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Jeff Howlett to Lead UT Tyler Entrepreneurship Center
Follow @UTTylerTweetJune 29, 2020
Media Contact: Beverley Golden
Senior Director of Media Relations
Marketing and Communications
The University of Texas at Tyler
903.566.7303
The University of Texas at Tyler announced that Jeff Howlett has been selected to head the University’s efforts to support and enhance the region’s economy.
Howlett is the new executive director of the East Texas Entrepreneurship Center, which provides community members integrated access to the UT Tyler resources and services that will support the advancement of economic development activities.
“We are very fortunate to have Jeff Howlett join the Soules College of Business,” said Dr. Krist Swimberghe, Soules College of Business interim dean. “The experience and level of expertise that he brings will certainly allow us to expand entrepreneurship education, research and outreach throughout the East Texas business community.”
The UT Tyler East Texas Entrepreneurship Center (ETEC) is designed to address the region’s economic ecosystem gaps by connecting businesses with resources and entrepreneurs necessary to help develop initiatives that will impact the regional economy.
As executive director, Howlett will provide strategic leadership in assisting communities in identifying and defining workforce talent and entrepreneurial capacity, examining client needs to determine best-suited services and resources, providing experts to assess challenges and identify opportunities and solutions, and guiding clients through the commercialization of new technologies, product design and development, business planning and market assessment and innovation network development.
“I look forward to working with the fine agencies and organizations of East Texas to enhance the current ecosystems and identify opportunities to introduce new endeavors,” Howlett said.
Howlett has amassed a 20-year career based on strategy, innovation and business development with diverse experience in such areas as healthcare, software development, manufacturing, energy and real estate development.
He has been involved in numerous startups and high-profile consulting roles. Howlett developed the business architecture for a startup that resulted in a break-through revenue sharing model with broad industry-shaping impact and five new software patents that are still in use today. He supervised students who within five years took a product from the television show “Shark Tank” to 20,000 retail stores and then sold it to a corporation.
For more information about the ETEC, contact Howlett at jhowlett@uttyler.edu.
A member of the prestigious UT System, The University of Texas at Tyler focuses on student success and innovative research in the more than 80 undergraduate and graduate degree programs offered to nearly 10,000 students. Classified by Carnegie as a doctoral research institution and by U.S. News and World Report as a national university, UT Tyler has campuses in Tyler, Longview, Palestine and Houston.