Keynote Speakers and Workshop Facilitators

Basil G. Englis is the Richard Edgerton Professor of Marketing and Chair of the Management, Marketing and Creative Technologies Department in the Campbell School of Business at Berry College.  He is also a Research Fellow at the University of Groningen Centre of Entrepreneurship and NIKOS at the University of Twente, The Netherlands.  Dr. Englis holds a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology with minors in Social Psychology and Statistics from Dartmouth College.  His research and scholarly work have appeared in more than 85 publications.  Dr. Englis is also Managing Partner of Mind/Share, Inc., and in that capacity, he has consulted with numerous organizations including American Airlines, Black & Decker, Caterpillar, Booking.com, E.I. DuPont de Nemours, eBay, Hasbro, Herman Miller, Proctor & Gamble, Under Armour, and VISA.

David Williams holds a PhD in Entrepreneurship  and Strategic Management from Georgia State University, an MBA in International Business from DePaul University, and a BA in International Studies from Millikin University. His research centers on cognitive processes underpinning entrepreneurial decision making and behaviors that impact a firm’s growth, profitability, and survival. Specific areas of interest include entrepreneurs’ evaluation of entrepreneurial opportunities, internationalization, identity and experimental methods. Dr. Williams has taught courses in Entrepreneurship, Strategic Management, and International Business at the University of Tennessee, Georgia State University, and Bradley University.  Prior to receiving his PhD, he worked as a consultant with an international SBDC to help small-to-medium sized companies expand internationally.

Ute Stephan is Professor of Entrepreneurship at King’s College London, TransCampus Professor (Organizational Psychology) at TU Dresden, Germany, Honorary Professor at Aston Business School and at UCL, and a Fellow of the International Association of Applied Psychology. She is an Editor at Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice and Consulting Editor at the Journal of International Business Studies. From 2015-2019 she was Editor-in-Chief of Applied Psychology: An International Review.

As an expert on the Psychology of Entrepreneurship, Ute explores how individuals and societies can thrive through entrepreneurship. Ute’s research builds evidence on how contexts (culture and institutions) shape entrepreneurship and how entrepreneurship, in turn, can help to build more inclusive societies.

Ute’s research explores (1) culture and institutions, (2) social entrepreneurship, and (3) entrepreneurial motivation, well-being, and mental health. She publishes in leading journals such as the Journal of Management, Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), Journal of Business Venturing (JBV), Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice (ETP), Management Science, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Academy of Management Perspectives. Ute serves on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, JIBS, JBV and ETP.

Her research has won multiple international awards, attracted over £3 million in funding from the European Commission, the UK Government, UK research councils, charities and German government institutions; and has been featured in the media including the Financial Times, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, WIRED, BBC, AlJazeera, Bloomberg and others.

Ute led projects commissioned by UK Government Departments on social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial aspirations. She currently leads a 30 country study on Entrepreneurship & Covid-19, she is also a lead investigator of the 10-country SEFORIS project which stands for Social Enterprises as a Force for Inclusive and Innovative Societies, and its predecessor the SELUSI project. She is an elected board member of the GLOBE project (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness project) and of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP). Ute chairs the IAAP publication committee.

Denis A. Grégoire is Professor in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at HEC Montréal. His research centers on the cognitive processes influencing the identification of innovative ideas for new entrepreneurial ventures, entrepreneurs’ decision to expand their firm’s activities to foreign markets, and the contribution of angel investors to the growth of high-potential ventures. 

Denis obtained his Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Colorado Boulder (2005) and worked in the USA for several years before returning to his native Canada ("HEC-Montreal has been a fantastic place where to develop new skills and pursue my career!"). Denis has received many awards for his work, including the Heizer Doctoral Dissertation Award in New Enterprise Development (2006) given by the Academy of Management’s Entrepreneurship Division, an IDEA Thought Leader Prize (2011) from the same organization, as well as numerous mentions for his manuscript reviews – notably from Academy of Management Discoveries, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, the Journal of Management Studies, and a few divisions of the Academy of Management. 

In addition to pursuing his own research, Denis currently serves a three-year mandate as Associate Editor of the Academy of Management Journal. He is also a member of the editorial boards for Academy of Management Discoveries, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, the Journal of Business Venturing, the Journal of International Business Studies, the Journal of Management Studies, and Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and is on the Scientific Committee for the French Revue de l’entrepreneuriat. He was elected to serve a second term as Representative-at-large for the Academy of Management’s Entrepreneurship Division (2020-2022). 

Denis contributes to two programs led by HEC Montréal’s Executive Education to support the growth of high-potential science- and technology-based ventures. He serves as Associate Director for CDL-Montréal and as Academic Director for NEXT AI – Montréal‘s business curriculum. 

Denis is a proud father of two. He blames them for his increasingly gray hair but knows they will turn out ok, thanks to their mum! ("I love you!") Denis feels blessed to have had a chance to work with great Ph.D. students. They all do fantastically.  

Diemo Urbig is professor at the Institute of Business and Economics at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg. He holds the chair for “Empirical Business and Economic Research & Transformation” and is a research fellow at the Institute for Development Strategies, School of Public & Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, USA. He holds a Ph.D. in Management Science from Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. His research on cognition and decision making in the context of entrepreneurship and innovation has been published in journals such as Journal of Management and Journal of Business Venturing. He is member of the editorial review boards at the Journal of Business Venturing and the Academy of Management Perspectives and editor at the Small Business Economics Journal.  

Magdalena Cholakova is an Associate Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship in the Department of Strategic Management & Entrepreneurship at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. 

Her research focuses on several topics, including: 1) Entrepreneurial learning and early-stage idea validation. She studies this topic by using experiments with entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial populations, as well as by collecting longitudinal qualitative data from early-stage companies; 2) Institutional complexity and strategic renewal. She focuses on the capacity of individuals within existing organizations to cope with change and pursue successful core innovations. She has addressed this topic by tapping into the microfoundations (cognitive and affective) of institutional complexity. Her work here is both conceptual and qualitative; 3) Effective decision making heuristics under Knightian uncertainty. She studies this topic in the context of angel investing (using verbal protocol analysis techniques) and crowdfunding (using quasi-experimental techniques); 4) Crowdfunding and the role of pecuniary and non pecuniary incentives in investment decisions. 

Magdalena holds a PhD in Business Administration and Management from Bocconi University, a MPhil in Organizational Behavior from Trinity College Dublin and a MSc in Statistics from Trinity College Dublin. Her research has been published in the Journal of Management, Strategic Organization, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practrice Journal, and the International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior.

Marco Kleine is an assistant professor at the Innovation Management & Strategy Department of the University of Groningen. As a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn/Germany and at the University of Jena/Germany, he gained in-depth knowledge of behavioral and experimental research methods. In his former position of a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich/Germany and in his current position at the University of Groningen, he has built on this knowledge to apply it to topics on innovation, strategy, and organization. His research has been published in journals such as Research Policy, the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization and Economics Letters.

Matthew S. Wood is a Professor of Entrepreneurship and holds the Michael F. Price Chair in Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at the Price College of Business, University of Oklahoma.  A former entrepreneur in the commercial printing industry, he received his Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. His research examines cognition and decision-making related to entrepreneurial action and entrepreneurial opportunity. He is a Field Editor at the Journal of Business Venturing and has been a Guest Editor for the Special Issue "Applying Experimental Methods to Advance Entrepreneurship Research" at the same journal. 

Susana C. Santos is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at Rowan University. She received her Ph.D. from ISCTE-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal and completed her post-doctoral program at the University of Florida. Her main research interests are focused on the cognitive and psychosocial processes of entrepreneurship at the individual and team level. Other streams of research include poverty, women entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship education. Susana’s work has been published in journals such as Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Business Venturing, Small Business Economics, Journal of Small Business Management, Journal of Business Research, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research, among others. Susana is author of the book “Poverty and entrepreneurship in developed countries”, co-editor of the book “The emergence of entrepreneurial behavior: Intention, education and orientation”, and has published several book chapters. Susana serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Small Business Management, is part of the Editorial Advisory Board for Entrepreneurship Education & Pedagogy and Academy of Management Perspectives. She is currently a member of the USASBE Board.

Mark T. Schenkel is a Professor of entrepreneurship at Belmont University. His research and teaching interests focus on the roles that entrepreneurial cognition and strategic decision-making play in new venture creation, corporate venturing, and family business settings. His scholarship has appeared in academic journals such as Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Family Business Review, Academy of Management Review, British Journal of Management, Journal of Small Business Management, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, New England Journal of Entrepreneurship and the Journal of Small Business Strategy, among others. He has published work using quasi-experimental and experimental designs focused on channel impacts of advertising messaging (Harding & Schenkel, 2017), influences on entrepreneurial intentions (Schenkel, D'Souza, Cornwall,  & Matthews, 2015; Schenkel, D’Souza, & Braun, 2014), and is currently co-authoring a manucript (with a co-guest editor) focused on the dynamics of regulatory focus on nascent entrepreneurial activity.

Schenkel currently serves as Associate Editor for Journal of Small Business Management and is on the editorial boards of  Journal of Business & Entrepreneurship and Journal of Business & Entrepreneurship. He served as President of the United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship in 2018 and was honored with the prestigious Justin G. Longenecker Fellowship in 2020 in recognition of his leadership efforts in entrepreneurship education and unwavering advocacy for start-up and small business development, in addition to his research. Schenkel earned his Ph.D. in Strategy and Entrepreneurship from the University of Cincinnati where he also served as the Assistant Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship Education and Research, building on more than a decade of entrepreneurial experience in a variety of leadership roles closely held family firms.

Silke Tegtmeier is Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at University of Southern Denmark. Currently, she is Immediate Past President of the European Council for Small Business and Entrepreneurship. Her research focus is on cognitive perspectives of the individual in entrepreneurship. Among others, she investigates  entrepreneurial opportunities,  engineering entrepreneurship education and women’s entrepreneurship. Dr. Tegtmeier has published more than 30 articles and 3 books, e.g., in Small Business Economics, Business Strategy and the Environment and Journal of Small Business Management. She Initiated and hosted several conferences and has experience as section head. She previously co-edited a special issue in International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship and as well as “The Dynamics of Entrepreneurial Contexts: Frontiers in European Entrepreneurship Research” (Elgar Publishing). Currently, is co-editing a special issue in International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing to be published in 2021. She is currently co-authoring a manucript entitled “Shifting Focus: An Examination of the Dynamic Role of Regulatory Focus in the Early Stages of Nascent Entrepreneurial Activity” which uses an experimental design and which was acceped for the 2020 Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference.