Lisa Noble wants all Colby students to see themselves as entrepreneurs.
To help achieve that goal and invite more students to participate in the programming of the Halloran Lab for Entrepreneurship, Noble has curated a weekly Founders’ Forum speaker series featuring inspiring leaders with different backgrounds and different areas of entrepreneurial expertise.
The series showcases entrepreneurs and innovators discussing various stages of their ventures and journeys, from the spark of an idea, through the development and capitalization phase, to a successful launch, and, in some cases, an eventual sale. Guests will discuss their motives, passions, and strategies while offering insight into the challenges and rewards of doing entrepreneurial work.
Some are business entrepreneurs seeking new markets. Others are social entrepreneurs who want to address problems they identify in their communities. Others are “intrapreneurs”—those who help organizations innovate their internal operations.
“This series isn’t just about pitching apps or chasing unicorns. It’s about people who are rolling up their sleeves to tackle problems from a variety of perspectives and experiences,” said Noble, deputy director of strategic initiatives and venture support at the lab. “We’re hoping students can see themselves in these spaces and meet their future selves. We’re presenting a way of thinking and a set of tools that students can use to solve challenging problems throughout their lives.”
Founders’ Forum will run Tuesdays at 6 p.m. throughout the semester, with most events in the Page Commons Room in Cotter Union and some moving to Ostrove Auditorium in the Diamond Building. All events are also available via Zoom. Founders’ Forum is open to students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the broader Colby community. Students who participate throughout the semester will receive academic credit.
The program Oct. 7 at Ostrove Auditorium features Jen Millard ’90, CEO and founder of mainelove, where she is creating a sustainable product from a natural resource and breaking into a crowded market by focusing on community-building and creating jobs in Maine. A serial entrepreneur and member of the Colby Board of Trustees, Millard will speak about Building Community through Water.
The series is built on a platform of storytelling. Featured speakers will share their personal entrepreneurial journeys while being interviewed by student panelists. Noble described Founders’ Forum as a cross between the podcast How I Built This and the comedic talk show Late Night with Seth Meyers.
Students will get a candid look at how ideas become ventures that change lives, insights into challenges and pivots innovators face, and make connections with people who care about similar problems. “Our guests will share what worked, what didn’t, and what they wish they’d known at different stages,” Noble said.
A banker with a B.A. in English
The series began with speaker Neil Kiely, CEO of Androscoggin Bank in Maine. He spoke about Entrepreneurship with Purpose: Lessons from Leading a Mission-Driven Bank.
Under Kiely’s leadership, Androscoggin Bank has become one of only 16 B Corp-certified banks nationwide. B Corp certification signals that a for-profit company meets high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency as verified by the nonprofit organization B Lab Global.
Among other initiatives, the bank launched an Islamic-compliant mortgage to serve the needs of residents and created a deposit program that allows individuals and businesses to align their finances with their broader societal goals without compromising on financial security.
The interesting thing about Kiely’s story is that he was not a banker when he joined the bank’s executive team. Kiely’s background spanned law, real estate development, and renewable energy, including as director of development for New England First Wind, LLC.
To make the point that life is full of unexpected outcomes, he emphasized to students that he majored in English and philosophy as a college undergrad and later added a law degree. “And I’m now running this complicated financial institution, so anything is possible,” he said.
Kiely’s life and career changed dramatically in 2014 when the bank’s then-CEO asked him if he would consider “the crazy idea” of stepping off the bank’s board to serve on the executive committee. “And I looked at him, and I said, ‘That is a crazy idea because I’m not a banker,’” Kiely said. “But I was intrigued, and I had done a variety of different things in my career already at that point.”
His curiosity piqued by the opportunity, he agreed to the challenge under the condition that his primary mission would be to operate the bank with a shared-value model instead of a traditional bank model that creates value for shareholders. In a shared-value model, the bank creates value for all stakeholders—customers, employees, and the community at large.
It worked. Employees felt empowered and recruited family members and friends to work for the bank. At the same time, satisfied clients brought new customers to the bank. To keep the momentum, Kiely and his team went through the process of becoming a certified B Corp to signal to the larger world the bank’s values and its commitment to those values. It’s been several years, and since then, the bank has distinguished itself from its many local and national competitors and is thriving, Kiely said.
Student involvement
Charlotte Turner ’26 co-hosted the talk with Kiely, along with Hudson Ritch ’26. Both students said they got involved with the Halloran Lab to improve their skills, broaden their perspectives, and begin developing ideas for their own ventures.
Turner wants to learn about “fundraising, finding market fit, producing results for investors, and staying ahead of threatening trends and competition. More broadly, I recognize that when it comes to starting a business, the odds are always against you, and no two paths to success look the same. That’s why any advice the speakers are willing to share is valuable. My hope is to take their insights and use them to sharpen my own perspective so that by the end of the series, I can confidently think like an entrepreneur and be better prepared to navigate the startup world myself.”
She urged her Colby peers to attend the talks and become involved in the lab.
“Regardless of whether you’re interested in entrepreneurship, all of the speakers are tremendously successful, and there is something for everyone to learn from them. In many ways, business mirrors life—with its varied paths to success and failure. The Founders’ Forum gives us the chance to see that firsthand: how different leaders define success for themselves, the plans they create to achieve it, the challenges they’ve overcome, and the ways they’ve learned from failure along the way.”
Ritch shared similar thoughts. He became interested in the Founders’ Forum because he has always enjoyed entrepreneurship. From a young age, he was intrigued by the idea of creating and running his own business. Since then, he has invested in that goal through webinars, conversations with entrepreneurs, and other courses focused around entrepreneurship.
“I hope to learn more about the skills and interests it takes to become a successful entrepreneur, or business person in general. Additionally, I hope that some of the connections I create with founders, professors, or other students through the course continue into the future,” he said, encouraging students to attend regardless of their interest in starting a business.
“Across the span of the series, there is a topic for everyone, and you never know what the benefit of attending could be. I describe this course as a casual way to learn more from people I wouldn’t otherwise have access to,” he said. “Resources like the Halloran Lab are ways that Colby students can best take advantage of their education and everything it has to offer.”
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