Spartan Innovations Announces CADE 2022 Fall Intern Class
EAST LANSING, Mich. –– Spartan Innovations announces its 2022 Fall Intern class for the Conquer Accelerator Diversity in Entrepreneurship (CADE) Program. This will be the 3rd fall that Spartan Innovations has welcomed student interns to join the 10-week venture accelerator program. The four members of our Grand Rapids cohort are:
Kristan Maxie - English Secondary Education, minors in History, Teaching English as a Second Language and Entrepreneurship, Michigan State University
Jesse Kinyua - Organizational Communication, minor in Entrepreneurship, Calvin College
Bailey Strasler - Marketing, Seidman School of Business, Grand Valley State University
Paige Grossi - Business Management, Davenport University
The CADE internship program hires students from various ethnicities and backgrounds to collaborate with teams going through the 10-week Conquer Accelerator program. The Conquer Accelerator program runs in East Lansing during the summers and Grand Rapids in the fall.
"With our CADE program, students learn entrepreneurship by becoming active contributors to a start up company,” said Thomas Stewart, program director. “With the coaching and the resources our team provides, lessons learned during this internship will help develop our students entrepreneurial mindset that they can carry with them forever.”
Spartan Innovations selects five startup companies in East Lansing and Grand Rapids to participate in the Conquer Accelerator program. The goal of the program is to assist early-stage companies to grow and scale by helping to author business plans, apply for non-dilutive funding and prepare the companies to raise venture capital investments.
“I went from having zero experience, to quickly working at an up-and-coming tech company. It went so well that after the CADE program ended, I was asked to stay on with them” said Mimi Pham, a CADE Intern from the Summer of 2021 class. “Now, I have a solidified skillset and I’m more confident in my own abilities.”
The Grand Rapids Conquer Accelerator program is currently underway. Entrepreneurs can learn more about Conquer Accelerator and student entrepreneurs can learn more about the CADE program.
About Spartan Innovations (SI)
Spartan Innovations is a venture development organization that designs and builds high-tech, high growth companies. As a subsidiary of the Michigan State University Research Foundation, SI is in the business of starting new businesses and runs a variety of programs such as Entrepreneurs-In-Residence, an extensive mentor network, and the Conquer Accelerator program that help us find, vet, and validate new business ideas that can be launched into venture fundable companies.
About the Michigan State University Research Foundation
The Michigan State University Research Foundation is a non-profit research foundation focused on the mission of helping Michigan State University achieve its objectives around economic development through the commercialization of intellectual property created by its faculty, staff, and students. The MSU Research Foundation manages an endowment built from decades of licensing revenue. In addition to providing over $10 million in research funding to MSU annually, the MSU Research Foundation operates three wholly owned subsidiary organizations – Spartan Innovations, Red Cedar Ventures, Michigan Rise Pre-Seed III Fund - focused on technology commercialization, new venture creation and economic development.