About Sharon Ballard
Mrs. Ballard is CEO of NuShores Biosciences, LLC. She is also president/CEO of EnableVentures, Inc., and previously a founder and former President/CEO of Reticular Systems, Inc., a privately held California corporation (1989). They developed and patented intelligent agent-based hardware and software products that aided customers in solving complex, time-critical problems. Under her leadership, Reticular won over $20M in SBIR/STTR Program funding and raised three rounds of angel equity financing. The company spun out new ventures that were purchased by venture-backed companies. Reticular’s board and advisory board members and investors included QUALCOMM founder and CDMA inventor, VP of Engineering for IBM (NY) and the former President of the Bank of London. Prior to founding Reticular, Mrs. Ballard was Director of Business Development for Titan Corporation, a NYSE company. She was Business Development Manager with Motorola, Inc., responsible for technology and systems sales averaging $100M annually for the satellite communications business unit. She was Engineering Manager and Sales Manager for LINKABIT Corporation, establishing sales for new lines of digital communications systems, including the first Internet modems.
Ballard was the first Management Fellow for University of California, San Diego (UCSD) CONNECT Springboard Program. She mentored 60 early-stage companies (half had technologies and products in life sciences); and dozens of high-technology ventures in the San Diego Technology Incubator. She has served annual fellowships with: Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at University of Strathclyde, Glasgow; and as instructor/coach for Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences, University of Jyväskylä and Jyväskylä Innovation, University of Oulu and Oulu Wellness Institute, and Tampere-based Ubiquitous Computing Cluster sponsored Supercoach® Entrepreneurial Training. She established the Finnish Supercoach® Launch Pad Program, modeled after CONNECT’s Springboard Program. Her curriculum – Supercoach® Entrepreneurial Training – currently reaches over 60 countries and over 300 US universities and colleges. She is a frequent judge for science-technology based business plan competitions nationally and globally and coaches presenters for investment conferences.
In 2003, she co-founded Arizona State University’s Technopolis Program (part of ASU SkySong and Venture Catalyst), modeled after UCSD CONNECT. Since 2003, she has been a consultant for hundreds of grant awards from Arizona Commerce Authority to assist ventures with high risk/high payoff R&D proposals for SBIR Program funding. She has been a frequent instructor and coach for AccelTech, NASA Commercialization Center at Cal Poly Pomona, delivering SBIR Program workshops and the first ever Technology Roadmap Planning Course for Entrepreneurs, offered annually by Arizona State University. Ballard’s SBIR/STTR Program Proposal Writing Workshops draw nationally. A recent SBIR return on investment assistance was 170:1 (US$). Under competitive bid, she was selected to pilot VentureWell’s (NCIIA) 4-day Invention to Venture (AI2V) Workshops based on Supercoach® Entrepreneurial Training. Since 2006, she has delivered dozens of NCIIA AI2V 4-day workshops, including a two-day version for MIT/Lemelson Foundation’s InvenTeams Program. In 2006, Mrs. Ballard was selected as a delegate to Syracuse University’s Experiential Classroom VII, an annual program designed to demonstrate best practice innovations for entrepreneurship educators, including a variety of experiential and application-oriented pedagogical tools. Delegates are chosen competitively based on their roles in and contributions to entrepreneurship education.
She has delivered customized SBIR training for the University of Minnesota’s Medical Device Fellows Program, University of Massachusetts’s campuses including the UMASS Worcester Medical School, and Florida’s Technological Research and Development Authority (TRDA). With e-learning partner inXsol, she received a NSF Phase I SBIR to migrate her Supercoach® Entrepreneurial Training to a blended e-learning environment.
She is co-writing a book with Levie entitled Launching Technology Startups: Practical Tools and Techniques for First-Time Entrepreneurs. The book is based on her Supercoach® Entrepreneurial Training courses originally developed under partial sponsorship from Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship. She has written and contributed to dozens of trade and peer-reviewed journals related to technology entrepreneurship, the most recent entitled Anticipation of Technology as an Entrepreneurial Skill (ECIE 2016, Finland).
Mrs. Ballard travels extensively both globally and nationally. When she is home, she and her husband Dan (BSEE ‘75, UA Fayetteville) are either in Alma, Arkansas or Scottsdale, Arizona. Prior to her move to Arizona in 2000, Mrs. Ballard was studying theoretical physics at Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego.