RAISE

Program description

RAISE, or Researchers and Academic Innovators Success in Entrepreneurship, is a mentoring network aiming to connect our researchers and academic innovators with an opportunity to gain connections and insights from ecosystem actors and peers. RAISE is designed to accelerate their road to impact by offering support systems and skills development opportunities, cultivating a growth mindset and resilience, and increasing connections to key ecosystem players and resources. The network helps build up the talent of the next generation of academic innovators, while attempting to provide opportunities not previously available to them.

RAISE supports up to ten highly creative and dedicated students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty members with each cohort. Participants conduct groundbreaking research on their own original projects, explore entrepreneurialism and commercialization, and/or continue to build a budding venture. Our ultimate goal is to accelerate participants’ path to success, however they may define their success, and to enable innovative research that eventually leads to the creation of new products and services.

Teaching team

Soraya Bailey

Director for Innovation Training, CoMotion

Evelyn Jacome

Project Manager, University of Alaska Center ICE & Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship, University of Alaska Anchorage Business School of Management

Teddy Johnson

ITHS Director of Technology Development & Clinical Associate Professor, UW School of Pharmacy

Professional development team

Roxanne Donovan

CEO of WellAcademic & Professor of Psychology, Kennesaw University

S. Tiffany Donaldson

WellAcademic Coach & Professor of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Boston

A team dedicated to providing the academic innovators with holistic coaching that centers professional success, personal well-being, and healthy navigation of the structural and systemic factors that can influence access and outcomes.