Business Economics major, Aidan Conley ’16 knew his passion lay in the entrepreneurship sector because he loves problem solving and the fast moving energy in such an environment. Originally from Kansas, Aidan works closely with Director of Entrepreneurship, Dr. Peter Abramo on some projects at Wooster. He first met Dr. Abramo when he took his class, Introduction to Entrepreneurship and later became heavily involved in the Entrepreneurship club on campus, Launch. While discussing his professional interests with Dr. Abramo, he was led to a number of business incubators with which Dr. Abramo is connected. He emailed the heads of all these incubators and developed a strong connection with Ashok Chandor, founder of Cellanyx Diagnostics, a developer of cancer diagnostics, incubated by North Shore InnoVentures. One thing led to another, and soon Aidan had received an APEX Fellowship to be a business development intern at the company in Boston during summer 2014. As the only intern in an office of approximately 7 people, Aidan touched his hands on everything a startup does, from organizing receipts and invoices, evaluating financial projections, process modeling and performing case studies on similar companies. After that summer, Aidan spent fall 2014 off campus in Philadelphia where he participated in a program at The Philadelphia Center. He attended class once a week and interned at a Real Estate Developer the other four days of the week. Aidan has thoroughly enjoyed both his experiences and continues to search for other opportunities in the entrepreneurship world.
As for his on-campus activities, Aidan is treasurer of Launch and worked on organizing the on campus Idea competition for two consecutive years. He is also currently the student manager of the newly incorporated Wooster Chapter of the Northeast Ohio Student Venture Fund. Aidan leads a 9 person team to identify and perform due diligence on technology startups in Ohio.