Alumni, students, faculty and staff will mingle with national entrepreneurial leaders on the Cornell University campus, March 30-31, for the first annual Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration to highlight the growing role that entrepreneurship is playing at Cornell. The celebration features a public address by Helen Johnson-Leipold, chairman/CEO of Johnson Outdoors Inc., and an open "Entrepreneurship Expo," featuring Cornell resources and organizations.

During this academic year, 3,000 Cornell students are participating in entrepreneurship courses and programs, and 3,500 alumni and friends of the university will participate in Cornell Entrepreneurship Network (CEN) networking meetings, held in major cities across the country.

Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration 2006 is co-presented by the universitywide Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise (EPE) Program and Johnson Graduate School of Management's Entrepreneurship at Johnson program.

"The celebration offers a great opportunity for participants to explore business innovation at the highest levels," said Zachary Shulman, the J. Thomas Clark Senior Lecturer of Entrepreneurship at the Johnson School and co-organizer of the event with EPE Director John Jaquette. "The insights gained and the creation of new relationships will benefit attendees for years to come."

The program begins Thursday, March 30, with the address by Johnson-Leipold, a 1978 alumna of Cornell, the first woman in five generations of the Johnson family to lead a family business and the only member of her family to serve as a director of every family business. Johnson-Leipold is director of S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. and JohnsonDiversey Inc. and is chairman of Johnson Financial Group, the $3.2 billion global financial services company founded by her father, Sam Johnson. Her address will be at 4:30 p.m. in the Statler Hall Auditorium, and it is free and open to all.

Following Johnson-Leipold's address, there will be a celebration dinner and the announcement of the winners of the sixth annual Business Idea Competition (BIC) run by BR Ventures (BRV), the Johnson School's student-run venture capital firm. The BIC top prize is $10,000 from BRV and 20 hours of free legal services from BR Legal, a joint program of the Cornell Law School and the Johnson School. The BIC is unique among business plan competitions in that participants are only required to submit a two-page description of their idea, not a full business plan. The viability and attractiveness of the business ideas to venture capital investors are evaluated by a panel of leading venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and industry experts.

Other events include the Entrepreneurship Expo on Friday, March 31, from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Conference Room Foyer in the Statler Hotel; a symposium, presented by the Johnson School's Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club and Net Impact Club, "Capitalizing on Innovation"; and a luncheon featuring a presentation on technology innovation at Cornell by Stephen Golding, the university's executive vice president for finance and administration.

The celebration ends with a CEN event, co-sponsored by the Cornell School of Hotel Administration's Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship, featuring a talk by Jeffrey Parker '65, M.Eng '66, MBA '70, the 2001 Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year, founder of First Call, CCBN and the namesake of the Parker Center for Investment Research at the Johnson School.

Primary support for Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration 2006 is provided by the Triad Foundation of Ithaca.

For a full schedule and information about registration, go to http://www.epe.cornell.edu or contact Debra Moesch-Shelley, EPE program manager, at (607) 254-2802 or e-mail dlm8@cornell.edu.