Colleen Wunderlich

Background

About Colleen Wunderlich

I am an entrepreneurial leader who forms strategic partnerships, develops, and oversees business education programs, and offers competition opportunities to entrepreneurs. The Forsythe Entrepreneurial center found its new home at The Chicago Lighthouse, and I am continuing to expand our offerings and opportunities in entrepreneurship. In 2016, I created a New Venture competition. Nine Entrepreneurs received over and turned their dream into a real business. My desire to work with small businesses came about when I studied Entrepreneurship and strategic Management while earning my MBA at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Since 2013, I continue to design, administer, and build dimension to the first-ever entrepreneurship center for people with vision loss. We served over people world-wide over the last ten years. I lead the development of the Business Enterprise Licensee Training (BEPLT), a national curriculum that educated over 250 entrepreneurs with vision loss to operate their own businesses in vending and food service management under the Randolph-Sheppard Program. The program is utilized in 36 states. I continue to foster its enhancement and national expansion. In my previous role as North Central Regional Sales Manager for Freedom Scientific, I grew my territory to generate over 4.5 million dollars in revenue. I managed a distributor channel, and I sold adaptive technology software and hardware solutions, business to business, in a ten-state territory for an adaptive technology company that remains the industry leader. I sold to non-profit and for-profit companies, as well as to government agencies, libraries, school districts, colleges, and universities. When I envision a project, I gather the resources to make it happen from raising funds, overseeing its development, and rolling it out to administer its ongoing success. I feel energized to lead a team comprised of people with different professional expertise and points of view to work towards a common goal. I am not afraid to try new initiatives, because I still learn even if they cannot come to fruition.