RJ Sherman, serial entrepreneur, strategist, and fintech and emerging tech leader will be visiting with the LaunchPad Tuesday, March 1 at 5 p.m. to chat about innovation and venture development.
Sherman is a Syracuse University alumnus ’09 (triple major in Information Studies and Technology, Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises, Finance) and G’12 (Information Management). He will share his insights in a virtual chat from his experience as a two-time startup founder, management consultant and enterprise innovation leader. He is an accomplished innovation leader, having developed the artificial intelligence strategy for a Fortune 10 company, co-created blockchain and cryptocurrency strategies, published on crowd-sourced testing methodology, and launched pioneering innovation programs at leading corporations. Sherman’s expertise is how to build skills to harness innovation potential and identify new opportunities. His area of expertise is identifying new market opportunities for emerging technologies.
As senior vice president of Citizens, he designed an Innovation Fund to make small scale VC like investments in ideas and curated an Innovation Academy. As manager of strategy and innovation at Deloitte Consulting, he launched Startup Deloitte and built the Innovator’s Garage, a program to support teams looking to build machine learning, cognitive, and blockchain proof of concepts on multiple cloud platforms
He founded his first company, Charles River Web Connections to build custom applications for small and medium sized businesses, and then went on to become part of the founding team and COO of one of Syracuse University’s first student ups, Brand Yourself, which was founded in the iSchool’s Student Sandbox and which has since grown to a major company.
He has just started a new role as vice president of customer experience at Northwestern Mutual.
Sherman will talk about how to use startup thinking to become an intrapreneur – a person who brings entrepreneurial skill sets to a large corporation to launch new products or processes that disrupt the status quo and create breakthrough change.
Sherman is keenly focused on mentoring Syracuse University’s next generation of startups, and being an ambassador for innovation, inspired by his time as a Syracuse University student engagement fellow, and student startup who befitted from SU’s innovation ecosystem.
Beyond work, Sherman has a passion for learning and has achieved professional status in areas such as aviation where he is a commercial aircraft pilot, motorcycles where he was a sponsored racer for many years, and in scuba diving where he is a dive master.
The interactive chat is open to all students, from all disciplines. Seating is limited, so to reserve your spot, RSVP to LaunchPad@syr.edu