Professor Jerome S. Engel is an internationally recognized expert in innovation, entrepreneurship, and venture capital, lecturing and advising business and government leaders around the world. After a successful business career, he joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley in 1991 to found the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, where he currently serves as Senior Fellow and Founding Executive Director Emeritus. At Berkeley he has fostered the creation of an internationally distinguished program that provides entrepreneurship education across the University and its constituent community. Mr. Engel is an Adjunct Professor at the Haas School of Business and instructs in both the School's MBA and Executive Education programs, specializing in Entrepreneurship, Corporate Innovation, New Venture Finance, Venture Capital and Private Equity. He serves on the Advisory Boards of several universities and innovation centers around the world. An author and frequent speaker, he has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio and other global media.
Mr. Engel is active in the private sector. He is a General Partner of Monitor Ventures, LLC, a venture capital firm organized in collaboration with the Monitor Group, a global strategic consulting and private equity management firm. Over his career Mr. Engel has served on the Boards of a number of emerging companies and non-profit organizations. Current Board positions include Adaptive Planning, Jupiter Systems, MedAmerica, and the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance. He advises major corporations, emerging companies and private equity investors on strategy, innovation, technology commercialization, and capital formation.
From 1979 through 1990, Mr. Engel was San Francisco Bay Area Director of Entrepreneurial Services, a practice group he founded at Ernst & Young, that is globally recognized for the creation of the Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Promoted to Partner in 1982, Mr. Engel specialized in consulting on capital formation, corporate strategy and management organization of entrepreneurial ventures, with an emphasis in software and biotechnology. In 1990, Mr. Engel was appointed Ernst & Young's National Director of Capital Resources, where he directed the firm’s capital formation services for its emerging business clients nationwide. During his career, Mr. Engel helped a number of entrepreneurial firms go public, including Brøderbund, Maxis, Autodesk and Fair Isaac Companies.
From 1992-1995, Mr. Engel served as a member of the Board of Directors of Maxis Corporation, and oversaw the company's financing activities, which included venture capital and a successful initial public offering. In 1995, Mr. Engel was a founding General Partner of Kline Hawkes Capital, a venture capital firm based in Los Angeles that was cited by CalPERS as providing top decile performance. In 1998, Mr. Engel co-founded AllBusiness.com, which he grew to over 150 employees and sold to NBC in March 2000 providing outstanding returns for its investors.
Professor Engel’s awards and recognitions include the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance Lifetime Educational Achievement Award, the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers Award for Outstanding Contributions to Advance the Discipline of Entrepreneurship among others. His most recent research and publications focus on the nature in innovation processes in firms, communities and global networks. He is a CPA and received his undergraduate degree at Penn State University and his master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School.
