Carl J. Schramm, president and CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, paid a visit to Akron recently to meet with Dr. Frank L. Douglas, president and CEO of the Austen BioInnovation Institute in Akron, to discuss the foundation’s strategic plan. Douglas was appointed to the Kauffman Foundation’s Board of Trustees last year and has served as a Kauffman senior fellow for several years.
The Kauffman Foundation is considered the world’s premier organization dedicated to creating new firms and understanding the role they play in economic growth. Schramm is recognized internationally as an authority on entrepreneurial innovation, job creation and economic growth. The Wall Street Journal has cited his “prescient” work and The Economist hailed him as “the evangelist of entrepreneurship.”
During the visit, Schramm made time to met with ABIA senior staff to learn more about the institute’s tremendous momentum and progress, as well as plans for the upcoming year.
Schramm’s research on how entrepreneurship fuels economic expansion led him to play a permanent role in the December 2009 White House jobs summit. Schramm chaired the National Advisory Commission on Measuring Innovation during George W. Bush’s presidency. In addition, he has advised government leaders worldwide on promoting job growth and economic expansion. In 2009, he was appointed by the Prime Minister of Singapore to serve on the country’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council.
Before joining Kauffman, Schramm served as a professor of health finance and policy at The Johns Hopkins University, founded several companies in health care finance and information technology, served as executive vice president of Fortis, and established a merchant banking firm. He was chairman of the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission and a member of the Maryland Health and Higher Educational Facilities Authority.
Schramm is a prolific writer whose commentary often runs in publications such as Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. He frequently appears on CNBC and Fox Business News. His two books, Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism (with Robert Litan and William Baumol, now published in eight languages) and The Entrepreneurial Imperative, are considered international classics in their field for their insights into economic growth. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Batten Fellow in the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia. He earned degrees in economics and law and holds several honorary doctorates. In 2005, he received the University of Rochester’s George Eastman Medal.
