Click here to subscribe today or Login.
WILKES-BARRE — Jeremey Tomaine is a young man on a mission.
Pursuing a finance major and an economics minor, the Wilkes University senior has participated in four different internships.
Tomaine sees the process as vital to securing skills and contacts that will help him land the right job after college.
“It is extremely critical,” said Tomaine, who is from Carbondale in Lackawanna County. “It’s also a requirement for academic purposes.”
His latest internship is with a Wilkes program that links such student-focused needs with the needs of employers in the community at large.
Tomaine is a Kirby Business Development Intern for the university’s Allan P. Kirby Center for Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship.
Founded in 1993, the center will mark a quarter-century of service with a dinner at the Westmoreland Club on Nov. 16.
Rodney S. Ridley Sr., executive director and distinguished professor of free enterprise and entrepreneurship, said the anniversary is an opportunity to celebrate the Kirby Center’s growth.
“Over the last 25 years, the Allan P. Kirby Center for Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship has grown and evolved,” Ridley said. “The center has evolved from a one-person operation that focused on singular course development, introducing entrepreneurship as a true academic discipline, and is now becoming a force for positive economic and community impact.”
Internship Q&A
Ridley spoke with the Times Leader last week about the center’s past, present and future, but particularly its “Kirby Scholars” internship program, which currently has about 20 participants.
These students are selected through a rigorous application process among Wilkes’ academic departments, officials said.
Q: What is the program’s purpose? Who benefits?
A: It was designed to bring students in to help us bolster our ability to help clients inside the university and outside the university achieve their business goals.
Q: What types of clients?
A: Usually we work with early stage firms, that’s our sweet spot. But we do work with firms at later stages along that continuum.
Q: How are the students chosen? And what disciplines do they represent?
A: They come from every department you can think of that would be required to run a firm in its early stage. So wherever you would need help — accounting, engineering, finance, communications — all those areas. I ask the department chairs to send us their best and brightest students.
Q: Businesses obviously benefit, but what about the students?
A: The goal is to give these interns a unique experiential learning opportunity … they get to work with these companies hands-on.
We also have a mentor program. We seek out the best professionals in town in their respective fields, who commit to working with these students.
That means the client is now getting help from the best accountant in town.
But the the mentor and the student also develop a relationship that can be mutually beneficial, especially as the student prepares for graduation and the workforce.
Q: How important is it to balance work and academics during the program?
A: The scholars are also responsible for remaining the best students, so they also write papers, publish, speak at conferences — they must stay engaged with the faculty in their departments.
Q: Is there any downside to all this?
A: If the program has any limitation at all, it is that we can only handle about 19 students. It requires resources and the scholars get paid for the hours that they work.
We usually cap their hours between 15 and 20 per week — we want them to remain scholars.
Q: What about students who might still find it hard to balance internship, school and finances?
A: We also are working on a scholarship program for the scholars. Many of them are first generation (college) students who may need to hold down weekend jobs to earn a few more dollars. So we are looking to raise funds for scholarships.
About the center
The center, located on West South Street, was established in 1993 through a gift from Allan P. Kirby Jr.
His goal was to create an institution that would promote and practice free enterprise and entrepreneurship as central to American society. Its earliest focus was academic, providing the region’s first undergraduate major in entrepreneurship.
It serves as a bridge between industry, academia and job creation, officials say, leveraging resources such as TedBridge, Ben Franklin Technology Partners, the Wilkes University Small Business Development Center and the Family Business Alliance to create opportunities for job creation and economic growth.
In 2017-2018, 11 new businesses received their start through the center, bringing its client roster of new and established business to more than 50, university officials said.
Since 2014, when Ridley took over the helm, the center has provided help to 131 clients at various stages of business development.
As a business incubator, it provides space for some of the businesses. Other services include mentoring from a team of seasoned volunteer business people, providing in-kind services in legal, marketing, manufacturing and technology, officials added.
Ridley said its collaborations cross departments, out into the community — and, indeed, around the world.
“Entrepreneurship is an opportunity here, but it’s a necessity in other countries,” Ridley said. “There, if you don’t do it you don’t eat.”
With that in mind, representatives and scholars have spoken at events in Ireland and the United Kingdom, and the center has been forging connections in Tanzania and Rwanda as well as looking at opportunities in Bangladesh, he said.
“We’re developing the beginning pieces of an international organization,” Ridley said.
“We’re excited about the future,” he added. “The center is small, but we’re going to be a catalyst for change.”
Kirby lecture
The center’s Allan P. Kirby Lecture Series has been an enduring success, bringing to campus leaders in a variety business-related fields.
The day before the anniversary celebration, the Allan P. Kirby Lecture, will be delivered by Jake Wood, founder and CEO of Team Rubicon, a nonprofit organization that trains and deploys military veterans to disaster zones in the U.S. and around the world. Wood spoke about “The One and the Nine: Building Teams and Organizations that Win.”
Past lectures included Steve Forbes, chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media, Andrew Ross Sorkin, author of Too Big to Fail, Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, and Martin Eberhard, founder and former CEO of Tesla Motors, among others.