About the Founder
Elizabeth R. Thornton
Current Positions:
Part-Time Faculty, Babson College, Blank Center for Entrepreneurship
Part-Time Faculty, Boston University School of Management,
Entrepreneurial Management Unit
President CEO, Entrepreneurship Advantage, Inc.
Education:
Masters of Business Administration June 1991
Sponsored by American Express for the Executive
MBA Program at the New York University, Stern School
of Business
Bachelor of Science in Business Administration June
1980
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Oxford University, Oxford England Summer 1979 Selected
to study under the Fellows of the Oxford Center
for Management Studies
Entrepreneurship Experience
Elizabeth R. Thornton founded Entrepreneurship Advantage Inc., in January
2005, as the natural evolution of a 20-year career revolving around one
central theme ― entrepreneurship and small business. The small business
theme first emerged at American Express 18 years ago, when as the Director
of Marketing, for Retail Travel Sales, Ms. Thornton was charged with
penetrating a new market, small businesses. She successfully leveraged
primary and secondary market research to assess the needs of the small
business traveler, and developed products and services to meet the
identified needs of this new small business segment. Her organization
achieved $195 Million in annual Business Travel Sales through the 133
National American Express Travel Services Network.
This small business trend then ignited the spark of entrepreneurship. With
her passion for small businesses and her extensive high level corporate
training and educational background, Ms. Thornton founded her own small
business, a marketing consulting firm, and focused on small business
start-ups, supporting them in the areas of business plan development,
access to capital, and organizational structure. Partnering with the SBA,
Ms. Thornton developed a competitive strategy workshop that helped 8(A)
companies, in their transitional phase, to develop strategies to penetrate
the non-government contract arena. In addition, through local economic
development organizations and universities, she offered marketing and
competitive strategy training to small businesses. Distinctively, The
Baltimore Business Journal featured her work with small businesses in an
article entitled Thornton Gives Minority Businesses Map to Success.
The small business theme continued to bear fruit as Ms. Thornton sought to
leverage the political climate in 1996 after the release of Nelson Mandela
and the resulting US government commitment to expand small business
relationships with South Africa. Ms. Thornton focused her consulting
practice on the international arena and won a contract to introduce into
the United States a consumer fruit juice product. Ms. Thornton
successfully raised $1.5 million dollars and achieved mainstream
distribution for a product from South Africa called Ceres Fruit Juices.
This success positioned her as an advocate for minority business
partnerships with South Africa, supporting government organizations such
as USAID and the United States-South Africa Business Development Council.
Ms. Thornton continued consulting and empowering small businesses for
several more years when the small business theme led her to Bank One in
2001.
As the First Vice President of New Product Development for Bank One, Ms.
Thornton led a small business initiative in which secondary research,
focus groups, in-dept interviews, and roundtables with small businesses
providers were employed to identify the needs of the small business owner
in order to develop highly differentiated small business credit card
products.
And, finally, in 2004, Ms. Thornton’s passion for small business led her
to the Center for Women and Enterprise who engaged her to deliver
intensive Entrepreneurial training to dislocated workers for the State of
Massachusetts. Ms. Thornton’s reputation as a small business advocate,
passionate, energetic, and highly effective entrepreneurship instructor,
and consultant is unparalleled.
Ms. Thornton’s reputation for excellence in the field has earned her an
appointment to the Faculty of the Babson College Blank Center for
Entrepreneurship and the Boston University School of Management
Entrepreneurial Unit, where she currently teaches Entrepreneurship and
Strategy and Policy courses.
In summary, Ms. Thornton’s experience empowering small businesses through
training and consulting has been distinguished. Her own success as a
minority small business owner demonstrates her ability to lead, manage and
raise capital. Ms. Thornton understanding of the needs of the small
business owner is comprehensive, both experientially and methodologically.
And perhaps most importantly, her energy and passion for entrepreneurship
and empowering small business is inherently evident in the focus of her
work over the past 20+ years and is the basis for the launch of
Entrepreneurship Advantage, Inc. in January 2005.
Click here to download resume
