Lauren
J.
Way
, EdD
Chair, Business Department and Director of the Entrepreneurial Program
Department:
Business
Degrees
BA, Smith College; MEd, EdD,University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Contact
Phone: 413.565.1193
Fax: 413.565.1131
Email: lway@baypath.edu
Profile
Dr. Lauren J. Way is the Chair of the Business Department and Director of the Bay Path Entrepreneurial Program. In the
undergraduate and
MBA programs, she has taught courses in entrepreneurship and innovation, small business practices, management, and leadership. Dr. Way is a champion of hands-on, experiential learning. She regularly links students with local business leaders to create innovative and implementable solutions to real-world challenges.
Dr. Way’s background combines experience in launching and consulting for new businesses around the globe. In the early 1990s, Dr. Way lived and worked in Russia during the country’s shift from communism to a free market economy, and became an international entrepreneur by establishing one of the country’s first global commodities trading companies. Later, she worked at the Moscow law offices of White & Case, where she helped to advise and register new start-up ventures. Upon returning to the United States, Dr. Way took on the position as an interpreter and team facilitator in the 1996 Olympics for the Russian, Belorussian, Estonian, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian Olympic yachting teams. She served as the associate director of the Lemelson Assistive Technology Development Center at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, where she was a co-PI on grants of up to $2.5 million.
At Bay Path, Dr. Way has led numerous efforts to bridge community business leaders with undergraduate students and classes. She has directed business summits and other events which have drawn over 1,000 community members and aspiring entrepreneurs to campus, and in the summer she hosts groups of high school girls from the region to learn how to become entrepreneurs.
Dr. Way has presented and guest lectured both nationally and internationally. In the past decade she has helped over 100 students to launch and grow their own new businesses. She recently won a national teaching award in experiential education (“The 3-E Entrepreneurial Experiential Exercises”), and collaborated with college educators from Cambridge, England to win the best workshop session at the 2010 national United States Association for Small Business Entrepreneurship (USABE) conference.
Dr. Way has also worked with the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance on invention and technology based entrepreneurship efforts, oversaw the development of an innovative United Nations exhibit, and currently serves as the College’s Grinspoon Entrepreneurship Initiative Faculty Advisor. Dr. Way did her undergraduate work at Smith College, and her masters and doctoral degrees are in Policy and Leadership from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
