John Quarton

Background

About John Quarton

I dream big, I’m extremely passionate about what I do, I have a very strong work ethic, and I love to help others achieve their dreams. I identify possibilities and create opportunities by making thoughtful connections. But I’m not just a dreamer. I also excel in execution and have a long, successful track record assembling the people and resources to turn dreams into reality. During my 25 years with State Farm, I worked on teams that built, delivered, and maintained very large and complex software systems and applications, and enjoyed riding the technology wave, from where I started developing on mainframe systems to the introduction of the PC, the internet, mobile devices, and the cloud. I led the team that earned the company its first software patent and worked with students, software engineers, and architects to prototype many of State Farm’s first mobile apps. My five years at State Farm's Research and Development Center in the University of Illinois Research Park was when I thrived. We hired 500 interns over five years, with a peak of 92 interns one summer, making State Farm the largest employer of students. The opportunity to work closely with and develop many of Illinois’ best and brightest engineering and business students is what motivated me in 2013 to accept an offer to cross over from the corporate world to academia to direct innovation and entrepreneurship programs. Collaborating with well over of the university’s most driven and talented students, outstanding faculty and staff members, dozens of Illinois’ most successful alumni entrepreneurs and changemakers, hundreds more business and engineering alumni, and industry-leading corporate partners like Abbott, Anheuser-Busch, Boeing, bp, Capital One, Caterpillar, eBay, Google, John Deere, Microsoft, Motorola Solutions, Navistar, Synchrony, T-Mobile, Uber, Walmart, and dozens more, was a dream come true. The cherry on top was also serving as Research Park’s site executive-in-residence, where I applied my previous experience to consult companies on best practices for establishing and operating innovation centers. For chapter three, I am creating something new and significant with Illinois Wesleyan University, an institution that dreams big like me. This collaboration is taking full advantage of the skills, knowledge, and professional network I have developed through my unique combination of corporate and university experiences.