In the 2023 U.S. News & World Report’s National University Rankings released in September, Case Western Reserve University was ranked #34 for entrepreneurship. One individual who played an integral role in this achievement is Michael Goldberg.
Goldberg is the inaugural executive director of the Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship and an associate professor of design and innovation at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve where he teaches courses on entrepreneurship.
Before joining the university, Goldberg was the co-founder of the Bridge Investment Fund, a venture capital fund focused on investing in Israeli medical device companies that have synergies with the leading healthcare industries and institutions in Cleveland and the director of international business development for America Online, responsible for structuring and negotiating international partnerships in Asia.
Traveling across the globe to teach about entrepreneurship is nothing new to Goldberg. In fact, he’s held entrepreneurship seminars and programs on behalf of the U.S. Department of State in almost 30 countries.
“I love to travel and interact with people,” he says. “And when you get asked to hold these seminars, I find it humbling that someone else is interested in what we’re doing.”
His most recent trip in July 2023 was to Madagascar where he led a three-day workshop on entrepreneurship to 30 local entrepreneurs as part of the U.S. Department of State’s U.S. Speaker Program in partnership with the U.S. Embassy in Madagascar and Ambassador Claire Pierangelo.
During the workshop, Goldberg covered topics relating to building the right team; women in business; choosing the right business model and financial approach; scaling your business; effective use of online resources; and more. He also gave an overview of his Case Western Reserve University massive open online course (MOOC) offered on Coursera—Beyond Silicon Valley: Growing Entrepreneurship in Transitioning Economies, which has attracted over 175,000 students from 190 countries since its launch in 2014.
Goldberg touts the value of Weatherhead and Case Western Reserve having a global outreach through programs, such as the U.S. Department of State’s U.S. Speaker Program.
“It’s important to the ethos of who we are at Weatherhead to take our work out across the world, especially to a country like Madagascar whose entrepreneurial ecosystem is still developing,” Goldberg says. “This is something the faculty at Weatherhead and Case Western Reserve are encouraged to do.”