Tag: joseph kopser

August’s Face 2 Face Recap with Joseph Kopser

This month’s Austin Business Journal‘s Face 2 Face event featured Joseph Kopser, CEO and Co-Founder of RideScout. Since the app launched in 2013, RideScout is now in more than 69 cities in the U.S. and Canada, earning the 2014 U.S. DOT Data Innovation Award as well as Joseph’s recognition as a White House Champion of Change as a Veteran in Clean Energy in part for his work with RideScout. Prior to RideScout, Joseph served in the army for 20 years. He earned the Combat Action Badge, Army Ranger Tab and Bronze Star. Joseph is a graduate of West Point with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and also received a masters from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2002. In his free time, he works closely with The Bunker Austin, an organization dedicated to supporting veteran entrepreneurs. In addition, he volunteers as Chairman of NSTXL, working to improve U.S. Energy Security policy. He lives in Austin with his wife and three daughters. During his time in D.C. working for the Pentagon, he began to notice how main highway lanes were always congested while the HOV lanes were always open. People in D.C. would combat this by informally doing a “rideshare.” Joseph personally witnessed this informal ridesharing at the Pentagon. He watched as people waited outside the Pentagon in a line. People would drive together if they were heading in the same direction. Joseph’s “aha moment” came one day when he noticed people waiting in line in the freezing rain and sleet for […]

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July’s Face 2 Face Recap with Ingrid Vanderveldt

July’s Face 2 Face speaker series, sponsored by the Austin Business Journal and Whole Foods, hosted Ingrid Vanderveldt. Vanderveldt is the founder of Empowering a Billion Women by 2020. EBW2020 is made up of three of Vanderveldt’s organizations: EBW2020, Ingrid Vanderveldt LLC and the EBW Foundation. The EBW Foundation was launched with a mentor-matching program during SXSW this past March. EBW aims to do just that–empower a billion women by 2020 by providing education, mentoring and policy programs for women to improve their businesses. According to Vanderveldt’s website, EBW works by “getting $1B of credit into the hands of women worldwide, enabling them to create leverage to buy up to $10B infrastructure they need to build and scale [and] creating $100B worth of overall global market impact.” Vanderveldt says the only way to reach this lofty goal of one billion women is through technology–“get a phone in a woman’s hands!” By partnering with Dell to launch this project, they reached 600 million women last year through the program. Ingrid previously worked for Dell as the Entrepreneur-in-Residence and says her personal goal is to be the female version of Michael Dell. Her advice for entrepreneurs is to not be afraid to fail. Her first business venture failed, but she continued to try and try again until she became successful. Vanderveldt said for women to succeed, they need three things: mentorship, financial literacy and technology, with a heavy emphasis on mentorship. She also emphasized that women are part of a “sisterhood,” and by building up each other […]

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