Connecting the Dots, an article in Monmouth, The Magazine of Monmouth University, describes how Terik Tidwell’s Fulbright Specialist project supported Egypt’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research assess the results of their 2017 Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation.
Tidwell traveled throughout the country meeting with university presidents, heads of research, entrepreneurs, students, faculty, and policymakers. He says, “The people were very welcoming and the culture was amazing. The research, inventions, and innovations that are being developed were quite impressive and the students were very passionate about innovation and entrepreneurship. Overall, they are moving quickly and systematically with a national innovation culture and the relationships I built will last a lifetime.
Tidwell is the director of inclusive innovation at VentureWell, a company with decades of experience investing in science, tech innovation, and entrepreneurship with universities, startups, entrepreneurs, and federal agencies. He was previously the executive and founding director of the Smith Tech-Innovation Center at Johnson C. Smith University. He holds degrees in Finance, Marketing, and IT from Monmouth University.
“The Fulbright fellowship not only connected me to an alumni network of 400,000 Fulbrighters around the globe who have a shared interest in innovation, entrepreneurial development, and globalization,” Tidwell told Monmouth writer Steve Neumann, “it helped me professionally, because I’m able to apply what I’ve learned to a project that my company is working on in Egypt.”
According to the article, “Tidwell is eager to do at VentureWell what he feels he does best: connecting the dots for various stakeholders in an innovation ecosystem. That could be a researcher in a lab who’s disconnected from an investor who might be looking to invest in technology, or a faculty member who wants to support students becoming more entrepreneurial—or even supporting an innovation center that enables all of these connections to happen.”
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