National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship Honors Three Community College Alumni for Their Entrepreneurial Achievements

Community college alumni from Florida, Texas and Wisconsin are being honored for outstanding entrepreneurial achievements at the 12th Annual Conference of the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship, underway this week in Phoenix, Arizona.

Winning the NACCE2014 Alumni Entrepreneur Awards are Gary Krause of Racine, Wisconsin; Pam Butler of Tallahassee, Florida; and Marilyn Harris of Houston, Texas. Each award winner received a $750 travel stipend to attend NACCE2014 and certificates for five Ed2Go Short Courses. These awards were funded through the generous donation from Cengage Learning, a leading educational content, technology and services company for the higher education and K-12, professional and library markets worldwide.

These alumni entrepreneurs each traveled a very different path to entrepreneurial success, said NACCE President and CEO Heather Van Sickle. We honor them as outstanding role models for others in their communities who have entrepreneurial dreams. We also are proud to highlight the role community colleges played in inspiring and supporting such outstanding business owners and job creators.

Here are the winners stories:

Gary Krause is president and CEO of EKG Concepts, LLC. He decided to return to school 28 years ago after an industrial accident that nearly killed him and left him partially paralyzed for a time meant he needed to find a new career. He studied nursing at Gateway Technical College in Sturtevant, Wisconsin, and became a cardiac nurse, gaining over 20 years of experience in the medical field with an emphasis on emergency medicine and cardiac education.

In 2010, Krause founded EKG Concepts Company in Racine with a vision to develop and market innovative and unique tools to significantly improve the overall process of reading/interpreting EKG output. During his nursing career he had become aware that many high-risk EKG abnormalities are often misread, creating potentially life-threatening situations. His goal was to develop and market products providing improved accuracy, as well as superior ease and speed of use.

The six products Krause has developed during the past three years have been well received by the market with sales growing thanks to a partnership initiated with a distributor in 2013. Two of Krauses products were awarded Top Products at the Journal of Emergency Services Conference in 2012 and 2014. Translation of EKG Concepts products into multiple languages for introduction into Europe and Latin America is in progress.

In addition to managing his company, Krause continues to work 20 hours a week in at a local hospital. He also continues teaching and provides counsel for other entrepreneurs and students.

Pam Butler is CEO of Aegis Business Technologies and a graduate of Tallahassee Community College in Tallahassee, Florida. She is also a graduate of Florida State University, where she became one of the first FSU graduates to earn a B.S. degree in Management Information Systems. After nearly two decades working for the State of Florida in an information systems leadership role. In 1997 she, along with business partner Brad Mitchell, founded Aegis Business Technology, a managed-services provider dedicated to offering technical support to small businesses.

Link:
National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship Honors Three Community College Alumni for Their ...