Join the Duke Career Center and Innovation & Entrepreneurship (I&E) for an interactive event exploring how startups are evolving and the diverse career opportunities they offer students across industries and disciplines.
Tuesday, March 17th, 6-8 PM at Karsh!
The event will begin with a 45-minute panel discussion featuring startup leaders who will share honest insights about:
- What it’s really like to build and grow a startup
- The variety of roles available beyond “founder” (product, engineering, ops, growth, design, policy, etc.)
- How early-career talent can add value in fast-moving environments
- How purpose, experimentation, and scale show up in startup work
Moderator- Tim Scales is an entrepreneurial community builder with a mission to build a more equitable and resilient startup ecosystem. Through accelerators, workshops, and events, he has worked with hundreds of founders at various stages of venture growth, from idea to scale. His primary focus is to help idea-stage founders take their ventures from concept to launch. Tim also serves as the executive director of Raleigh-Durham Startup Week, a community-driven movement to connect and inspire entrepreneurship across the region. Prior to entrepreneurship, Tim’s first career was in the nonprofit arts sector as a performing arts producer and promoter. In keeping with this non-linear career path, Tim holds a degree in Theater and Women’s Studies from Guilford College and an MBA from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. While at Fuqua, Tim was a CASE Fellow and received the 2017 CASE Launch Pad Award for his civic tech startup CivicRise.
Panelist – Amanda Stockwell is the President & Principal Researcher at Stockwell Strategy, Founder at The Seed List and a professor in Duke’s Design & Technology Innovation program. She has partnered with everyone from Fortune 100s to startups to prove that a deep understanding of people is the foundation of every successful business. She specializes in weaving iterative user research and lean experimentation into the core of product strategy and organizational process, and now delights in teaching others to do the same.
Panelist- Will Tenpas ’23 is an engineer and startup operator at PROTECT3D, which focuses on creating custom, 3D printed medical devices at scale. He graduated from Duke University in 2023 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and later earned a Master’s in Data Science from the University of Virginia in 2024. He began his career as the first employee at an early-stage software startup, CodeCargo, before returning to PROTECT3D, where he had previously interned. He now serves as the Head of Engineering, leading efforts to build the software and manufacturing systems that support their mission. Will is a lifelong entrepreneur, having started his first business building raised gardening beds at 13. In his free time, he trains for running races and athletic competitions.
Panelist- Russell Kroeger is a Certified Financial Planner and founder who previously built a wealth management and tax practice in San Francisco serving the tech and startup community. He has helped clients navigate major career transitions and equity-driven liquidity events, including work connected to more than $800M in exits across companies such as GitHub, Slack, Roblox, Airbnb, Asana, Palantir, Coinbase, and Stripe. He is now Founder and CEO of Trayecto, a software and education platform that helps finance and tax professionals deliver clearer guidance for clients with equity compensation complexity.
Following the panel, students will participate in a 75-minute networking session with representatives from startups, providing the opportunity to:
- Make direct connections with startup employers
- Learn and explore roles within startups
- Ask questions in a more informal, conversational setting
This event is ideal for students interested in innovation, entrepreneurship, and startups regardless of major or prior startup experience.
Complete list of startups attending:
1. Durham Bottling Company
2. Oasis Futsal Academy LLC
3. Warrant
4. TruTechnologies
5. Trayecto
6. 8 Rivers
7. Vega Health
8. Scale Social AI
9. Revel Durham & Swift Alert
10. PROTECT3D
11. 3E
12. The Seed List
13 Texture Tech
REGISTER TODAY: https://app.joinhandshake.com/career_fairs/cb49c2cd-42ae-4413-b4a1-806ba853aafe/student_preview
