Sam Seltzer has been committed to personal enterprise throughout his life. In 1960, he founded Allison Corporation, a company that manufactures and sells a wide variety of automobile accessories with facilities in East Asia, Europe, and the United States. Allison was one of the first American companies to do business in Mainland China.
By the early 1980s, Sam came to recognize the need for undergraduate education in business skills, specifically for those young people wishing to join family enterprises or for those willing to make the commitment and to take the risks to start their own businesses. Thus, he became the founding chairman of Cornell PEP (Personal Enterprise Program); a program which began with one course in Business Planning, quickly grew to over 35 courses, mostly at the undergraduate level, and eventually merged into Entrepreneurship@Cornell (Entrepreneurship@Cornell).
In 1954, Seltzer started one of the first manufacturing operations to be set up under the Puerto Rican government's Operation Boot Strap. He was founder and an officer of the Commonwealth Manufacturers Association of Puerto Rico and the Plastic Manufacturers Association of Puerto Rico. The U.S. and Puerto Rican governments appointed him to serve on their respective committees to determine minimum wages for the island. From 1975-92, Sam Seltzer was also an officer and trustee of the Pension Fund of the United Furniture and Bedding Workers Union.
Sam Seltzer is a graduate of Cornell University.
Jerry Goldman is a senior tax partner at Ernst & Young. Goldman began his career in audit at Arthur Young before swtiching to the tax field. Arthur Young merged with Ernst and Whinney in 1989 to become Ernst & Young.
Jerry Goldman received his underegraduate degree from Cornell University and his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
<p>Emmy Award-winning musician Peter Buffett has an acclaimed career that spans more than 28 years as a professional musician, composer, philanthropist and author. He began his career as the musical mind behind many of the early MTV bumpers of the '80s, and the climactic crescendo in the memorable "Fire Dance" scene in 1990's Oscar winning film Dances with Wolves. </p> <p>From 1987 to present, Buffett has released 15 records, and has been signed to such labels as Narada, Epic and Hollywood Records. He now owns two independent labels, BisonHead and BeSide Records.</p> <p>Buffett's latest venture is his inspiring new book, Life Is What You Make It. Personal and revealing, instructive and intuitive, Life Is What You Make It is about following passions over conventions, transcending your circumstances or status, taking up the reins of your destiny, and living life to its fullest. </p>
<p>As an Image and Body Language Specialist, Sara Canuso, President of A Suitable Solution, empowers individuals to use non-verbal communication, image, and body language as tools to communicate effectively with others and to understand not only what others say, but to discover the unspoken messages and feelings behind their words and actions. Her insightful keynote presentations, business seminars and one-on-one coaching on the Impact of Image deliver new ideas and practical tools in the areas of creating powerful first impressions, developing a positive self image, dressing for success, and inspiring confidence. </p> <p>Canuso is the creator of Campus to Corporate, a program held in area colleges to help students prepare to enter the workplace. She is a certified seminar leader and known for her informative and popular column in Philadelphia Maven and her Winning Look articles in the Legal Intelligencer and the Burlington County Straight Word. </p> <p>Sara Canuso attended Temple University.</p>
Jay Walker is one of America's best-known inventors and entrepreneurs and is one of a dozen or so living inventors worldwide to hold 200 patents in multiple fields.
Walker, and a team at Walker Digital, LLC, his invention laboratory, created the central ideas behind priceline.com, the groundbreaking "name-your-own-price" company for airline tickets and hotel rooms.
Walker has also created a number of other successful businesses, including New Sub Services (now named Synapse) a company he co-founded and that revolutionized the magazine subscription industry and was recently sold to AOL Time Warner for $600 million. Walker also co-founded Target Communications, a conference and publishing company which was sold to Primedia in 2000.
Mr. Walker is currently chairman of Walker Digital, LLC, a Stamford, Conn.-based laboratory that invents entirely new ways for businesses to operate and serve consumers. Walker Digital is not a consultancy, but a privately funded active research laboratory that use long-term interdisciplinary invention teams to create solutions in the same manner and style as the original Edison laboratory. Successful inventions are licensed to industry or used as the core intellectual property of innovative startups for which the laboratory provides both personnel and funding. To date, Walker Digital has invented over 600 proprietary business methods addressing dozens of significant business problems in a wide range of industries such as travel, data security, retail, automotive, restaurants, groceries, financial services, gaming and entertainment.
Walker's inventions and innovations have been widely recognized. He has twice been recognized by the editors of TIME magazine as one of the 50 most influential business leaders in the digital age. Business Week selected Jay as one of its 25 Internet pioneers most responsible for "changing the competitive landscape of almost every industry in the world." Newsweek named him as one of three executives at the forefront of the Internet commerce revolution.
Walker and his wife have two children and live in Connecticut. He holds a B.S. degree in Industrial Relations from Cornell University.
Robert Waldman is Managing Director & Head of Corporate Bond Research at Citigroup. He has worked at Citigroup for the past 20 years. Prior to that role, he worked at Standard & Poor's. He also worked in criminal law while serving in the Marine Corps.
Robert Waldman is a graduate of CUNY City College of New York. He also holds a law degree.
M. Christine DeVita is President of The Wallace Foundation, a private charitable foundation created by Lila and DeWitt Wallace, the founders of Reader's Digest, as a legacy of their own philanthropic lives.
DeVita joined the foundation in November 1987. Since then, she has led the foundation as it has shifted away from project-focused grantmaking and toward more integrated strategies that combine program, evaluation and communications expertise to deliver social benefits beyond the recipients of the foundation's direct grants.
DeVita earned her B.A. magna cum laude from Queens College of the City University of New York and her J.D. cum laude from Fordham University School of Law.
A. Dana Callow, Jr. is the Managing General Partner of Millennia. Prior to founding Millennia, Dana co-founded Boston Capital Ventures in 1982. Before that, he worked as a Senior Consultant at Braxton Associates (Deloitte Touche), an international strategic planning firm that was formed by professionals from Boston Consulting Group and Bain & Company, where he worked with Fortune 100 companies in strategic planning and implementing merger and acquisition strategies. Prior to working in the management consulting business, Dana worked in sales and marketing and also was an Application Engineer for Tymshare (acquired by McDonnell-Douglas). Dana is a Director of Jobs for Massachusetts, a Massachusetts based non-profit organization comprised of business and political leaders including the Governor and Congressional leaders. He is a member of the Board of Trustees at Tufts University, on the Board of Overseers at Tufts University Medical School, and is on the Board of Advisors at the Foster Center for Private Equity, part of the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
Dana Callow is a magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University and holds an MBA from the Amos Tuck School.
Janice Bourque is Senior Vice President and Group Head-Life Sciences for Comerica Bank. Formerly, Ms. Bourque was President/CEO of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council (MBC) where she led the organization for 12 years. Under her leadership, the MBC membership grew from 80 to over 400 organizations with revenue increasing from $500,000 to over $4.1 million. Ms. Bourque created multiple services, policy initiatives and the Education Foundation (MassBioEd) that focused on science education, workforce training and public awareness. Under Ms. Bourque's tenure, the MassBiotech 2010 was released which provided a blueprint for Massachusetts to remain at the forefront of the biotechnology revolution.
Ms. Bourque has held several previous senior managerial positions, including CFO of Cambridge Medical Technology Corporation, senior public accountant for Coopers & Lybrand Emerging and Middle Market Group, and as a NASA Space Science grant project manager for the first satellite payloads to be repaired by the space shuttle missions.
Ms. Bourque was a member of Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's Transition Team. She is currently a Board of Director of the Boston History Collaborative and Chair of the Board of the Women Entrepreneurs in Science & Technology (WEST). In 2004, she was awarded the Woman of Valor Award by the American Diabetes Association and the 2004 Distinguished Leadership Award by the Huntington Disease Society for her work in public policy and public health. In 2003, Boston Magazine named her one of Boston's 100 most influential women and the Cambridge Chamber Commerce awarded her Business Person of the Year. Ms. Bourque received her MBA degree in finance and accounting and her BS degree in veterinary science from the University of New Hampshire.