Rob Ryan, founder of Ascend Communications and Entrepreneur-America, Named Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year

Rob Ryan, founder of Ascend Communications and Entrepreneur America, will be honored by Cornell University on Sept. 26-27 as Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year (CEY) 2002.

Ryan earned national attention when he grew his 1989 start-up company, Ascend Communications, Inc., to more than $500 million in sales by 1995. Lucent Technologies acquired Ascend in 1999 for $23 billion, in what was termed the "largest technology merger ever."

Back surgery sidelined Ryan from Ascend in June of 1995, but soon after his recovery he reinvented himself as a " boot camp mentor " at his Montana Ranch and began helping budding high-tech entrepreneurs formulate winning business plans and teaching them how to sell their ideas.

"I wanted to give something back, to America, to the fellowship of entrepreneurs, to my community and to Cornell," Ryan said. "I have been lecturing at Cornell and mentoring entrepreneurs from Boston to Silicon Valley with whistle stops in Chicago and Bozeman, Montana."

Since Entrepreneur America http://www.entrepreneur-america.com began, Ryan has counseled dozens of aspiring entrepreneurs and as a result 18 companies have been founded and mentored by his organization. Three of those companies rose to billion dollar valuations.

Ryan received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1969 from Cornell and began his career as a systems analyst with Burroughs, then worked at Lawrence Livermore Lab on the first non-military extension of Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet. In the late 70’s he was the principal architect of DecNet and the Intel portion of the Ethernet specification while working at Digital Equipment Corp. in the Boston area (at the same time, putting his wife, Terry, ’69, through law school). He founded Softcom, Inc. in the early 80’s; sold it in two years to Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc. and worked there as Director of Research and Development until the late 80’s.

Ryan is a member of Cornell’s University Council and its University-wide Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise Program (EPE) Advisory Council. He is the visionary behind the Cornell Entrepreneur Network (CEN), a program that brings Cornellians together for networking events in cities across the country and offers a Web site (www.cen.cornell.edu) to help alumni connect for career advancement.

He is a frequent guest lecturer and current Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Cornell’s S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management and is one of the advisors of the student-run Big Red Venture Fund and its Business Idea Competition.

Cornell Press is now publishing Ryan’s book "Smartups – Lessons from Rob Ryan ‘ s Entrepreneur America Boot Camp", which helps entrepreneurs "become streetsmart startups instead of ‘bubbleups’", Ryan said.

The entrepreneur of the year award is given annually to a Cornellian who best exemplifies entrepreneurial achievement, community service and high ethical standards. The past two award winners were Jeffrey Parker, ’65, M.Eng ’66, MBA ’70, founder of First Call and co-founder and Chairman /CEO of the Corporate Communications Broadcast Network (CCBN) and Jeff Hawkins’79, inventor of the PalmPilot and co-founder of Handspring, Inc. A committee of Cornell alumni, faculty, and students reviews the nominations and the selects the recipient.

The award was established in 1984 by Cornell’s S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management and is now managed by the EPE Program. Founded in 1992 as a combined initiative of the Johnson School and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, EPE supports instruction, internships, student groups, and an alumni network. The deans of the nine participating Cornell schools and colleges govern it.

This year’s CEY Celebration will begin with an award presentation dinner and reception on Thursday, September 26, hosted by President Hunter R. Rawlings III. It will also include a public address by Ryan at 4 p.m., September 27 on campus in the Statler Auditorium.

For further information about the CEY Celebration or the EPE Program, contact John Jaquette, Director, at (607) 255-9675 or visit the EPE Web site: http://epe.cornell.edu.

http://cen.cornell.edu/ryancey.html