Fletcher D-Prize

Poverty Solutions Venture Competition

Coaching

Need some more help working through your D-Prize plan or another entrepreneurial idea you’ve been kicking around? Enlist the help of The Fletcher School’s Entrepreneur Coaches, Marilyn Davison & Rockford Weitz.

How to Get Involved

As Entrepreneurship Coaches, Marilyn & Rockford will help students and alumni:

  1. Think through business, social, and policy ideas where entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship could be part of the solution
  2. Create business plans, go-to-market strategies, and presentations to potential customers and investors
  3. Connect with potential customers, potential investors, and service providers that an help aspiring Fletcher entrepreneurs turn their ideas into viable enterprises
  4. Collaborate and problem solve team dynamic challenges

Bios

Marilyn Davison

Marilyn is a double Jumbo with a BS and MA from Tufts University. Her Fine Arts degrees led to an award-winning position as a Boston Globe Art Critic. She held Sales and Consultant Management positions in high tech and management consulting both in the US and in France – where she worked for large global and small academic consultancies for twenty years before returning to Boston in 2013.

As a management consultant, Marilyn managed strategy and IT based projects, and was a speaker at seminars through Europe and in Beijing. Marilyn co-designed and managed a Venture Academy in Sophia Antipolis, France, where she coached French startup firms. As an adjunct professor, she taught at three French-based global MBA programs –   Institut de Préparation à l’Administration Générale (IPAG), specifically the Leadership and Business Plan Development program for this MBA Entrepreneurial program in the South of France; the School of Knowledge Economy and Management (SKEMA);  and Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales du Nord (EDHEC).  Her entrepreneurial learning experiences include founding a pet supply company and an Internet shopping mall.

Currently Marilyn is a mentor in the MIT Sandbox program and with the MIT partnership Explorer mentoring program, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Morocco. She is a mentor with ChangeLabs Scale UP accelerator in Egypt, having worked with this program in Jordan and on site for two years in Lebanon. This includes mentoring a special program for the Beirut Red Cross EMT organization.  She judged Innovation Week in Nairobi, as well as coached and judged Hult Prize competitions as an expert in Team Dynamics and Mediation for 7 years.

Marilyn has coached the Fletcher D Prize teams for the past four years. Interested students can meet with Marilyn at Fletcher or via Zoom by contacting her via email. davisonmarilyn@gmail.com

Twitter: @Whycroft
www.marilyndavison.com

Rockford Weitz

Rockford Weitz

Rockford Weitz is Entrepreneur Coach at the Fletcher School. He also serves as President of the Institute for Global Maritime Studies Inc., a non-profit that seeks practical solutions to global maritime challenges, and President & CEO of Rhumb Line International LLC, a consultancy that provides strategic advice to entrepreneurs and startups.

Rockford served as founding Executive Director at FinTech Sandbox in 2014. From 2008 to 2013, he served as founding CEO at CargoMetrics, leading the effort to build a financial technology business that started in his Cambridge apartment and has hired numerous Fletcher students and alumni.

Before co-founding Rhumb Line in 2005, he served as international counsel at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Inc., leading the effort to open 12 international subsidiaries and streamline global operations. He also worked at the U.S. Trade Representative, and co-founded and served as Program Director of the Borgenicht Peace Initiative, a social entrepreneurship venture in Bethlehem.

Rockford earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School, M.A.L.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the Fletcher School and a B.A. in International Relations: Political Economy from the College of William and Mary. He is a fellow in the U.S.-Japan Leadership Program, a member of the Fletcher School’s Development Committee and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Contact Rockford by email, Rockford.Weitz@tufts.edu

Twitter: @rockfordw