Mark Rider recently returned to academia after a distinguished 30-year career in Executive roles in the healthcare, building products, aviation, and training industries. He currently serves as the VanArsdale Chair of Entrepreneurship at SUNY Geneseo, where he develops and delivers entrepreneurship curricula, including social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial leadership. He also manages the student incubator and advises the Adopt a Business program.
Mark’s professional journey includes a wide range of experiences, from startups to the top 30 multinational medical device companies. Currently, as the Founder and CEO of Accent Growth, he helps small businesses and social enterprises integrate AI into their organizations.
Previously, Mark was President and COO of Modern Marketing & Commerce (MMC), a high-tech outsourced marketing and sales organization serving major clients such as Lowes, Goodman, Ferguson, Bausch Health, 3M, and Bayer. Mark also served as a principal at SalesMark Ventures, an MMC investment arm that engaged in multiple startup investments.
Mark also held global Executive positions, including VP of Commercial Operations for the Americas and Director of Global Sales Operations for Swedish-based Med Device company Getinge. He oversaw commercial operations, marketing, and sales enablement for the multi-billion-dollar business.
Mark is currently completing his doctorate in business administration at the University of Rhode Island. His research focuses on employee perceptions of authenticity in dual-purpose organizations or social enterprises.
Classes
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ENTR 100: Intro to Entrepreneurship
This course is designed to provide students with a basic understanding of the practical skills needed to start a new business as well as innovative thinking that can be applied to any field students ultimately find themselves working in. Included is a basic understanding of business and its component parts. Study topics will include: - What is Entrepreneurship? - Understanding the Basics of Business - How to Determine a Good Idea and Opportunity? - How to Write a Marketing Plan? - How to Write a Management Plan? - How to Manage Change? - Handling Human Resources - How to Grow a Business
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ENTR 200: Entrepreneurial Leadership
The Entrepreneurial Leadership course builds on the basic business learning students acquire from the course, Introduction to Entrepreneurship. Students will get a more in-depth understanding of the entrepreneurial process, tools, and techniques. Through classroom instruction, hands-on participation in group projects, and guest speakers, students will learn how to frame, ideate, research, prototype, test, present, and get validation for entrepreneurial endeavors. Students will be exposed to concepts such as design thinking, customer validation through customer discovery, lean start-ups, business models, financial planning, sources of financing and pitching to potential investors. While the Introduction to Entrepreneurship course includes students identifying a new business idea, students in this course will not only identify a new business idea, they will work on an actual new business plan based on their idea that will include some preliminary customer discovery and validation.
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ENTR 425: Entrepreneurship-Idea2Venture
A place for you to develop great ideas into great companies. According to the Census, over 5.4 million new business applications were filed last year. More and more people in the United States are starting their own businesses than ever before. You can be one of them. This course is designed to take you from a well-qualified business idea to a real startup business. Through hands-on exploration of preparing your business to launch, launching your business, and building plans and presentations for you to raise funds, this course will give you the capabilities and confidence to take your idea out into the real world.