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UT Tyler Announces ETX New Venture Day April 7

By Hannah Buchanan

Alden Warr, vice president and managing member at Lavender & Company, a boutique and financial consulting firm in Tyler, will serve as keynote speaker.

The University of Texas at Tyler announced the inaugural ETX New Venture Day will be Friday, April 7.

Hosted by the UT Tyler East Texas Entrepreneurship Center, ETX New Venture Day will be 1 – 5 p.m.
in the Soules College of Business, located on the UT Tyler campus. The three-part event, designed to
inspire and promote innovation and entrepreneurship in East Texas, features a student organization
open forum, a keynote speaker and the flagship Business Model Competition.

“This day celebrates and showcases student-led innovation, validation and cultivation by providing a venue for new ideas and business models,” said Jeffery Howlett, ETEC executive director. “We invite our East Texas community to attend this free event and show support for our students.”

The open forum will highlight ETEC’s Business Innovation Group, or BIG. Students can learn about the resources, opportunities and benefits that the ETEC and BIG club provide to students and East Texas. Special guest Alden Warr, vice president and managing member at Lavender & Company, a boutique and financial consulting firm in Tyler, will also speak, and a Q&A session will follow. During the Business Model Competition,

UT Tyler student innovators will present in front of a distinguished panel of local entrepreneurs/investors and compete for more than $15,000 in cash prizes for idea development and product launch.

ETX New Venture Day is made possible through UT Tyler’s partnership with Blackstone LaunchPad, which helps students succeed in entrepreneurship while building next-generation companies and careers. For more information, contact Brandon Reynolds, ETEC director of competitions and mentoring, at breynolds@uttyler.edu.

The UT Tyler East Texas Entrepreneurship Center works to improve economic development through entrepreneurship and innovation programming. The center’s competitions and programs provide mentoring and potential funding opportunities to ensure that viable new ventures accelerate and scale more quickly. For additional information, visit uttyler.edu/entrepreneurship-center.

With a mission to improve educational and health care outcomes for East Texas and beyond, UT Tyler offers more than 80 undergraduate and graduate programs to 10,000 students. UT Tyler recently merged with The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler (now known as UT Tyler Health Science Center). Through its alignment with UT Tyler Health Science Center (HSC) and UT Health East Texas, UT Tyler has unified these entities to serve Texas with quality education, cutting-edge research and excellent patient care. Classified by Carnegie as a doctoral research institution and by U.S. News & World Report as a national university, UT Tyler has campuses in Tyler, Longview, Palestine and Houston.

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