H.B Jones Grant – Third Year and Growing

The Herbert B. Jones grant began its third year with 36 students completing the shadowing phase of the program. This represents more than a 100-percent increase in student participation from the second year. We anticipate that most of the students will proceed with the mentoring phase of the program and eventually the internship phase. We are still seeking alumni support in any or all of the three grant phases. Interested alumni are encouraged to contact JoAnn Nielsen at 509.777.3242 or joannnielsen@whitworth.edu.

The Entrepreneur Speaker Series portion of the Jones grant began in October with guest speaker Mike Davis. Davis is the chief technical officer of ReliOn; he spoke on the challenges for an entrepreneur with a spin-off company. The second speaker was Michael Dickman, CEO of Trigeo, who spoke on dealing with venture capitalists and offered an update on the company's progress since her last speech last year. The series concluded with James Gambill, financial analyst with the Boeing 7E7 program, speaking on the advanced technology being incorporated into the aircraft and the new financing and global partnership arrangements in place to produce this plane.

This year Whitworth University is collaborating with Eastern Washington University and Gonzaga University in the 5th annual Hogan Business Plan Competition. To kick off the program, the grant sponsored a "Spaghetti Throwers Event" hosted by Bill Kalivas, CEO of INTEC. (There was no actual pasta-tossing.) The event commenced with a panel of four entrepreneurs briefly outlining their entrepreneurial endeavors; each stressed the importance of entrepreneurship to the Spokane community. After the panel discussion, everyone was encouraged to "throw" out ideas for new entrepreneurship endeavors. Several excellent ideas surfaced, and we are now aggressively pursuing the formation of business plans to enter into the competition.

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