Skip to main content

Westminster Entrepreneur Speaker Series and Networking Symposium is Feb. 29

Share on:

Posted on Monday, February 24, 2020

NEW WILMINGTON, PA — The Westminster Entrepreneurship Center (WEC) will feature four entrepreneurs at its Entrepreneur Speaker Series and Networking Symposium on Saturday, Feb. 29, in the Witherspoon Room of the McKelvey Campus Center.

The day will begin at 11:30 a.m. with a reception and networking session for business leaders, mentors, WEC students, faculty and guests. The speaker series will take place at noon, followed by a 1 p.m. breakout session.

Featured speakers include former Tollgrade Communications Inc. chief executive Chris Allison; Barry Wolfe, a human resources leader in the engineering and manufacturing industry; Kelly Collier, entrepreneur and founder of ActivAided Orthotics; and Kimberly Zytnick, former president and CEO of Stratus Building Solutions.

Allison led Tollgrade for 16 years—10 of which as chairman and chief executive officer—from technology startup to public company to being recognized as one of the Best Small Companies in America by Forbes, Fortune, Business 2.0, Bloomberg Personal Finance and Industry Week. Before he retired in 2005, Tollgrade’s centralized telephone test systems reached $114 million and its value on the NASDAQ exchange reached $2 billion. He is currently Entrepreneur-in-Residence in the economics department at Allegheny College, where he is also a member of the college’s Board of Trustees. He is also a columnist for Pittsburgh Quarterly.

Wolfe, president of Sarver, Pa.-based Argos HR Solutions, sold his former company—Windfall Products—in 1999 for more than seven figures. With more than 25 years of leading human resources in manufacturing and engineering companies, Wolfe has delivered results in change leadership, leadership development, performance management, employee retention, recruiting, compensation and benefits management, strategic management and HR analytics. He is the author of “The Little Black Book of Human Resources Management” and is currently working on a second book.

Collier’s business ActivAided Orthotics was founded as part of a group senior project at Carnegie Mellon University. As biochemist engineers, the group sought solutions for shoulder and back pain and developed a device to alleviate pain. The business was sold in 2016. Today, Collier is the business development manager with UPMC Enterprises in Pittsburgh.

Zytnick served as president and CEO of Stratus Building Solutions, the fastest growing building services and maintenance franchise in the country, until 2013. In 2014 she started EverGreen Facility Services and sold the company in 2019. She recently joined Clinical Platform—a Pittsburgh-based company that develops mission critical information for patients, caregivers, doctors and nurses in the form of short- form on and offline video libraries—as its chief operating officer.

“The 2020 Westminster Entrepreneurship Center Symposium is going to be an unparalleled opportunity for students to come together with successful entrepreneurs as well as leaders in major corporation who have found incredible success,” said Eric Gaber, visiting assistant professor of business and the Scheller-Edwards Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Westminster College.

For more information about the event or the Westminster Entrepreneurship Center, please contact Gaber at 724-946-7161 or gaberea@westminster.edu.