Heidi Marie Neck Babson College, USA

Heidi M. Neck, PhD, is a Babson College professor and the Jeffry A. Timmons Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies. She has taught entrepreneurship at the undergraduate, MBA, and executive levels. She is the academic director of the Babson Academy, a dedicated unit within Babson that inspires change in the way universities, specifically their faculty and students, teach and learn entrepreneurship. The Babson Academy builds on Neck’s work starting the Babson Collaborative, a global institutional membership organization for colleges and universities seeking to increase their capability and capacity in entrepreneurship education, and her leadership of Babson’s Symposia for Entrepreneurship Educators (SEE), programs designed to inspire faculty from around the world to teach more experientially and entrepreneurially. Neck has directly trained more than 3,500 faculty around the world in the art and craft of teaching entrepreneurship. An award-winning teacher, Neck has been recognized for teaching excellence at Babson for undergraduate, graduate, and executive education. She has also been recognized by international organizations, the Academy of Management and USASBE, for excellence in pedagogy and course design. In 2016 The Schulze Foundation awarded her Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year for pushing the frontier of entrepreneurship education in higher education. She was again recognized as Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year in 2022 by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) for her contributions that have substantively advanced how scholars think and approach entrepreneurship teaching and learning. Most recently, Neck was the recipient of the 2023 Karl Vesper Pioneer Award from the Experiential Classroom at Notre Dame for her work to expand the reach and impact of entrepreneurship education.

Her research interests include entrepreneurship education with a specific interest in building entrepreneurial mindsets. Neck is the lead author of Teaching Entrepreneurship: A Practice-Based Approach Volumes 1 and 2 (Elgar), books written to help educators teach entrepreneurship in more experiential and engaging ways. Additionally, she has published 40+ book chapters, research monographs, and refereed articles in such journals as Journal of Small Business Management, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, and Entrepreneurship Education & Pedagogy.

Neck speaks and teaches internationally on cultivating the entrepreneurial mindset and espousing the positive force of entrepreneurship as a societal change agent. She consults and trains organizations of all sizes on building entrepreneurial capacity. She is the co-founder of VentureBlocks, an education-technology company, and achieved a successful exit with FlowDog, a canine aquatic fitness and rehabilitation center located just outside of Boston. She also served on the Board of a 100% family-owned, seventh-generation land-management company in Louisiana, A. Wilbert's & Sons. Heidi earned her Ph.D. in Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She holds a B.S. in Marketing from Louisiana State University and an MBA from the University of Colorado, Boulder.