Chaired by lab founder Todd Halloran, the board includes members from a range of industries
The Halloran Lab for Entrepreneurship has formed of Colby alumni and parents who will support the work of the lab through mentorships, strategic guidance, and networking across industries.
In tandem with the formation of the advisory board, the lab has also received a $1-million
challenge gift from lab founder and Trustee Emeritus Todd W. Halloran ’84, who has spent his career working with business leaders and entrepreneurs. Colby must raise an additional $1 million by the end of the 2025 calendar year to meet the challenge. Halloran will chair the advisory board.
“We are incredibly grateful to Todd for his continued support of the lab and his belief in what we are accomplishing to create the next generation of entrepreneurs,” said Halloran Lab for Entrepreneurship Director Jeremy Barron ’00.
The advent of the board and the gift come during a time of momentum for the lab, which was formed in 2022 to provide students with academic and practical opportunities and experiences for understanding and applying the principles of entrepreneurship with a goal of preparing Colby students to be effective innovators and entrepreneurs. The lab collaborates with academic departments across the College on coursework, presents speakers and events, offers funding, organizes competitions that encourage students to present new ideas and ventures, and supports those ventures through networking and other resources.
Members of the advisory board include entrepreneurs from across industries, including finance, technology, education, medicine, and real estate. They will provide advice and guidance based on their experience and interests, as well as mentorship and access to opportunities for students. They will play many roles, Barron said, with opportunities to teach Jan Plan courses, provide consultation, participate in lab events, including as judges for competitions and as featured speakers or panelists, and create and foster real-world experiences for students.
The board includes:
Bill Carr ’89, who spent more than 15 years with Amazon and, as vice president of digital media, launched and managed the company’s global digital music and video businesses, including Amazon Music, Prime Video, and Amazon Studios. He is the coauthor of the best-selling book Working Backwards and cofounder of Working Backwards LLC, where he teaches executives how to implement the management best practices developed at Amazon. After graduating from Colby, he earned an M.B.A. from Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Carr serves on the board of directors for Worldreader and the advisory council for the National Outdoor Leadership School.
Bob Compagna ’76, who retired in 2010 as the Northeast division sales president of the New England Division of Rexel CLS, Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of French-owned Rexel Inc., the largest electrical distributor in the world, He spent his entire career with Capitol Light and Supply Co. and was its CEO when it was acquired by Rexel in 2006. In addition to his service on the advisory board, Compagna has supported the Halloran Lab with the Compagna-Sennett Iterate and Expand Grant, made possible with a gift from Compagna and his wife, Joan Sennett ’76, and the Compagna-Sennett Entrepreneurial Seed Fund. He serves as director of the BSPC Foundation, a Connecticut-based nonprofit that has made grants to Colby, the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, and others.
Tim Eippert, parent of a recent Colby graduate and chair of Stratus, which provides signage, facilities, and brand management solutions to a variety of customers in the financial, health care, retail, QSR, and petroleum segments. Eippert purchased MC Sign Company at age 24 and steadily expanded the company’s services on a national scale. It now employs more than 1,200 employees and generates more than $400 million in annual revenue. He founded the Stratus Foundation with a mission to elevate people and communities, and to date, the foundation has raised more than $1 million for nonprofit organizations across the country. He serves on various philanthropic boards, is actively engaged with the Cleveland Alzheimer’s Association, and has earned numerous accolades for his leadership and entrepreneurial achievements.
David Genovese ’89, founder and CEO of Baywater Properties, a Connecticut-based full-service commercial real estate company. He founded Baywater in 2001, following a 12-year career in real estate investment banking in New York and London. Presently, he is leading the development of the Corbin District in Darien, Conn., a transit-oriented development project in which he and his partners have invested more than $250 million. Prior to founding Baywater, Genovese served as co-head of real estate investment banking for Credit Suisse First Boston. He started his career at Bankers Trust Company, where he held multiple positions before a promotion to managing director. He is a member of Colby’s Board of Visitors, as well as a member of the board of directors of the Darien Athletic Foundation. During his junior year at Colby, he studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and he has an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Trustee Emeritus Todd Halloran ’84, CEO of Fox Hall Holdings, LLC, an investment holding company with interests in sports teams, sports tech, health and well-being, and tech-enabled consumer product and service companies. He is also the principal owner and executive chair of the South Carolina Stingrays, affiliated with the Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League. Halloran has had a 30-plus-year career in mergers and acquisitions and private equity investing, initially at Goldman Sachs and then at Freeman Spogli & Co., a multi-billion-dollar private equity firm focused on U.S.-based consumer-related growth businesses. He is currently a senior advisor and serves on the board of directors of several Freeman Spogli portfolio companies. After graduating from Colby, he earned an M.B.A. from Harvard University.
Erin Knight ’00, veteran product executive, designer, and entrepreneur. She was an early employee at Blackboard Inc., a leading provider of enterprise software and services to the education industry. At the Mozilla Foundation, she founded the digital credentialing infrastructure Open Badges. In parallel, she founded the Curiosity Lab, a physical space for making and inventing. At WEX, she served as vice president for production and innovation before developing a startup called Flume, a project management and payments app for builders and remodelers, incubated within WEX. In August 2024, she started her next venture, Gatherwise, aimed at reducing wasteful meetings and helping people meet better. She earned her M.S. in information management and systems at the University of California-Berkeley and is working on her doctorate at Syracuse University with a focus on the science of meetings.
Trustee Jen Millard ’90, cofounder and CEO of a Maine-based startup, MaineLove LLC, an emerging consumer products company, and entrepreneur-in-residence at the Halloran Lab. A longtime innovator and entrepreneur, Millard began her career in retail and moved quickly into the executive ranks. Chain Store Age named her to its list of Top 40 under 40 Retailers to Watch. Her interest in retail transitioned to innovative brands, exploring new ways of reaching consumers, and she helped bring robotic retail vending machines to airports and high-traffic locations before expanding that idea to a network of more than 2,000 locations with top brands. Millard’s entrepreneurial work began with a founding role at Truaxis Inc., where she worked with brands to personalize and provide more relevant content to consumers. After MasterCard bought Truaxis in 2012, she became an entrepreneur-in-residence for Sutter Hill Ventures and a consultant at Sanctum Insights LLC and Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP.
Eric Paley, Colby parent and partner at the seed-stage venture capital fund Founder Collective. Paley has been named to the Forbes Midas List of top venture capitalists five times and has led investments into Uber, Cruise, Airtable, Whoop, the TradeDesk, and numerous other companies. Previously, he founded Brontes Technologies, a 3D-imaging company spun out of MIT and acquired by 3M. He received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and completed his undergraduate degree at Dartmouth College. Prior to business school, Paley founded Abstract Edge, a web application development company in New York City. He has been included on the Boston Globe’s Technology Power Players list and Boston Magazine’s 2025 List of Most Influential Bostonians.
Graham Powis ’90, parent of a recent Colby graduate and managing partner at Brookline Capital Markets, a life-sciences investment bank, where he focuses on the firm’s public financing and capital markets advisory business lines. Powis has been active with the Halloran Lab since its inception, serving as advisor-in-residence, and has taught a popular Jan Plan course, From Idea to IPO: Business Strategy Basics for Next Gen Titans. Prior to joining Brookline, he served as head of investment banking at BTIG, head of U.S. Equity Capital Markets at Lazard, and head of equity capital markets at Cowen. He began his career at Credit Suisse First Boston in the Healthcare Investment Banking Group. Powis is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer on business strategy; the equity capital markets, including IPOs; entrepreneurship; and other healthcare, consumer, and technology investment banking topics. He is the co-chair of Colby’s Board of Visitors and received his M.B.A. in finance from New York University.
Theo Satloff ’19, founder and CEO of Remark, an AI research company working to improve e-commerce shopping experiences by incorporating human expertise. Since launching Remark, Satloff has raised tens of millions in funding and formed partnerships with some of the industry’s top companies, such as Stripe. At Colby, he contributed to early entrepreneurship initiatives by helping establish a dedicated space for entrepreneurship, and his plan for Remark won Colby’s Entrepreneurial Alliance pitch competition. He developed the business with a few of his classmates, with whom he continues to lead Remark today.
Brian Sharples ’82, entrepreneur, public company executive, and angel investor who currently serves as chair of the board of GoDaddy. Formerly, he was the chief executive officer and founder of HomeAway, which was sold for $3.9 billion in 2015 and now operates as VRBO. Prior to HomeAway, Sharples was president and chief executive officer of IntelliQuest Information Group, a supplier of marketing data and research to Fortune 500 technology companies. Before that, he was founder and director of automotive marketplace iMotors, which was sold to AutoNation in 2000. He’s been an active angel investor for 15 years, and he serves on several boards. He was recognized by Ernst & Young as National Entrepreneur of the Year in 2012, and he has an M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
“These individuals have all developed and had successful careers in a variety of industries,” Barron said. “They all have different skill sets, and they all have connections and extensive networks, which we will leverage for the benefit of our students. They offer an incredible wealth of experiential knowledge and strategic guidance, and they present the lab with a real opportunity to further develop practical learning and creative, innovative programming based on their expertise.”
Halloran, who founded the lab in 2022 as part of Colby’s Dare Northward campaign, said advisory board members will help the lab fulfill its mission and grow effectively as it expands its offerings to reach more students.
“Our goal is to provide opportunities for students to express their entrepreneurial instincts, innovate, and try to solve problems,” Halloran said. “We want people who have been successful entrepreneurs, funded entrepreneurs, worked with entrepreneurs, or consulted with entrepreneurs because they bring great knowledge to the lab and the students we serve.”
With an advisory board in place, Halloran’s $1 million challenge gift is designed to spur further innovation and momentum for the lab.
“We want the lab to grow, and the goal of this gift is to expand the horizon of people who are willing to get involved,” he said. “Since its inception, the lab has resonated with a lot of people who have come forth to support our efforts and support Colby. We want that to continue.”
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