Executive Director of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship

Position and Candidate Specification

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) – a global leader in education, research, and innovation across computing, artificial intelligence, engineering, science, business, arts, and public policy – invites nominations and applications for the position of Executive Director of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. The successful candidate will be an accomplished and visionary leader who will drive CMU’s ambitious goals to transform the bold ideas emerging from CMU’s research labs, classrooms, studios, and our alumni into market-ready solutions that will shape industries and benefit society for generations to come. The Executive Director will partner with colleges and schools to develop and implement a CMU-wide strategy to enhance and expand existing entrepreneurship resources and networks to build future generations of Tartan entrepreneurs and to grow successful startups that are affiliated with one of the nation’s most dynamic and interdisciplinary universities in the world.

About Carnegie Mellon

CMU is a top-ranked private research-intensive university based in Pittsburgh, PA, with a vision of fostering a transformative impact on society through continual innovation in education, research, creativity, and entrepreneurship. The university is internationally recognized for its computer science, artificial intelligence, engineering, business, science, humanities, and fine arts programs, with a strong emphasis on innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration.

With more than a dozen degree-granting locations and a growing number of partnerships around the world, CMU is truly a global university. CMU provides undergraduate students with a distinctive interdisciplinary approach and an emphasis on research and entrepreneurial experiences. Its world-renowned faculty also deliver a full complement of graduate and postgraduate programs and conduct research that pushes the frontiers of technology, science, and the arts. Its footprint fosters cooperation across borders, including from its campuses in Silicon Valley, CA; Education City, Doha, Qatar; and Kigali, Rwanda, East Africa.

CMU’s confluence of scholarly excellence, robust federal and industry partnerships, and heritage of innovation consistently place it among the most dynamic and impactful research institutions in the world. The university is ranked #20 in National Universities and the #4 Most Innovative Schools by U.S. News & World Report in 2026 and is considered a top 25 university globally by Times Higher Education in 2025. It has #1 ranked programs in Computer Science and Business – including AI, software engineering, cybersecurity, programming languages, mobile applications, business analytics, and management information systems – with 14 additional top 10 programs across Engineering, Computer Science, and Business.

CMU views its 125-year legacy as a beginning: with innovation and entrepreneurship in the university’s DNA, it thrives on agility to seize pivotal moments and embrace the future in its persistent pursuit of excellence.

For additional information about CMU, please visit https://www.cmu.edu/.

Research and Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is known as an epicenter of innovative and societally transformative research and technologies — from the birthplace of AI through the pioneering work of Simon and Newell in the 1950’s, to the home of autonomous and self-driving vehicles in the 1980’s, to the first wireless campus in the 1990’s, all the way to AI-powered cognitive tutors and AI-enabled robotic scientific labs today. The entrepreneurial mindset and approach of its faculty, staff, and leadership have enabled CMU researchers to drive innovation at the frontiers of science, technology, and society. Its interdisciplinary research enterprise spans AI, robotics, computer science, engineering, life sciences, social systems, and the arts — tackling challenges that support a safer, more secure and resilient future.

Last year, CMU’s research expenditure exceeded $720 million, which included support from industry partners across all major sectors, federal agencies such as the NSF, DOW, DOE, NIH, and ARPA-H, as well as non-profit foundations and international organizations. CMU’s reach and impact are extended through its large applied and translational research units that include the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC), the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), a national federally funded research and development center, and the Advanced Robotics Manufacturing (ARM) Institute, a national manufacturing innovation institute.

CMU’s collaborative culture accelerates progress, enabling researchers and students to move seamlessly from idea to implementation. The result is a university whose innovations don’t just advance knowledge — they redefine industries, inform national policy, and improve lives worldwide. The university has a rich history of successful startup founders and investors who are CMU alumni, faculty, and students. This includes 67 CMU-affiliated unicorns like Duolingo, Skild AI, Nest, Cognizant, and Aurora, and startups with CMU IP or equity that have exited with more than $38 billion in cumulative value.

Read more about CMU research on the Work That Matters site.

The Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship at CMU is an institutional priority and core component of the university’s identity. CMU fosters an entrepreneurial culture that gives students, postdocs, staff and faculty tremendous freedom and support to pursue bold ideas that can be translated into market-ready solutions with global impact.

The Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship —a university-wide interdisciplinary center that integrates the elements of business, technology, mentoring, and funding— is the cornerstone of the CMU’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. In 2015, CMU alumnus and Accel founder James R. Swartz catalyzed a new era of entrepreneurship at CMU with a transformative $31 million gift to establish the Swartz Center as the university’s hub for entrepreneurial excellence and startup creation.

At CMU, academic coursework related to entrepreneurship is anchored by world-class credit-bearing programs that are delivered in the Tepper School of Business in concert with more technology-specific courses in the other colleges and schools across CMU. The Swartz Center brings entrepreneurship to life through experiential programs, competitions, and end to end support for startup creation, launch, and growth. It serves the entire CMU community –entrepreneurial students, faculty, staff and alumni across departments, colleges, centers, and campuses– through key initiatives, programs and resources that support founders from ideation to scale, offering funding, mentorship and access to global alumni networks.

Headquartered in the Tepper Quad, the Swartz Center hosts over 25 major events annually and provides 8,000+ square feet of startup space, including dedicated coworking areas for CMU startups. This fall, the Swartz Center delivered its largest and most successful event to showcase CMU research and startups in frontier and deep tech. The 2025 Startup Week included more than 200 investor and industry partners, representing 150 unique firms on campus at one time, and more than 400 facilitated meetings between CMU founders and investors. The Swartz Center also supports undergraduate and graduate fellows, alumni networks and startups, and the annual McGinnis Venture Competition, among others.

The Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship and related college-based and regional programs have helped to launch 400+ startups in the last decade, positioning CMU at the center of Pittsburgh’s renaissance into a vibrant technology hub for startups and large companies such as Duo Lingo, Abridge, Skild AI, Google, Meta, Apple, ANSYS, Bosch, Microsoft NVIDIA, SAP, and many others.

Learn more about CMU’s Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship.

The Leadership Opportunity

CMU seeks an accomplished, strategic, and results-focused leader to serve as the Executive Director of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship to guide CMU’s entrepreneurial ecosystem into its next era of bold ambition, innovation, and impact. Reporting to Vice President for Research, Theresa Mayer, the Executive Director will work to leverage the extensive assets of the university to generate excitement, momentum, and meaningful engagement in the practice of entrepreneurship and startup creation, launch, and growth. The Executive Director will work collaboratively across CMU to engage faculty, students, staff, alumni and external partners —including investors, industry leaders and mentors— to deliver the Swartz Center’s vision and mission and secure CMU’s position as a globally leading university for entrepreneurship.

This is a pivotal time for entrepreneurship at CMU. Long renowned for its translational excellence and impact in key areas of interdisciplinary science and technology research, such as AI, computer science, engineering and robotics, CMU is now poised to strengthen its support and commitment for innovators and founders across all domains. During its first decade, the Swartz Center established itself as a vibrant and successful university-wide hub with programs, events, networks, and funding to support student and alumni engagement, ideas, and startups. The next Executive Director will be charged with significantly expanding its reach and impact by building more robust pathways for CMU faculty, postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students to translate research and compelling ideas into world-changing startups, with a key goal of working collaboratively across colleges and schools to identify potential founders and create an environment that fosters the creation and growth of startups with “unicorn” potential — privately held startups valued at over $1 billion.

The Executive Director is a highly visible, newly expanded role, with strong support from university leadership and CMU’s Board of Trustees to shape the future of entrepreneurship within a culture that prizes ambition, creativity, and interdisciplinary excellence. CMU seeks a leader who will not only steward its entrepreneurial mission but will elevate it by transforming ideas into impact, enabling the CMU community, and positioning the Swartz Center as a defining force in entrepreneurship for years to come.

Priorities, Opportunities and Expectations

The next Executive Director of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship will boldly advance CMU’s success by:

Developing and executing a cohesive and ambitious campus-wide strategy to realize CMU’s role as a global leader in entrepreneurship and startup success.
Elevating CMU’s entrepreneurial culture, visibility, ambition, incentives, and narrative to make entrepreneurship and startup creation, launch, and growth central to the university’s identity.
Ensuring that the Swartz Center is CMU’s flagship resource for entrepreneurship by engaging with colleges and schools to deliver highly impactful, visible, and accessible events, services, programs, and resources for all the university’s students, staff, faculty, and alumni.
Strengthening alumni mentorship networks and relevant infrastructure, particularly in the areas of AI, software, deep tech, hardware, and biomedical ventures.
Building a founder-first environment that provides exceptional training, mentoring, facilities, and access to funding at all stages of start-up development – derisk, launch, invest, and grow.
Collaborating across the CMU academic colleges, schools, and departments to enhance incentives —student fellowships, promotion and tenure recognition, faculty leave, IP structures— to mobilize students and faculty into action.
Expanding relationships with a broad range of top-tier investors and companies in Pittsburgh and beyond. Driving student, faculty, staff, and alumni ambition to create and build start-ups with unicorn potential.
Establishing a data-centric approach to measure outcomes and impact and to tell CMU’s story of success both internally and externally.
Raising philanthropic funding to expand Swartz Center entrepreneurship activities and programs, and to increase the amount of CMU early-stage grant support and resources for startups with the most potential for launch and growth.
Using the Swartz Center’s distinctive mission and platform to leverage the expertise, networks and experience of CMU’s Trustees, alumni, partners, and friends to accelerate CMU’s entrepreneurship agenda.
Developing and incentivizing an ambitious team, ensuring that roles and structure are aligned with the Center’s mission, and are in line with best practices in governance and data infrastructure.

Candidate Profile

Ideal Experiences and Qualifications

CMU's next Executive Director of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship will be a successful leader with many of the following attributes, characteristics, and experiences:

Credibility as a successful tech entrepreneur and/or investor with a track record of building and scaling organizations that drive impact and value.
Intellectual stature and curiosity with a bias for action and results to achieve an outsized impact for CMU entrepreneurship and startups.
Deep appreciation of and passion for CMU’s goals to have a transformative impact on society through education, research, creativity and entrepreneurship.
Able to thoughtfully lead and influence within an academically rigorous culture rooted in excellence and interdisciplinary outcomes and across colleges and schools with diverse portfolios and goals.
Capable of articulating and implementing an ambitious vision for the future of entrepreneurship at a leading research university through an action-oriented, collaborative, cross-college/school approach.
Can leverage strong and active contacts with a broad range of investors, companies, alumni, and universities to advance Swartz Center goals.
Able to serve as a compelling and visible ambassador and fundraiser to further elevate the profile of the Swartz Center and CMU’s culture of entrepreneurship.
Capable of recruiting, retaining, and leading high-performance matrixed teams through action, collaboration, and influence.
Prior experience as executive and/or operational leader in the context of significant complexity and commensurate scope and scale.

The Search Process

Spencer Stuart, a global executive search and leadership advisory firm, has been retained by Carnegie Mellon University to help identify and recruit the new Executive Director of Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. All inquiries, nominations, and applications (CVs and letters of interest) should be sent electronically and in confidence to: CMUSwartzCenter@SpencerStuart.com

Carnegie Mellon University does not discriminate in admission, employment, or administration of its programs or activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy or related condition, family status, marital status, parental status, religion, ancestry, veteran status, or genetic information. Furthermore, Carnegie Mellon University does not discriminate and is required not to discriminate in violation of federal, state, or local laws or executive orders.