JOHNSON CITY (March 5, 2020) — The Entrepreneurs’ Club at East Tennessee State University
will welcome guest speaker Dr. Audrey Depelteau at its meeting on Monday, March 9,
at 5 p.m. in Sam Wilson Hall, Room 334.
She will present “Transforming the Future through Innovation,” a soup-to-nuts presentation
that will highlight the ETSU Innovation Lab’s multi-faceted endeavors and its role
in the entrepreneurial community.
According to Depelteau “directing the Innovation Lab is an entrepreneurial endeavor
where every day is a walk in the unknown, facing novel opportunities and challenges,
consulting with a diverse group of individuals, creating newly in the moment and pivoting
when needed; all the while keeping true to our mission of supporting local start-ups,
creating new jobs and promoting economic development in the region.”
Before coming to ETSU, Depelteau owned and operated the largest multi-disciplinary health care clinic in Boston, Massachusetts from 1984-2005, with satellite offices in Massachusetts and California until 2009. Also a former environmental toxicologist, she returned to academia in 2009 as the biology education coordinator in the Department of Biological Sciences at ETSU where she wrote and assessed a new biology curriculum to include more statistics and mathematics.
Since 2010, Depelteau has been director of the ETSU Innovation Lab, a high-tech business incubator. Under her leadership, the Innovation Lab was awarded the International Business Innovation Association’s International Soft Landings Designation in 2015, which recognizes an incubator’s expertise in recruiting and welcoming non-domestic firms into its domestic market. At this time there are only 26 such designations globally. Only 0.26% of all business incubators have this prestigious designation.
Depelteau received a B.A in biology from Russell Sage College and completed graduate work in environmental toxicology at the Center for Environmental Toxicology and Pathology at Albany Medical College, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Marine Biological Labs at Woods Hole. She received a doctor of chiropractic from Logan University. In 2015, Depelteau earned the International Business Innovation Association’s (InBIA) Certificate in Incubator Management.
She is very active in the community and serves as a mentor in the Climate Reality Leadership Training and currently mentors former Vice President Al Gore’s top three farm managers at the Caney Fork Farm and has given over 50 Climate Change Presentations. She holds an Honors Code Certificate in Climate Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The talk is open to the public. Directions to Sam Wilson Hall are available at www.etsu.edu/maps/. For additional information, contact Mitzi Brookshear at brookshe@etsu.edu or 423-439-7444. For disability accommodations, call the ETSU Office of Disability Services at 423-439-8346.