The title of the talk :
Harvard Innovation Labs: Opportunities & Challenges
Harvard i-lab nurtures 2800 Student Entrepreneurs – 11% of Harvard’s degree-seeking students.
Why are students so interested in entrepreneurship today? What problems are they trying to solve?
What are the challenges of supporting so many entrepreneurial-minded students? How are we innovating to meet the challenge?
Rebecca Xiong is the Managing Director, Programs and Engagement. She spearheads a strategic portfolio of programming and resources for the Harvard Innovation Labs’ community of student and alumni innovators across industry sectors, including health and life sciences; social impact; consumer products and services; business-to-business (B2B) technology. Becca brings to the Harvard Innovation Labs two decades of experience in the MIT startup ecosystem. She previously served as the program director of MIT Startup Exchange, which promotes collaboration and partnerships between 2000 MIT-connected startups and industry. Prior to that, Becca co-founded two startups: social analytics and marketing startup SocMetrics, and Going.com, an events social network that grew to one million members and was acquired by AOL. Xiong has also held positions at DataPower (acquired by IBM) and Akamai Technologies. Becca received a PhD in Computer Science from MIT, and did her thesis research at the MIT Media Lab. Becca has been an active member of her community including president of the MIT Club of Boston (the largest alumni club serving 17,000 area alumni) and lead organizer of Cambridge Parent Summit.