The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland has appointed Liz Sara as Chair of its Board of Advisors for the 2016-2018 academic years. She becomes the first female chair in its 30-year history. She officially took the helm at the October 5th Board meeting. Liz will lead the current board of 14 members in advising the Dingman Center’s managing director on initiatives, development and growth strategies. She succeeds prior Chairman Mark Walsh, who currently runs Investments and Innovation for the Small Business Administration.

“One of my key strategic initiatives as managing director is to grow the size of our board, so we needed a chair who had connections not only to the university but also to the regional startup community,” said Elana Fine, managing director of the Dingman Center. “Liz’s experience in marketing and technology and her vast network made her the ideal candidate, and I am flattered by her willingness to serve in this role given all the requests made on her time.”

Liz has more than 25 years of experience in the local high tech community as an entrepreneur, business leader and angel investor. In 2001, she founded Best Marketing, LLC to provide early stage tech companies with strategic marketing services and expertise. Since inception, she has worked for more than 90 companies, assisting them in increasing revenue and speed market adoption for their B2B products and services. Recently, Liz was featured in the Center’s podcast, Dingman Bootstrapped.

“I am honored to accept this role as chair and look forward to ramping up the visibility of the fantastic programs, services, support and mentoring available to student-led startups across the campus through the Dingman Center,” Liz said. “I’m especially excited to attract additional members to the Board and to the angel group, which will further our ability to raise awareness in the region and build on our success to date of nurturing startups that last. Long term, I see the Dingman Center providing the roadmap to supporting entrepreneurship across the entire university-wide system in Maryland.”

In addition to serving as the Dingman Center’s Chair of the Board of Advisors, Liz is also an Entrepreneur-in-Residence and an adjunct Marketing Professor at the Smith School. She has been an active member of the Dingman Center Angels for more than five years. In the region, she mentors founders at Eastern Foundry, Tedco, Founders Institute and the German American Accelerator in NYC. She is a frequent speaker at conferences and workshops geared to entrepreneurism and angel funding.

About the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship

The Dingman Center is one of the nation’s pre-eminent institutions where the research, education and practice of entrepreneurship are pursued vigorously. We develop and execute curricular and non-curricular programs that uniquely leverage Smith School thought leadership, experiential learning and our network of practitioners to provide maximum resources to startup businesses. Every initiative is designed to support the Center’s mission to make entrepreneurs of all kinds successful. In 2014, the Dingman Center received the prestigious NASDAQ Center of Entrepreneurial Excellence Award from the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship.