Jennifer Yang selected as Entrepreneur-in-Residence for newly named Program in Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Jennifer Yang has been named the entrepreneur-in-residence for McDaniel College’s newly named Program in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, formerly known as The Encompass Distinction.

As the entrepreneur-in-residence, Yang provides instruction and business strategy advice to students in the program. She also assists students who are interested in competing in McDaniel’s annual Innovation Challenge, where students present their entrepreneurial ideas and products to a panel of experts for the opportunity to win a top prize.

Yang has more than 23 years of strategy, management, and technology consulting experience working with CXO-level stakeholders at Fortune 50 companies, start-up ventures, and federal agencies. Yang’s career began at American Management Systems, where she worked with companies in the communications and media industry. In 2005, Yang joined the start-up consulting company, Battle Resource Management, Inc., that grew into a 100-plus person company. She also is a founding member of multiple entrepreneurial ventures, including Inflexion, LLC, TasteBuds Events, LLC, Teardrops to Rainbows (nonprofit), and, most recently, Covalent Spirits, LLC, a craft distillery located on Main Street in Westminster, Md.

McDaniel’s Program in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which is open to students in any major at McDaniel, combines courses, off-campus learning experiences, and mentorship by entrepreneurial alumni of the college, allowing students to gain broad-ranging skillsets required for enterprise management. McDaniel students also can choose to minor in Entrepreneurship or major or minor in Marketing.

Dana Ferraris, associate professor of Chemistry at McDaniel and the John Desmond Kopp Professorship in the Sciences, serves as the program’s interim director. Ferraris, who has taught at McDaniel since 2015, serves as department chair for the Chemistry Department and is actively involved in mentoring undergraduate students through the college’s student-faculty research program.

Additionally, an Entrepreneurship Advisory Council is made up of entrepreneurial alumni who mentor students, lead workshops and other speaking engagements, and help with internships, externships, and job opportunities.