Howie Rhee

Current

Managing Director at Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University

Past

President at Novek Executive Search
Manager, Entrepreneur Development Programs at Council for Entrepreneurial Development
Business Development Intern at DuPont

4 more...

Education

Duke University - The Fuqua School of Business
MIT

Recommended

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Connections

500+ connections

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Howie Rhee’s Summary

My current goal is to help Duke University and the Fuqua School of Business create a world-class entrepreneurship offering.

My previous goal was to help North Carolina's Research Triangle Park enter the upper eschelon of entrepreneurial regions in America a la Silicon Valley and Boston's Rte. 128. I believe that with enough startup activity, the region can "tip" (a la the Tipping Point) and we can launch into this higher level.

Previously, I was the president of my own Executive Search firm, Novek (www.novek.com), whose mission was to bring top talent to startups and maturing companies in RTP. In my job before that, I came to realize that one of the major limiting factors of RTPs success was the lack of access to high quality management and technical talent. In my work, I made access better by connecting companies to talent.

From 2004-2006, I worked directly with first-time high tech entrepreneurs, the base unit of the entrepreneurial economy, and ran a course taught by successful entrepreneurs, to train the first-timers how to think like an entrepreneur. Most of my students were engineers, programmers, or scientists who were making the transition to an entrepreneurial mindset. We saw between 30 and 60 new companies a year.

Previous to 2004, my experience has been as a founder or early member of several startups. I also finished an MBA with a focus in entrepreneurship.

I currently serve on the Board of Directors for the MIT Enterprise Forum (enterpriseforum.mit.edu) which helps startups around the world and Leadership Triangle (www.leadershiptriangle.com), which helps the Research Triangle area develop leaders.