Wheaton Blog

The Business and Management Department is excited to introduce Dr. Tammi Redd, our new associate professor of entrepreneurship and social innovation. 

Professor Redd is currently teaching Business Fundamentals and a new course for Wheaton College called Creativity and Innovation. She says the Creativity and Innovation course will be used as a “bridge course into the proposed new Entrepreneurship minor. “

Professor Redd came to Wheaton specifically to create and launch the new minor, having previously worked with a faculty team to create the Entrepreneurship minor and programming for Ramapo College of New Jersey. She looks forward to various majors from across campus engaging in Entrepreneurship courses and linking them to Wheaton’s state-of-the-art makerspace and fabrication labs. She says the Entrepreneurship minor will be designed so that “students from any major will be able to align the coursework with their career goals supported by an entrepreneurial mindset.”

Her love of business and entrepreneurship was sparked during her undergraduate studies at Penn State University. Originally a Biology major, she was required to take an elective and chose an Organizational Behavior course in Management.  She shared, “That one management course had me hooked, and I switched my major from Biology to Business Management, not knowing that I would end up earning a PhD in Business at some point.”

Professor Redd attended the MBA program at Penn State and later earned her doctorate at the University of Texas-RGV (UTRGV), where she studied Management and Entrepreneurship. She credits the location of the UTRGV as a hub for  growing entrepreneurs and international business professionals where she was able to witness small business development and Entrepreneurship firsthand being so close to the Mexico border. 

Having an affinity to liberal arts institutions, Professor Redd was drawn to Wheaton College and its “spirit for collaboration across the disciplines,” which was perfect for her dream of building an Entrepreneurship program in a place where it didn’t exist. She also mentions that Wheaton had all the resources, innovation spaces, and energetic colleagues necessary for product prototyping, an essential activity for her Creativity and Innovation course.

Professor Redd’s classes are powered by interactive conversations, idea generation, and a good dose of humor. She also shares stories of her personal experiences in business. 

She wants every student to walk away confident that “they have the skills and creativity necessary to solve some of the world’s wicked problems.” Professor Redd believes that at a liberal arts institution such as Wheaton, students are given the tools they need to make a measurable impact in the world.

Other than instilling confidence in her students’ capabilities, Professor Redd jokes that another  goal of hers  is to “figure out all the acronyms on campus!” She looks forward to growing closer with her Wheaton colleagues “so that I am in a better position to collaborate on projects and to offer programming that will be supportive of the students,” she says. 

Additionally, Professor Redd is excited to see the Entrepreneurship program grow and utilize the “opportunity to bring in entrepreneurs from the local community to connect with our students  in a way that larger schools cannot.”  She believes that Wheaton’s smaller size allows our students networking and connection opportunities they couldn’t get elsewhere.

When she’s not working on the Entrepreneurship program or teaching, Professor Redd volunteers for two non-profit boards. She is a trustee for Georgian Court University in New Jersey, where she is a member of the Academic Affairs and Vision Committees. She also serves on the executive committee and is the board treasurer of The Management and Organizational Behavior Teaching Society, or MOBTS. Professor Redd loves serving on these boards as it “allows me to stay connected with the business world and to be a part of organizations as they grow and evolve,” she says. 

In her spare time, Professor Redd is usually playing golf, biking, or drumming! She even builds bass guitars, saying, “It’s the prototyper in me.”  As many bass guitars are heavy and covered in designs made with men in mind, she designs bass guitars that are lighter, smaller, and adorned with patterns that are more attractive to women musicians. 

In addition to her hobbies and courses, Professor Redd conducts research on minority entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship in its early stages. She is also writing a research paper on “crowdfunding for women-owned businesses.”

Categories:
• Academics
• Business & Management