Faculty and Staff

Scott Dust, Ph.D. is the Fealy Family Chair in Entrepreneurship and an Associate Professor in the Department of Management at the Lindner School of Business, University of Cincinnati. Dr. Dust's research, teaching, and consulting focus on leadership and team development. He has consulted internationally on leadership development initiatives, including as the Chief Research Officer for Cloverleaf (HR-Tech) and as an advisor to Harvard Business Publishing Education. He is also the principal of the Assessment Validation Institute, which focuses on human capital analytics and assessment validation.

Dr. Jason Heikenfeld is a long-standing parter of the Center for Entrepreneurship, specifically involved with getting students from the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences engaged with entrepreneurship.

Professor Matthews is an internationally recognized scholar and innovative teacher in the field of entrepreneurship. An award winning teacher, he was awarded the title Distinguished Teaching Professor in 2006.

Dr. Dalziel is an experienced manager, management consultant, and entrepreneur who has served in over 40 industries and 13 countries. He has founded several small businesses and a nonprofit society. He has conducted leading-edge research on boards and top executives, innovation and strategic renewal, IPOs, and strategic management resulting in dozens of presentations to business leaders and scholars in the US, Canada, and Europe, two Best Paper awards, and over twenty articles/chapters/conference papers.

Professor Barton has previously worked for 13 years as a VP of Marketing. He holds a Doctoral degree in Strategic Management, minor in Finance, and an Engineering undergraduate degree. Professor Barton currently does extensive consulting work with the CEC relating to strategy and family business. 

Professor Burkhart is an experienced entrepreneur, innovator, marketer and consultant. He currently owns an Amazon Delivery Service Partner company that delivers packages throughout Cincinnati in branded Amazon Prime vans. He is a Xavier University graduate who previously started, scaled, and sold a company called Tixers in the event-ticketing software space. Professor Burkhart has also worked and consulted for several large companies such as P&G, Macy’s, and Everything But the House.

Professor Lechner has over 30 years of experience including senior leadership roles in New Ventures, Marketing, Business Strategy, Business Development, and Operations. He's led start-up teams for local, national, and international companies including: Frameri, Moto Photo, Essilor and Luxottica. He's led Marketing for national retailers including LensCrafters and the Women's Apparel Group of US Shoe and serves as a consultant and mentor for several start-ups in the technology and health care fields.

Professor Meyers has over 20 years of experience in the printing industry, including sales and management. He is currently the founder and principal of a consulting firm, The Ridge Group, which provides fractional CFO services to small businesses, and is a co-founder of two technology start-up companies. Ron has a BS in Manufacturing Management/Graphic Arts as well as a MBA and MS in Accounting. Ron is currently teaching courses in entrepreneurship at UC.

Professor Shewmon is an experienced entrepreneur and manager with over 11 years of experience leading teams, growing brands, and implementing strategic decisions in start-up, rapidly growing, and established companies.  He founded, led, and grew a software company from its infancy into a multi-million dollar enterprise that was acquired in 2014. He is currently the Director of Business Development for Everything But The House, the Cincinnati-based online personal property and estate sale company. Professor Shewmon has a BS (Finance) from Miami University and a MBA from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.