June 2005
John Zitzner, president and founder of E City Cleveland, and Melissa Williams, director of business development for the Buckeye Area Community Development Corp. in Cleveland’s Buckeye neighborhood, each won a $30,000 grant from the Civic Innovation Lab, which was launched by the Cleveland Foundation in 2003 to “support individuals with great ideas to grow Cleveland.”
Zitzner and Williams both have B-W ties. Students in the campus chapter of Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) are mentors for high school students involved in an E City project with the Cleveland Municipal Schools (see Business & Economy @ B-W, January 2005 issue), and Williams had help from the B-W Business Plan Clinic developing the business plan that accompanied her proposal to match entrepreneurs and potential small-businesspersons with local vacant storefronts.
B-W and the Civic Innovation Lab established a partnership several months ago to help “civic entrepreneurs” like Williams move their concepts forward. Students and volunteer Entrepreneurs-in-Residence from B-W’s Business Plan Clinic work with these civic entrepreneurs to put their ideas into a succinct, executive-summary format for a 10-minute presentation to potential mentors.
Professor Phil Bessler, Herzog Chair of Business Administration, director of the Business Plan Clinic and SIFE chapter adviser, represented B-W at a “Meet the Champions Breakfast” on April 13, hosted by the Civic Innovation Lab to introduce the grant recipients.
A third initiative also won a $30,000 grant: Jack Kleinhenz, formerly an economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and local entrepreneur Terence Murphy have teamed up to explore the potential for a Center for Health and Disease Management in Northeast Ohio. They plan to integrate resources from the region’s existing health care firms to develop “predict and prevent” medicine alongside “see and treat” medicine as a driver of the regional economy.
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