Back in October 2021, I had the opportunity to attend the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers (GCEC) Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

If you don’t know GCEC, the majority of collegiate entrepreneurship centers are a part of it and it can be a great resource to learn from others that are in the space. It’s honestly one of the few places I don’t have to really explain what I do as a lot of people have the same title that I do in my full time job as the Director of Student Programming at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale.

At the GCEC conference, I attended a bunch of interesting workshops, and one of them was from Deb Williams and Sarah Goforth of the University of Arkansas. Before their workshop, I hadn’t known anything about Arkansas. The only thing I ever really knew is that it might be a good hiking spot?

Thankfully, Deb and Sarah taught me a bunch about what is happening entrepreneurially in Arkansas, and there’s a lot happening - more than I expected honestly, but we’ll get into some of that later on.

What I do want to highlight before jumping into my conversation with Deb, is that one of the programs that Deb manages, is the Venture Intern Program. This program connects students to local startups so students at the University of Arkansas can be paid interns at local startups.

It’s an amazing program that not only creates more entrepreneurs but also helps develop talent to join startups which isn’t something that is always talked about. Early startup employees are really important to an entrepreneurial ecosystem and not every person is meant to be an entrepreneur. That’s why this program stood out to me and Deb’s execution of the program is brilliant.

So with that, I’d like to introduce you to Deb Williams, the Director of Student Programs in the Office of Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the University of Arkansas.