Newton Wins Prestigious Enterprise Award

The Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge will honor David Newton, Westmont professor of entrepreneurial finance, with one of the 31st Annual Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Awards for Excellence in Private Enterprise Education at the March 7-8 Leavey Summit and Awards Dinner in Pennsylvania. Newton was the only winner this year in the college and university category.

Each year the foundation recognizes about a half-dozen individuals and/or programs throughout the United States that make extraordinary contributions to promoting American private enterprise on a regional or national level.

Newton was nominated three previous times for the award; in 1993 for launching the Westmont entrepreneurship program; in 1996 for developing the five-year research project: “The Westmont Small Business Barometer”; and 1999 for the three-year student-faculty project promoting research about change and innovation in U.S. industries, highlighted in his two-year run as contributing editor on growth capital for Industry Week Growing Companies magazine in New York.

The 2007 nomination focused on Newton’s five-year track record as founder and director of the Spirit of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (S.E.E.D.) National Collegiate Venture Forum. Launched in October 2003, SEED’s initial forum in Santa Barbara, February 2004, attracted 20 investor groups to review business plans from schools such as Columbia Business School, Louisville, Wake Forest, and the Universities of Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Colorado, and Arizona. The forum now attracts more than 40 investor groups and the SEED honor roll includes ventures from: Boston U., Rice, Johns-Hopkins, Syracuse, John Carroll, Duke, Washington State, Westmont, and the Universities of Texas at Austin, San Francisco, Maryland, Virginia, and Akron.

The fifth annual forum, March 14-15 in Santa Barbara, includes ventures from Harvard, Emory, Belmont, Union (NY), Westmont, and the Universities of Wisconsin-Madison, San Francisco, and Central Oklahoma.

SEED is the only venture capital and angel investor forum held specifically for college and university students to raise investment capital for their start-up firms. The 2007 forum was featured in a special CNN report hosted by Ali Velshi on innovative collegiate business programs.