Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com September 26, 2016 • Hartford Business Journal 11 Show your finances who's boss Simsbury Bank Cash Management Solutions To learn more, visit SimsburyBank.com/CashManagement Simsbury Bank's Cash Management Suite gives you the flexibility to simplify and manage the flow of money through your organization. Whether you need to view and conduct business online or are looking for automated financial services, we can offer a comprehensive package tailored to your unique business needs. H B J P H O T O | J O H N S T E A R N S identifying commercial opportunities, help- ing us to build out our team and find mentors and people who are great advisers to us," said Wagner, who got her Ph.D. in molecular biol- ogy at UConn and is an assistant research pro- fessor there. UConn doesn't offer an entrepreneurship major, but there's a minor in entrepreneur- ship in the Business School. There's also a new creativ- ity, innovation and entrepreneurship minor that's a part- nership between the schools of engi- neering, education and business, and there's talk about having concentra- tions developed in some of the gradu- ate programs, Cote said. UHart's focus The University of Hartford offers an entrepreneurial studies major and minor, said Martin Roth, dean of the Barney School of Business. The university also has gotten into more hands-on experiential learning opportunities, he said. That can happen in a program like the Micro Business Incubator, in which students work one on one with small business owners, primarily on Albany Avenue near campus. "It gives the student the opportunity of really getting first-hand experience working with that business and it gives the business the benefit of getting the students' knowledge and the students' skills to help them," Roth said. For graduate students, the school offers its Barney Graduate Consulting Service, through which current graduate students and recent alumni provide consultative service to small business owners and to local govern- ments primarily in West Hartford and Hart- ford, Roth said. The students who are gaining skills and tools in various management areas are able to apply that knowledge in helping a small business address its problems. "What we're doing as a business school is we're helping the students gain good skills so that if they want to try to start a startup and grow their own busi- ness … they'll be able to have a good chance of doing that successfully." A lot of the Ent repreneu r i a l Center's classes are free or low- cost, said Milena Erwin, program manager at the Women's Business Center, the largest ini - tiative of the Entrepreneurial Center that focuses on helping women in business. There's also one-on-one advising and technical assistance programs like photog- rapher Conley enrolled in that provided her a bank of 18 hours of technical assistance for $100. Through that, she used a lawyer to help her complete some legal documents. Conley also has attended the center's June matchmaking events, a "speed net- working" where she's met 15 companies in a day and landed clients. She also recently attended a workshop to learn about a cor- porate procurement portal to access com- panies seeking outside services. "Those kind of opportunities are what the university brings," Conley said. She hopes to see the center expand because "I think more and more people are going to work for themselves." n Nicole Wagner, CEO of LambdaVision, says the company is restoring vision to patients blinded by macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa using a retinal implant, seen in purple in the plastic package. The implant is coated with a light-activated protein, the purple liquid in the vial, and will replace the damaged photoreceptor cells, or light sensing cells, of the eye. Martin Roth, dean, Barney School of Business, University Hartford Milena Erwin, program manager, Women's Business Center, Entrepreneurial Center

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