[Music] [Applause] [Music] so I was here 90 through 94. uh I was actually probably one of the first computer science Majors also a math and business minor and I played football all four years I was in a fraternity and actually my on-campus job although I had many my last one was at the alumni Department it is a great School uh you know being in the midwest I think the opportunity to both play football in college which I didn't think I'd have that opportunity presented itself that was also a means for me to get a great education so those those two things combined concealed the deal participating in the alumni Department as a student kind of helped me understand you know how alumni continue to interact with the university and my family I have a long history of kind of teachers in my family as well so kind of giving back through education was always something very important to me so today I I work to help create the entrepreneurship minor working with professors here and I'm also the entrepreneur in Residence so I co-teach classes every semester I've been doing that for about five years additionally provide a fellowship every semester now for students there's a business idea competition and if they win they get funding so they can actually just focus on creating that business I think we've done that over a dozen times in the last few years additionally [Music] I wanted the students to actually run a business and so we decided that the best opportunity was to actually run an Airbnb short-term rental in the Bloomington Normal area so we've been doing that the students help both select the house furnish the house actually put it up on Airbnb manage it that's completely managed and run by those students so there's a lot of different Avenues from either helping people start businesses to actually running businesses to teaching about how to actually run a business so I had started a services company as a I.T Services System integrator and I had built and sold that company and so today I'm actually kind of somewhere between kind of venture capital private Equity investing in companies that I'm building investing in other companies and I'm supporting so I kind of act as both an investor a board member sometimes an operator so I'm kind of doing a bunch of different things on top of being a dad and when I think about all of the there's a lot of entrepreneurs that come out of the Midwest a lot they've come out of Leslie and I still have great relationships with a lot of my classmates peers colleagues and they all have started businesses so I actually hope they all are also selected because I know it's a competitive group there's a lot of very smart ambitious people so I'm very honored to have been selected although this award is for entrepreneurship and entrepreneur doesn't do it alone right they have their family they have their friends they have the community there are people that support them other businesses that support them other people that know they're taking a bit of a risk they know it's going to be not a normal job and they need that support from all of those people so I would actually thank everybody that's actually listening to this because in some way they help support entrepreneurs and make them kind of make it through you know tough times and help them succeed so thank you foreign [Music]