Dr. Martin Lindenberg, skilled entrepreneur and consultant, has been appointed by the University of St. Thomas – Cameron School of Business to lead the McNair Center for Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship.
Lindenberg is a native of Johannesburg, South Africa, where his interest in entrepreneurship was first formed. “While I was growing up, I watched my dad take the family business from a tiny mom-and-pop operation of about a dozen employees, and over 30 years grow that to a 500-person company that was a brand name leader in South Africa,” he said in a statement. His father’s hard work inspired Lindenberg to pursue an undergraduate degree in computer science and mathematical statistics at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, and both a MB.BCh. (the South African equal to an M.D.) and an MBA.
Lindenberg has a number of years and vast experience under his belt, having served as chairman, president, CEO and in several other leadership roles for various companies throughout the years. He is also the founding chairman of the Houston Technology Center, which has been named one of “Ten Technology Incubators Changing the World” by Forbes.
The McNair Center will serve several purposes but will focus mainly on the role of principled entrepreneurship in promoting economic growth, especially as it relates to small businesses. The center will develop a new undergraduate minor in free enterprise, host an annual symposium for sharing entrepreneurship knowledge and gather together scholars, graduate students and research associates for the study and discussion of principled entrepreneurship and free enterprise.
“There is a lot of fantastic creativity in today’s generation facilitated by the technology and connectivity of today’s world,” said Lindenberg. “I want to empower these people to be able to grow their own careers and help make the world a better place for themselves and the people involved with them.”