The advisory group is comprised of individuals with significant expertise in innovative entrepreneurship and aging research and practice. The group’s functions are primarily two-fold:
- to help define and refine the entrepreneurship questions that will be developed for the experimental module on entrepreneurship that will be submitted to HRS; and
- to catalyze and help shape the discussion on the big issues that the program should focus on with respect to how entrepreneurship is changing work and retirement in aging cohorts such as Baby Boomers.
The advisory group is:
Elizabeth Isele
Recognized globally as a pioneering senior and intergenerational entrepreneurship expert, Elizabeth is leading a movement to transform the culture of aging and retirement. Her passion to ignite an Experienced Economy™ by unleashing the potential of 50+ year-olds to drive economic markets and generate social and environmental impact is grounded in data and metrics.
Elizabeth is part of the experienced economy. As a septugenarian, she founded The Global Institute for Experienced Entrepreneurship, a comprehensive, cross-sector (business, government, education and research) ecosystem to catalyze and support cross-generational experience and entrepreneurship. Elizabeth has been a trusted advisor for the Obama White House, and continues to be for Congress, the European Union (EU),the US State Department, Vint Cerf and David Nordfors’ i4J (Innovation for Jobs), the Clinton Global Initiative, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD), and the W-20, G-7 and G-20 world forums, as well as many other governments,universities, private sector corporations and NGOs worldwide.
Fred Keller
Fred Keller is the Founder and Chair of Cascade Engineering which he started in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1973. With a belief that you can have a successful business and still treat employees with dignity and respect. Fred began molding plastic parts with six employees in a 10,000 square foot building. Today, Cascade Engineering employs 1600 people across 15 facilities in six US locations and additional European operations in Budapest, Hungary.
Cascade Engineering has 9 business units spanning a wide diversity of markets including transportation, recycling/waste management, office furniture, agricultural/industrial containers, polymer compounding, and RFID asset management. Primarily focused on designing, engineering and injection molding of large plastic parts, Cascade Engineering is widely recognized for its business achievements and community involvement, and is one of the largest Certified B Corps in the world.
Fred believes that business has the unique opportunity to complement its efforts on financial performance with important work in the social and environmental arenas. He has emphasized the key role business can play in building financial, social and ecological capital, often through partnerships with government and community agencies. His innovative management approach and work in advancing sustainability are featured regularly in business and industry publications.
Fred has been a visiting lecturer at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University since 2002 teaching a course most recently entitled “Changing the Game: Purpose and Profit”. He is also an Executive-in-Residence at the Center for Positive Organizations at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He was formerly the board chair of the U.S. Department of Commerce Manufacturing Council and served on the Board of Trustees including chair of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation for 14 years. Fred is also a trustee of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation.
Fred has served on the boards of the Meijer Corporation and Fifth Third Bank, West Michigan. He has been part of many community organizations and change initiatives and currently is a co-founder and chair of Talent 2025, a catalyst for the development of an integrated talent system to meet employer needs throughout 13 West Michigan counties and co-chair of K-Connect, a Kent County collective impact systems change collaborative. A Grand Rapids, Michigan native, Fred earned his B.S. in materials science and engineering from Cornell University and an M.S. in business management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Fred is an accomplished public speaker frequently asked to talk about the Triple Bottom Line culture he has inspired at Cascade Engineering, including their “Welfare to Career” and “Returning Citizens” programs. These programs have provided career opportunities for hundreds of employees formerly on welfare, or who have been involved in the criminal justice system. His TEDx talk “Why Business, Why Now”, has been a common theme in many of his public speaking engagements. Fred believes that business leaders and the power of business are key to solving the world’s toughest problems.
https://purposeandprofit.wordpress.com/
http://www.cascadeng.com/fred-keller
Audrey Light
Audrey Light is a Professor of Economics at Ohio State University, where she has been employed since 1993. Prior to joining Ohio State, Light taught at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and held a visiting appointment at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Her research interests lie in labor economics, education, and demography. Recent work focuses on distinctions between business ownership and self-employment; interactions between “grit” and cognitive skill; labor market rewards to STEM training; household wealth accumulation; employer learning; determinants of long-term cohabiting and marital unions; effects of risk aversion on divorce; and time to college completion.
Light was a member of the National Longitudinal Surveys contract team from 1993 through 2015, and served as Principal Investigator of the NLSY79 from 2005 to 2015. Her research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Kauffman Foundation, Spencer Foundation, American Educational Research Association, and Bureau of Labor Statistics. She is a recipient of the H. Gregg Lewis Prize awarded by the Society of Labor Economists.
Greg O'Neill
Dr. Greg O’Neill is a demographer and director of the National Academy on an Aging Society, the public policy institute of The Gerontological Society of America (GSA). The Academy conducts, synthesizes, and disseminates research on population aging issues to policymakers and the public. Greg also serves as associate editor for its flagship policy publication, Public Policy & Aging Report.
Greg founded Aging Means Business, GSA’s conference series highlighting breakthrough ideas, innovations, and strategies for the 50+ market and entrepreneurship by the 50+ demographic. He tweets regularly to over 20,000 followers on issues that concern this highly entrepreneurial group. This year, his efforts will be featured in a one-day Aging and Technology summit at the 2017 World Congress on Aging, to be held in July in San Francisco. He invites you all to attend!
Follow Greg on Twitter @Aging_Society and @AgingMeansBiz.
Rich Sheridan
Menlo Innovations CEO Rich Sheridan had an all consuming thought during a difficult mid-career in the chaotic technology industry …things can be better. Much better. He had to find a way. His search led him to books, authors and history,including recalling childhood visits to Greenfield Village every summer. The excitement of the Edison MenloPark New Jersey Lab served as his siren call to create a workplace filled with camaraderie, human energy,creativity and productivity.
Ultimately, Rich and his co-founder James Goebel invented their own company in 2001 to “end human suffering in the world as it relate to technology” by returning joy to one of the most unique endeavors mankind has ever undertaken: the invention of software.
Their unique approach to custom software design, they named it High-tech Anthropology® has produced custom software that delights users rather than frustrating them. The programming team creates the software that works every day without the emergencies that are all too common in the tech industry. The process itself is so interesting that almost 4,000 people a year travel from around the world just to see how they do it. Many spend a week or more studying “The Menlo Way” being taught by the Menlonians who love to share their experience and knowledge.
In 2013, Rich and his publisher Penguin Random House took a chance that a business book with the words joy and love on the cover might have impact. They had no idea how the world yearned for such a message. His best selling book, Joy, Inc. – How We Built a Workplace People Love now has Rich traveling the world speaking about joy, creativity, and human energy in the workplace.
Levi Thompson
Professor Thompson earned his B.ChE. from the University of Delaware, and M.S.E. degrees in Chemical Engineering and Nuclear Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan. He served as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the College of Engineering from 2001 to 2005, and is currently Director of the Hydrogen Energy Technology Laboratory and Director of the Michigan-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation.
He has published more than 150 journal articles and several book chapters, is co-inventor on 12 patents, and given more than 100 invited presentations. Professor Thompson is recipient of awards including a 2006 Michiganian of the Year Award for his research, entrepreneurship, and teaching, National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, McBride Distinguished Lectureship, Union Carbide Innovation Recognition Award, Dow Chemical Good Teaching Award and Engineering Society of Detroit Gold Award. He is also co-founder of T/J Technologies, a developer of nanomaterials for advanced batteries; Dr.Thompson served as founding CEO and Board Chair until the company was acquired by A123Systems in 2006. He recently founded Inmatech to commercialize low cost, high energy density super capacitors. Professor Thompson was Consulting Editor for the AIChE Journal and member of the National Academy’s Chemical Sciences Roundtable, and presently serves on the DoE Hydrogen Technology Advisory Committee, and American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Board of Directors. He is active in the community, serving on the Board of Trustees for the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation.
Stewart Thornhill
Stewart Thornhill, Executive Director of the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, serves as the Eugene Applebaum Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies and the Managing Director of the Zell Lurie Commercialization Fund. He joins Ross from Ivey Business School at Western University in London, Ontario, where he served as the executive director of the Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship and a member of the faculty, focused on strategy and entrepreneurship.
At Ivey, he championed a number of new initiatives and has sizable experience helping entrepreneurs through his involvement in QuantumShift, an Executive Development program for high-growth entrepreneurs. Thornhill’s extensive background also includes global experience, having held the Karel Steur chair in entrepreneurship at the Universidad de San Andreas, Buenos Aires and various professorial roles at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany, the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris in France and the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. Dr. Thornhill’s research interests include strategic execution, leadership, competitive strategy, innovation and corporate entrepreneurship. His work has appeared in several top management journals and he has published more than 20 teaching cases. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Business Venturing, the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, the International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, and the Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research. He received his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia and also holds a B.Sc. (Eng.) in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA with a concentration in Finance. Prior to pursuing a career in academia, he worked as a manufacturing engineering and a radio journalist.
The Boomers, Entrepreneurship, and Retirement 2030 research program has received funding from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The program has also received institutional funding from the University of Michigan Office of Research.
