Ted Zoller

Kauffman Foundation Director United States of America
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Ted Zoller is a senior fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, engaged in core strategies of the foundation in the area of entrepreneurship.

Zoller is also director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also a senior advisor to the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and serves as an active practicing entrepreneur. Zoller has taught entrepreneurship courses in the MBA, BSBA, MBA for Executives, and MBA@UNC programs at UNC Kenan-Flagler since 1999; oversees the Center’s teaching and outreach programs; and is the primary liaison for the business school to UNC’s university-wide Innovate@Carolina initiative and to partners in the Research Triangle Park entrepreneurial community.

Zoller teaches new ventures, business model and enterprise development, and global venturing courses, focusing primarily on high-growth enterprises. He is the founding instructor of “Launching the Venture” an enterprise-creation program that has significantly increased the number of companies to spin off from UNC-Chapel Hill since its inception; and he is one of the founders of Launch Chapel Hill, the university’s innovative accelerator program. His research focuses on entrepreneurial firm performance and social networking implications of entrepreneurial and venture dealmaking networks, and he collaborates actively with the Blackstone Foundation to implement these networks nationally.

Zoller is founder of CommonWeal Ventures, a global venture advisory firm; is an active angel investor; and serves on the boards of numerous entrepreneurial ventures, including the executive committees of the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers and the Council of Entrepreneurial Development and on the boards of Idea Fund Partners, Southeast TechInventures, and Rex Health Ventures. He also serves as senior vice president – finance and is on the executive committee of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE).

He holds a PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill, master’s degrees from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University and the University of Virginia focusing on entrepreneurship and economic development, and a dual bachelor’s degree from the College of William & Mary.