOs and academic centers have made these collaborations stronger and have given the opportunity for more community engagement and inclusive innovation strategies. Our hope is that through sharing our stories, we leave you with some of the best practices so that you can strengthen your ecosystem wherever you might be. I'm going to start by kicking off an introduction to the rest of the panelists. Lindsay Ryan is the Executive Director of Economic Development for the University System in Maryland where she helps to coordinate 12 public institutions throughout the state to support innovation, entrepreneurship and economic development. This helps to ensure equitable access to all the resources they provide. The second panelist is Christiana Russell. She's a partner and Chief Operating officer at we the Plug, which helps to build strong ecosystem to ensure Pan African and Latino entrepreneurs and startups have the opportunity to leverage every source of resource that gives them the opportunity to advance from ideation, pre seed and Series A funding. She's also the owner of Mended Wing Consulting, an agency that focuses on strategic planning and process management for small business owners and entrepreneurs. And finally, we're so excited to also be joined with Steph Santoso of Maker usa. She helped to build communities with stronger pathways for underserved students into making related careers in entrepreneurship through talent and capacity. Previously, Steph served as the first senior Advisor for Macron at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy where her team worked to develop President Obama's notion of Makers initiative. So with that, if the panel would please chair your comments and we will kick it off and please go ahead and drop any questions you might have in the chat. We'll also be sharing our contact information. We're really excited to get you all going. So let's hear a little bit from you all and tell us how you want to bring this entrepreneur education ecosystem to our audience. So how did you all collaborate with esos and what do you do to help strengthen these partnership opportunities? So, Lindsey, I'm going to kick it off with you.

Excellent.

Yeah, thank you. Well, I have the, the honor and pleasure of working with 12 different universities. They all have their different flavors, preferences, strengths. And so part of my role is to be external facing and within our state and even external to our state. You make sure that our universities understand the partnerships that are available to them. Another, another key thing about our 12 universities in the state of Maryland are that many of them have esos themselves or they're serving entrepreneurs themselves. And in our state, you know, about 50% of the entrepreneurs who we're supporting that are at a company level already about 50% of those, they're not our students, they're not our faculty, they are community members. And we have some great partnerships with other more community facing organizations as well. So that's part of my role, is to be that liaison. It's a really fun role. So I'm happy to be here and I'll keep it at that for now.

Awesome. Thank you, Lindsay. And certainly we want to make sure to emphasize that this is a community system. So even though we're talking about working with academics, it's really all of us coming together. This shouldn't be a divide. There's a bridge that we're building here. So with that, Steph, can you talk a little bit about what you all are doing to help learn that bridge? Yeah.

Thanks Megan. Yeah. So Maker USA's mission is really to partner with the communities that have been most marginalized by unequal access and opportunity and support their goals to leverage making to drive community led innovation and social mobility. So what we're seeing is that communities across the country are really investing in Maker Spaces and Maker Education to support entrepreneurship and really drive innovation and economic mobility. But there's a really acute need for unique human talent and talent and capital that just doesn't exist at scale. And so if you have a makerspace, you might have a higher ed institution that's received funding to start and, and implement a makerspace, but really they, they lack the capacity to sustain the makerspace and keep it, keep it running long term. And that's where Maker USA's model is really helpful. So it's really starts with a community identifying the needs that they have at the intersection of Maker Education and Maker career pathways. And then Maker usa, we then locally recruit and embed full time program managers at partner innovation sites which can be community colleges, technical colleges, rural and minority serving institutions, and community based makerspaces. And then we run a community of practice called the Learning Network where we bring together these innovation sites to be able to share the work that they're doing and collaborate with one another.

That is fantastic. I'm definitely seeing things fly through my head about connections we've got to make. And speaking of making those networking connections, Christiana and I actually met and I'm going to throw this one out here at Black Tech Week which is happening in, in July of 2023. Would love to see you all come there. So Christiana, what do you do to help support the entrepreneurs not just in your community but across the States.

Absolutely. And thank you so much, Megan, for sharing that tidbit. Because one of the things that we often forget about is moving outside of our local ecosystem. I think one of the things that set us apart from some of our other colleagues in this space is that we recognize that building out an ecosystem on a local scale is very important, but it's equally important to reach across the aisles and we just experienced in 2020 and 2021, when we're on lockdown, how valuable it is to have connections throughout our state and then on a national level and then an international level. So for we the plug, we think of ourselves as conduits. And as a conduit, you are moving throughout a system to ensure that you're understanding it at the core, all the resources and services, but you're digging a little bit deeper to understand the mechanisms that allow it to thrive. And then looking at the founders that we're working with and other partners are working with, we recognize that there's some disconnect oftentimes when resources are being shared because we're working with folks in the in smaller and larger communities, being able to understand the nuances that gets them from point A to point B can vary. So for we the plug, we make it our our business or a huge value prop of our business to move outside of our local beautiful city of San Diego, which I'm looking outside right now on the UCSD campus, beautiful campus. Y' all gotta check it out and get out to places like Cincinnati, where I connected with Megan to just learn more about the ecosystem. What's happening in Connecticut, in Kentucky, almost said Connecticut in Kentucky, and then see how we can cross pollinate each other's world as well as helping founders that we are servicing. So again, for us, it's identifying as conduits and then making those connections outside of our local ecosystem.

Fantastic. One of the things we often tell our KCB Fellow program is your network is your network. So one of the things we want to make sure you take away from this session is to connect with us, grow your network, have opportunities to have these conversations. Christiana and I talk on a quarterly basis just because we want to know what's going on in the world. But one of the things that we found is that higher education still seems to be that ivory tower and they still struggle with how to connect within the community. And while it's absolutely critical for higher education to be involved with entrepreneurship, the whole setup around ecosystems that fuels new business innovation and economic growth has been a bit of a challenge for higher education to engage with. So Lindsey, can you start us off? What are some of the examples you've seen of where we've had successful integration with innovation and entrepreneurship within the communities you're part of?

Excellent. Yeah, I'm happy to give a few examples at some university. Well, actually I'd say across the system, culturally there's a great love for this. So we convene all 12 and we are constantly talking about this and what the latest is. So we might be a bit of an outlier in that case. But I definitely acknowledge the struggles of trying to make that work. So I'm going to give a couple examples of how it is. So for example, at University of Maryland College park, which is one of our large universities, our flagship, they have a lot of entrepreneurship and innovation activities and again, some of those are community facing. So they even have some funding that's devoted to economic development. So it's for entrepreneurs that are in that county to really promote that. And that's coming from the state through the university to entrepreneurs. And one of the nice things about University park is they actually organize their resources for startups or innovators at companies large and small into what they call the innovation gateway. And that's just at Innovate umd Eduardo, to give you a flavor of all of the various ways that you can plug into a university and maybe the one you're thinking about doesn't have those ways yet, but you can point to that and say, hey, you know, have you ever thought about doing this? A great line to use also is another university's done it before. They love that. They love it. So if there's anything on there that you know. So that's one example. And you know, I want to emphasize that there's also been some support for ESOS as well. So for example, one of our HBCUs, Coppin State University, they used their expertise and worked with a local makerspace, actually stuff called OpenWorks, really did an economic impact analysis of how OpenWorks is creating impact in community and they were able to leverage that partnership over several years and that information to go support a bill that actually funded some statewide funding for makerspaces throughout the state. So those are a couple of examples. I have probably too many to name, but there's we also have a list, a link can be shared on our website and then on the Maryland Entrepreneur Hub about all the resources we have at the university that are external facing. And so either when you are working with your entrepreneurs, whether you are saying, I'm sorry, you're not a good fit, but maybe you want to point them towards some free or heavily subsidized resources. Those are some of the types of things that we're doing. Again, I can elaborate more, but I'm going to stop there for now and invite my colleagues in.

Awesome. Thank you, Lindsey. I love that nugget of making those connections. Universities do have limited resources. We don't have the option to do everything. But that's where eso connection can really come in. So we can create that pipeline so that nobody ever feels that they don't have support system somewhere, but they always have that next person to go talk to. And speaking of those makerspaces, Steph, I'd love to hear a little bit more both on what you think about how makerspaces can partner to get grants with universities and especially within that community college sector that you mentioned.

Yeah, thanks so much, Megan and Lindsey. We're totally on the same page. It's so interesting that you brought up Coppin State, which is actually one of our pending innovation sites, and OpenWorks is also a pending innovation site for Maker USA. But the just what you had mentioned about kind of, you know, being able to like leverage examples like even if your community or your institution isn't necessarily at a place where they could, you know, they have a fully built out ecosystem, for example, but you, you've seen another community doing something that is maybe aspirational for where you'd like your community to be. Pointing to another example. But also recognizing that like another community has, has created a blueprint is so incredibly valuable because it also means that you don't have to start from scratch, that you can make that connection with a partner in another region of the country or in your state and talk to them about what they did. And so you're really not having to start with a blank canvas, which is incredibly valuable, especially as you're talking to local partners about wanting to do something right. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. And then the, that the policy, the legislation that Lindsey had mentioned is actually, is actually pretty historical. So SB453 is actually a statewide legislation that was recently passed which really Maryland made history. It's the first public funding to create a statewide network of municipally owned public maker spaces. And that's pretty amazing because what that means is that over the next five years, Maryland is going to be developing public maker spaces across the state which are going to really provide access to so many more innovators and entrepreneurs and makers that have ideas and, you know, need space to prototype and iterate on those designs and maybe even do some small batch manufacturing. And we're seeing that community colleges, four year universities, technical colleges and minority serving institutions are really critical to lowering the barriers to entry for students and community members to pursue their entrepreneurial goals. And I just wanted to share one very tangible example briefly. One community college we're working with in rural Martinsville, Virginia is Patrick and Henry Community College. And they have a, it's called the Adult and Idea Center. So it's an innovation and entrepreneurship hub for students, but also the broader community. It's on the Patrick and Henry College campus. And they actually have a, they have a fab lab. It's a digital fab lab that has actually partnered with the Chamber of Commerce. So it's the local Martinsville Chamber of Commerce and an initiative called Startup Martinsville. And so within that makerspace, they're running boot camps for entrepreneurs, early stage entrepreneurs. And they've done this for over five years. It's really led to creating opportunities for the community college to engage with, you know, burgeoning entrepreneurs that maybe might not have set foot onto the campus because of this sort of cross collaboration with other esos.

That is fantastic. I love some of those examples and certainly shout out to Marilyn for leading the way. As Lindsay said, peer pressure can sometimes make a difference. So for the other 49 states, check out the model that is going on there.

Megan, can I. Before we go on, I just want to add a little bit to that, if you don't mind.

I am turning it to you anyway, Christiana.

So I love what you both had shared right there because I think what we really need to push is for this model to spread across all of the US States that are looking to hyper build out their innovation tech hub. And I say it like that because in my travels I'm constantly running into representative political representatives from states that are going out to these conferences. And one of the things they're talking about is funding that's coming into their state or city and the push to maintain talent and to draw new talent. You see it happening in St. Louis, you see it happen in Tulsa, and I could list so many. The point I'm making is this. One of the most effective ways to start retaining your talent is by creating opportunities for the community and the university ecosystem, the community college EcoSystem and the ESOS to form an alliance together. An example of what we're doing here in San Diego is we plugged two years ago. Well, we started three years ago, so we had to get our Legs up under us. But immediately we started reaching out to our universities, our community colleges, our non nonprofits, anyone who were on the perimeter of serving entrepreneurs, and then those that were deep in the throes of it. And the purpose behind that was for us to get the support and the funding in order to better serve community entrepreneurs as well as student alike. And what has come out of that is we're moving into our second year with ucsd. We have EDA grant that my consulting company wrote along with team members at UCSD and successfully won it. And the premise of what this grant is set up to do is draw in the community into this beautiful immaculate innovation center that has a maker lab, has access to investors, but also to provide the university access into the community to make sure that there is this fluidity of resources going back and forth. I just wanted to hop in there and just reference the value of that and how we see it working in our community, not just in Virginia and Maryland. So we want to spread this Gotcha.

And to that point, Christiana, I want to encourage people, reach out beyond your state. So we're not just looking to partner with people in Kentucky or we, the plug is not just looking to partner with people in California and so forth and so on. So reach outside if you don't know that's what we're here for. We'd love to talk with you about how do you do that, how do you expand those opportunities and networks. Another great example currently is the NSF Engine program. If you go to that website, you can see what people are working on and where they're looking for partners. So take a moment and find your partners, find your community and develop it out across the entirety of the United States. I want to pivot a little bit from that because when we talk about building out those ecosystems, we also want to make sure we're focusing on creating inclusive innovation ecosystems. Inclusion is a term that has a lot of meaning. It has a lot of loaded baggage that goes along with it. I'm going to turn to Christiana first because one of the things you all are focusing on we the plugin is addressing people who have been underserved, under engaged and under resourced. So what are some of the ways that you all can work with community leaders to welcome and engage these types of founders?

Yes, and Megan, I appreciate this question because I think one of the things that we have to constantly remind ourselves is that we're not the expert. I think if we go into any situation recognizing that we have much to learn and we're the student, then I think we're going to grow and reach much more than the latter. But I would say for us, for we, the plug. One of the things that we have begun doing is, and actually it was kind of like out of a demand need is capacity building, training. And we do it in several ways. There are outreach, recruitment and retention trainings that we will do because oftentimes we have various groups coming to us saying we don't know how to do outreach, where do we go and how do we do it? And then those that already have programming that's servicing inclusive communities but are struggling to retain them, and then the other groups that are struggling to sustain it, sustain programming through funding. And so they're trying to figure out, well, how do we rightly and do it in an equitable way. Because I really, I know we didn't talk about this, this was one of the questions. But one of the things that's just really passionate for me, especially as a federal grant writer, is that there's tons of funding that's coming down the pipeline right now targeting underserved communities, underestimated communities. And oftentimes there are larger corporations that have all the bells and whistles that seem to get that funding. And then very little is going back into the community. And I have my quorums about that, but I'm working with some amazing people in that department to help address that. But one of the things is understanding what true partnership is. And this is something that we talk about with those that we're working with. What does true partnership look like? Well, let's be in slow to speak and quick to hear. It's being patient, it's being flexible, it's building trust, it's being consistent. All of these things are parts of ingredients that go into having successful interaction and outcomes. When you're working with underrepresented groups. And I think that when you understand that in order to effectively work with community, you have to be willing to sometimes play the sidelines, you know, you can't take the front and center. You have to recognize that there are groups and other leaders in the community that you're targeting to provide support services to that know the community better. And going in, being willing to learn and incorporate some of the their recommendations into programming that you have to offer, I think is really, really valuable. And I think the other thing that is important is recognizing that this is not about checking a box. And if you're intent behind the work that you're doing is one to help flourish. I mean, because we all know if we're able to bring in dollars in the community and help to build up these entrepreneurs, startups, small businesses, the community will win. You'll draw in, you'll, you'll not only retain your talent, but you'll be able to draw in more commerce from outside areas and hopefully be able to educate other groups on it. So I would say those are the key factors. You want to be slow to speak quick here, understand trust is valuable, be patient, be flexible, and consistency is key. And really recognizing what your intentions are and understanding what true partnership looks like is a long game. It's a long game.

Absolutely. And intentionality is so important when we do this. It's not like Christiana said to check a box, it's to do it because we want to make a difference. And Lindsey, I'm going to ask, you mentioned that you all serve 12 systems within Maryland. I assume that includes Eastern Shore, which is an hbcu. How are you all making sure to bring that intentionality to the way that you're serving communities that maybe don't have the same kind of resources as the main campus you mentioned earlier? Yeah, yeah.

And we definitely, yeah, we have three HBCUs in our system, which is awesome. And a diversity in terms of geography, which is huge here as well in the States. So rural versus urban. But yeah, we've had a lot of conversations. So our sort of university system wide group of ESOs that get together and speak, we have an ongoing dialogue about diversity, equity, inclusion to make sure that we're holding to what our universities universally want to support in terms of mission and are in varying degrees. We've also talked about leveraging resources that exist on our campuses that are outside of our sphere. So many of us have been in the innovation realm. We are not DEI experts and we know that. So we can do what we can do to speak together, to support each other, to keep educating each other. But we also have folks on campuses that have been doing decades of community engagement work that have actual diversity, equity, inclusion expertise. So encouraging our communities of folks working in innovation, entrepreneurship to leverage that. And that's how we get, that's how we get programs and initiatives that actually succeed in again, what our universities fundamentally want to do, especially as public institutions, is serve the public good. And that's the whole public.

Awesome. Well, and I'm going to close this out in the last minute here and first off, I'm going to drop my piece of action item that everyone can take away, which is rolling off of what Lindsey just said, build out your network. You don't have to be an expert in everything. You just have to know the person who is. So that's one thing you can do today is expand your network. So thank you so much to the rest of you on this panel for taking your time. I'm going to call on each of you to please share one action item or takeaway our audience can do to start making a change now. Christiana, 10 seconds.

Slow to speak, quick to hear.

Step.

In the tradition of building out your network, find an individual from one organization in your community you've been meaning to connect with but haven't, and invite them to grab coffee.

Lindsay, start small with something. If it doesn't work, try a different person or a different university. Keep trying.

Thank you so much, everyone. Again, we have dropped our contact information in the chat. We expect to see our LinkedIn exploding when we are done with this. Turning it back over to Jametta. And thank you again to the SBA for this opportunity.

Thank you, Megan, Lindsey, Christiana and Steph. Let's give them a round of emoji applause.

We appreciate you.

If you just joined. Welcome to our second annual SBA Innovation Ecosystem Summit. You could be anywhere in the world virtually, but you choose to be right here with us. So thank you so much for investing your time with us today. We're going to take a brief break and when we come back, we'll hear about an emerging model for enhancing economic development. See you soon.