William Schawbel is the founder and CEO of the Schawbel Corporation. According to its website, the Schawbel Corporation “excels in the discovery and identification of technologies that lead to innovative, patented consumer products, which it markets itself or licenses through strategic partnerships.” In this way the Schawbel Corporation represents the real, working example of what is done on campus each and every day at the Weiss Tech House.

Recognizing this Mr. Schawbel has been involved with the Weiss Tech House for years. He understands that fostering development and innovation at the university level is not only ambitious but extremely valuable to both the corporate community and general public at large. He believes that it takes a special kind of engineer to take the technology developed by university students to the next level, the commercial level. Mr. Schawbel understands that many students cannot get to this level for one reason. It is not a flaw in their idea or technology; it involves their perspective. They lack a grounded, real world perspective. They do not see how their innovations need to be tailored and tweaked to meet the demands of the business world.

Mr. Schawbel is dedicated to helping students at Penn’s Weiss Tech House and other universities, like MIT, gain the perspective, which will thrust their ideas into the profitability and excitement of the commercial sector. He shows students how to produce, market, finance, and fine tune their ideas with already existing businesses and services; he asks students to take advantage of what is already out there in the production and corporate world. He even urges them to think about international opportunities, which his corporation has been focusing on and profiting off of for years. A keen example of Mr. Schawbel’s one-on-one work with students is his involvement with SunSak, which was developed by Allison Floam and was featured in the last issue of Momentum. Mr. Schawbel guided Allison through the various channels discussed above to make SunSak a now profitable enterprise, and he is willing to help any diligent, focused students that show similar promise.

William Schawbel sees great potential in the Weiss Tech House. He is passionate about both its mission and the students that frequent its facility and services. At the same time, he is of the opinion that the Weiss Tech House needs to work harder at reaching out to alumni to benefit more form their expertise and resources. He and many of his colleagues have so much more to offer the Weiss Tech House, and they should be asked to do even more than is already requested of them. He wants to go beyond judging PennVention and working with the Mentoring Committee to get more hands on involvement with students and their innovations. It is thanks to individuals like William Schawbel that the Weiss Tech House has an influential place in both the Penn and greater corporate community.