UA’s Amerine Chosen as Featured Speaker at Fast 15 Event
by March 13, 2013 11:55 am 139 views
The Northwest Arkansas Business Journal is pleased to announce Jeff Amerine as the featured speaker for its annual Fast 15 event.
The Fast 15 program is designed to recognize a small, exclusive group of 20-something professionals on the fast track to success. This year’s class will be profiled in the May 13 issue of the Business Journal, and honored at a May 14 event hosted at Pratt Place Inn in Fayetteville.
Nominations can be made online at www.nwabusinessjournal.com/best-in-class/fast-15-nominations through March 29.
Amerine is the director of technology ventures at the University of Arkansas Technology Licensing Office. He’s also an adjunct faculty member who teaches entrepreneurship courses.
“We are thrilled to have Mr. Jeff Amerine as our guest speaker this year,” Business Journal publisher Darin Gray said. “Jeff is well known throughout Northwest Arkansas and the rest of the state for working with and mentoring the next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs.
“I can’t think of a more fitting speaker to address this exclusive class of Fast 15 honorees.”
Amerine, who joined the UA in 2008, has held senior leadership positions in seven startup ventures and three Fortune 500 companies over the past 20-plus years. His role at the UA is to implement effective strategies and methods that lead to commercialization of world-class research.
Amerine also serves as a consultant to Innovate Arkansas, a program designed to bolster the creation and support of a knowledge-based economy in Arkansas. Innovate Arkansas has served more than 100 clients — and helped them raise $175 million in public and private funding — over the past four years.
In 2010, Amerine helped found Gravity Ventures Arkansas, a 21-member, tech-focused angel investment fund. Amerine also has been instrumental in the Gone in 60 Seconds Elevator Pitch contests, the Natural State Angel Association and the creation of the ARK Challenge startup accelerator.
A certified project management professional since 2002, Amerine earned a bachelor’s degree in physical science at the U.S. Naval Academy, and a master’s in operations management from the UA.