Billiken Angels

In 1995 and again in 2001 Professor Jerome (Jerry) Katz was identified by Inc. Magazine as one of the top 15 academics in the world teaching and researching entrepreneurship. Today he holds the Coleman Foundation Chair in Entrepreneurship at Saint Louis University. The Entrepreneurship Program he ch... More

In 1995 and again in 2001 Professor Jerome (Jerry) Katz was identified by Inc. Magazine as one of the top 15 academics in the world teaching and researching entrepreneurship. Today he holds the Coleman Foundation Chair in Entrepreneurship at Saint Louis University. The Entrepreneurship Program he chairs at Saint Louis University has been rated among the top 50 in the nation since 1994 as mentioned by US News & World Report, Fortune Small Business, Business Week, Success, Women 3.0 or Entrepreneur magazines. Recipient of national awards from USASBE and the Kauffman and Coleman Foundations, the Saint Louis University Entrepreneurship Program is Missouri’s oldest and one of the nation’s most respected programs internationally. Prof. Katz has supervised more than 400 business plans locally including plans for firms as diverse as Akermin, eTab International, Sprint Retail Stores, Selkirk's, Slacker’s and TKO DJs. He is on the board of innovative start-ups such as eePulse, eTab International, VividSky, and the National Institute for Youth Entrepreneurship. He has been a Governor of the 13,000 member Academy of Management, as well as the head of their Entrepreneurship Division. Prof. Katz government service included staff work at the national level on the President’s National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, as well as a member of the Department of Agriculture’s SBIR national review panel, at the state level as a statewide Associate Director for Research for the Missouri Small Business Development Centers, and at a local level as associate director of the Urban Renewal Demonstration Project in Memphis. He has been a consultant on entrepreneurial development to the Kauffman, Coleman, GE, NFIB and Soros Foundations, as well as Sweden's ESBRI, the ILO, the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, the Committee of 200, and the NSF. He has worked with entrepreneurial companies and campuses throughout the US as well as in Israel, the West Bank, Sweden, Italy, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Croatia, and Singapore. He is senior author of the McGraw Hill text Entrepreneurial Small Business (2nd Edition), and edits books series in entrepreneurship for Emerald and Sage. An author of nearly 100 papers in entrepreneurship, he sits on the editorial boards of Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice (listed by the Financial Times as one of the top business journals in the world), Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Journal of Small Business Management, and six other scholarly journals. For his work he has received international awards such as Babson’s Appel Prize for Entrepreneurship Education, the Family Firm Institute's LeVan Award for Interdisciplinary Contributions, the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Academy of Management’s Entrepreneurship Division. Acclaimed as a mentor and developer of entrepreneur and entrepreneurship faculty, he has received the Mentorship Award from both the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management and from Saint Louis University’s Graduate Student Association and Alumni Association. eWeb, his entrepreneurship education website (eweb.slu.edu) has received awards from Anbar, Argus, LookSmart and Studyweb. He holds a PhD from Michigan and other advanced degrees from Harvard and the University of Memphis, and before coming to St. Louis was a professor at the Wharton School. He sold his first business, a consulting firm, in his 20's, continuing to consult to his family's collection of firms in Memphis as well as consulting to businesses in St. Louis, and especially those firms started by alumni of the SLU Entrepreneurship Program.