Who Are These Guys?
Dave Croasdell
Dr. David T. Croasdell is the inaugural Charles and Ruth Hopping Professor of Entrepreneurship, and an Associate Professor of Information Systems at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is the founding director of the Sontag Entrepreneurship competition, former co-chair of the Nevada Governor’s cup entrepreneurship competition and former Academic Director for the Mandela Washington Fellows Initiative for Young African Leaders.
Dr. Croasdell and his colleagues at the University of Nevada, Reno work hard to foster relationships with the broader community. Dave is founding member of Entrepreneurship Nevada – a local portal for developing business networks and identifying entrepreneurial resources. He also sits on the board of Entrepreneurs Assembly working to support local startups and help develop business strategies. He is a founding mentor of Summit VMS – a local service that matches high value mentors to local ventures in a team mentoring approach to developing those organizations.
Dave has mentored numerous students and teams since first becoming involved in entrepreneurship. He has also pursued several of his own startup ventures. He served on the organizing committee for TedX-University of Nevada since its inception in 2012. As director of Global Initiatives at Business Assembly, Dr. Croasdell promoted building entrepreneurial ecosystems built upon what Thomas Friedman has called a “Flat World”. Simply put, technology has shrunk the world. As such, our ability to understand and work with different cultures and economies is more critical now than ever before as citizens in this global community. Entrepreneurs looking to develop and grow business across international boundaries must have the skills and knowledge to think an act globally if they are to be successful.
Dave teaches courses on Digital Transformation, Leadership in Business Analytics, Global Technology Management, Project Management, and Survey of Information Systems at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Dr. Croasdell’s research focuses on distributed knowledge systems, knowledge equity, and cyber security awareness. Prior to academia, Dr. Croasdell worked as a technical staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Alex Wolfe
Alex has broad experience not only in starting multiple businesses in the state of Nevada, but also in Nevada small business mentorship, and additionally in areas pertaining to international expansion and operations. Alex has coached and mentored businesses ranging from ideation phase pre-formation small businesses, to startups, failed startups, fast growth startups, including national and international multi-billion dollar entities.
Alex has further led and engineered international operational systems to allow for global transit of psychometric and generally Personally Identifiable data, across the boundaries of EU and US, relating to the intersection of GDPR, CCPA, BIPA, VCDP; navigating issues across US Dept of Commerce Safe Harbor framework, and otherwise facilitating the techno-operational aspects of international business concerns.
Additionally, Alex has engaged in coaching and mentoring cohorts of companies from Poland through Poland-Nevada Accelerator, as well as the Warsaw School of Economics and the broader referred ecosystem. Mr Wolfe has founded four Nevada based businesses and is intimately familiar with the facets and resources involved in not only the formation of an entity, but also the support structures in the community.
Matt Westfield
Matt started his first entrepreneurial endeavor at age 10, starting a TV Guide route, garnering 150 customers in the first year of operations. At 21 he founded the New Year Ultimate Fest, a Frisbee tournament in Tempe, AZ. The directors donate tourney proceeds to aid abused/neglected children every year.
His next successful venture was a design/build firm, started after dropping out of college at age 21 because he thought he knew everything. At 30, realizing that he did not know anything, he sold the successful company and went back to school, earning undergrads in computer science and international business, then pursued a Masters in marketing from City University in Seattle WA.
In 1994 Matt accepted the COO position for Dine-Rite software, an early internet restaurant play. Then in 1997, as a Microsoft Business Partner, he helped build the world’s first desktop anti-fraud software, developing the markets, channel strategies, & strategic alliances with the FBI, CIA, DOJ, DOD, State Farm Insurance.
He moved to Reno in 1999 to help launch an investor relations dotcom. In 2004 he acquired the US rights to a European design collection of executive gifts. The in 2005 he and a partner invented the first custom paperclip brand, which remains the leader in the space — www.LOGOpaperCLIPs.com.
Matt’s on 3 boards, founded and leads the vision for the Entrepreneurs Assembly (an entrepreneurial 501c3 non-profit he founded in 2009 — (www.EA-NV.org). He helped develop and instructs the Entrepreneurial Minor @ the University of Nevada, Reno, while creating business strategies, business plan mentoring and advising the UNR Entrepreneurs Club. He’s been a business plan writer since 1992, and a business plan judge since 2003.
Matt has tirelessly given back to charity and the community, recently being awarded the distinction as one of the Top 10 Community leaders for Reno-Tahoe, the 2014 Governor’s Cup Mentor of the Year, and the 2014 SBA Entrepreneurial Spirit Award for his work with the EA.
