by Andre Marquis, Executive Director for the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley
The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship was founded in 1991 through a gift from W. Howard Lester, Chairman of Williams-Sonoma. We focus on creating path-bending, entrepreneurial leaders and scalable startups across the University of California Berkeley and serve thousands of students. Our focus areas include:
- Entrepreneurial leadership education with over 15 core classes taught by seasoned entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and business executives
- Startup competitions with local, regional, and international partners including the Berkeley Business Competition, Global Social Venture Competition, Venture Capital Investment Competition, Intel Global Challenge and Intel Scalable Startup School@UC Berkeley
- Forums with topics relevant to the entrepreneurial community, both students and community members, including the monthly UC Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum, Entrepreneurial Best Practices Series as well as intense, topic-specific experiences including Health Technology and Energy Hackathons
- Student-led groups including the Entrepreneurs Association (the largest student group at the Haas School of Business), Haas Venture Fellows, Berkeley Solutions Group, and UCSF-affiliated Venture Innovation Program
- Active mentoring of UC Berkeley-affiliated startups through the UC Berkeley Startup Accelerator Mentor Network and drop-in mentoring hours
- Running the Skydeck Startup Accelerator in partnership with the College of Engineering and Office of the Vice Chancellor of Research
- International teaching entrepreneurship to corporations, faculty, university entrepreneurship staff, and government officials worldwide
Learn more at http://entrepreneurship.berkeley.edu.
