The Entrepreneurship Center is staffed with passionate innovators and entrepreneurs who support students, faculty, staff, alumni, partners, sponsors, and other participants in the Trinity Innovation ecosystem.
Danny Briere, Executive Director
The inaugural director of the center is Danny Briere, who brings to this role more than four decades of experience as an inventor and entrepreneur. He has started multiple successful firms—including TeleChoice, which focuses on leading-edge, high-impact technologies—and he has served as a consultant to more than 200 start-ups. Briere has a B.A. and an M.B.A. from Duke University, where he majored in public policy and economics. He served on the board of Duke University’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship initiative for a decade. His experiences span multiple industries, including telecom, internet technology, aerospace, alternative energy, health and medical, social networking, education tech, and youth-oriented non-profits. He holds 16 patents with several more pending.
At the policy level, Briere has supported innovation ecosystems in partnership with universities, companies, and government, including in Connecticut. He was the CEO and co-founder of Startup Connecticut, a statewide initiative to help start-ups drive job creation, which ultimately morphed into CTNext. Briere has successfully worked to promote innovation among young people, including as a longstanding board member of Connecticut’s Invention Convention and as chief entrepreneurship officer at The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation. He also is the co-author of more than 15 books and more than 1,000 articles in telecommunications, computer networking, and other topics.
Dr. Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre, Faculty Lead
Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre is an award-winning historian. She is the author of Imperial Wine: How the British Empire Made Wine’s New World, which won the André Simon Award, and two other books. She was named one of the “Future 50 Under 40” of the global wine industry by the WSET and ISWC in 2019. She teaches the popular The World History of Modern Wine for EdX.org. A fellow of the Royal Historical Society, she holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in history from Queen’s University Belfast, a B.S. in foreign service from Georgetown University, and a Level 3 Award in Wine from the WSET. She has taught at the University of Cambridge, the University of Exeter, and the American University of Paris. An American raised in London, she lives in Connecticut, USA and is a professor of history and chair of the Department of History at Trinity College.
Dr. Ewa Syta, Faculty Lead (on leave)
Dr. Ewa Syta, an associate professor of computer science, received her Ph.D. in computer science from Yale University. Prior to joining Yale, she earned her B.S. and M.S. in computer science and cryptology from Military University of Technology in Warsaw, Poland. Her research interests lie in computer security and distributed systems. The long-term objective of her research is to bring cutting-edge cryptographic techniques to real-world applications to shape tomorrow’s digital world. She has been working on effective identity management methods, stronger anonymous communication technologies, practical privacy-preserving authentication protocols, unbiasable distributed randomness protocols, ways to keep Internet authorities honest and accountable, and most recently, on blockchain technologies, and provable security for real-world protocols. Her current research work is funded by the NSF Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) Medium Collaborative Award: “Applied Cryptographic Protocols with Provably Secure Foundation”.
Maria Dyane, Associate Director of Strategy and Student Development
Maria Dyane coaches and advises students on various aspects of their college journey and beyond, including life design, career development, immigration, and navigating the overall student experience. She collaborates with colleagues across the Career & Life Design Center and with campus partners to develop structures and initiatives that uphold the vision of empowering both international and domestic students and graduates. Her work aims to help students become active agents in designing their Trinity College experiences and careers, both at Trinity and beyond, while utilizing their liberal arts education to adapt to and transform the future of work globally and live and lead as global citizens.
A proud first-generation international alumna of Trinity College, Maria was deeply involved on campus during her time as a student. After graduation, she chose to return to her alma mater, where she took on various roles within the Bantam Network. Before her recent return to higher education, Maria worked in the hospitality industry as a director of marketing and communication and in the consulting industry as a strategy and management consultant. During this time, she had the opportunity to work with clients from across the globe.
Maria is excited to continue her work with students, helping them navigate their journey to, during, and after their time at Trinity.
Olivia Corso, Associate Director of Operations & Marketing
Olivia Corso serves in a holistic, multi-functional role within the Career & Life Design Center, where she manages all operational logistics and overall marketing strategy, in addition to the creative development of the Center’s brand. She leads the team of Career & Life Design Interns and collaborates with colleagues to gather and assess student and alumni engagement data, implement best practices regarding systems, and communicate Career & Life Design services and programming through the Center’s new website.
Olivia’s career spans roles in both academic and corporate spheres, as well as entrepreneurship. Her greatest impacts are often centered around her passion for mentoring and her dedication to continuous improvement. She is deeply committed to meaningful work in higher education and is grateful to be part of the industrious team at Trinity College.
Education: Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Master of Science in Organizational Leadership (both from Western New England University)
Reid Lewis, Entrepreneur in Residence
Reid helps students develop their innovations and turn them into startup companies following the Lean Startup Method first introduced at Stanford University and now taught nation-wide by the National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps. His real-world experience as an entrepreneur provides invaluable context to Trinity College students who are just starting their journeys and helps the students expand their innovative and entrepreneurial mindset, career experience, and professional networks.
Reid has founded, led, and sold several technology companies including Group Logic and Proxidyne and advised many more allowing him to advise from a position of experience.
Reid earned a B.S. in computer science with a second major in economics and a concentration in mathematics in 1984 from Duke University.
Rick Cleary, Entrepreneur in Residence
Rick Cleary ’85 is an entrepreneur with 30 years’ experience in high growth, turnaround and start-up companies in the US and SEA. He co-founded specialty finance company CYS which he IPO’d on the NYSE, and served as COO. Before CYS, he started Iron Mountain’s (NYSE:IRM) digital archive business, and ran Thomson Reuters’ First Call operations in SEA. After graduating from Trinity, Rick was at Xerox and DLJ.
Rick has a B.A. from Trinity and an M.B.A. from Cornell in Entrepreneurial Finance, where he was an adjunct professor. He served on Trinity’s Board of Fellows, as a trustee of the University of Virginia Architecture School, and the Concord Conservatory of Music.
Richard Guha, Entrepreneur in Residence
Richard is a leading expert on corporate and startup innovation, having worked with almost 2,000 over the past 27 years, involved in raising over $250 million, made over 25 acquisitions, and with a total 50 years in business, largely leading F500 & startup cos. I double, or more, the market value and EBITDA of market-driven global or domestic businesses of all sizes. Long time expert on CPG (food, beverage, and personal products), software, bio-tech, Health-care & Pharma, fintech, insuretech, telecommunications & cable, energy, and other businesses. I have done this repeatedly as a CEO, CMO, advisor, Board member, investor (corporate and individual), and mentor. Top Marketer in expertise and achievement. Have lived in 10 countries on 4 continents.
Examples.
➢ Millennia III software, as co-founder and Board member, from zero to $54 Million (sold to EMC) in five years.
➢ Introduction and naming of first “broadband” service for US West – http://youtu.be/eiCQtSArNwY – resulting in growth in value of the business from $10.8 Billion to $62 Billion in 18 months.
➢ Built largest non-regulated energy business in the country as President of Reliant Energy, quadrupling market value.
➢ Grew value of Remedy Corporation software from $400 to $1.4 Billion in 2 years.
➢ As Board member of Retail Next, grew to Unicorn valuation in ten years.
➢ Examples of businesses grown: Wise Window (sold to KPMG); Synerscope, B.V.; Northwind Energy, and more.
Ken Kousen, Entrepreneur in Residence
Ken Kousen is the President of Kousen IT, Inc., a company specializing in technical training, consulting, development, and mentoring in Java and open source technologies. For over 20 years, he has helped clients build robust and scalable applications using Java, Groovy, Gradle, Spring, and Hibernate/JPA.
Ken is a Java Champion, a multiple-time Java Rock Star, and a Grails Rock Star, recognized for his expertise and contributions to the Java community. He has authored several books and video courses on Java, Groovy, Kotlin, Gradle, and Android, and is a regular speaker and keynote presenter at conferences around the world, including the No Fluff, Just Stuff tour. His mission is to make Java and open source technologies more accessible, enjoyable, and productive for developers of all levels and backgrounds.
