Dr. Ray Smilor is Executive Director of the Beyster Institute, Rady School of Management, University of California at San Diego. He also serves as Executive Vice President of the Foundation for Enterprise Development. Previously, he was vice president of the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. In that capacity, he helped build one of the most prominent organizations promoting entrepreneurship in the United States. Before joining the Kauffman Center, Dr. Smilor was a tenured professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Texas - Austin. He also served as the executive director of the IC² Institute at UT, which became an internationally recognized think-tank for entrepreneurship and economic development. Dr. Smilor has also been very involved in the writing and editing of several books and articles on entrepreneurship, economic development and technology transfer and commercialization.

His writings range from articles in academic journals to opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines, and his work has been translated into a number of languages, including Japanese, French, Russian and Italian. He is a sought-after motivational speaker, and lectures nationally and internationally to business, government and academic audiences. He oversees major U.S. sponsored programs involving entrepreneurship training in Russia as well as the Middle East and North Africa. He was selected as an Entrepreneur of the Year in 1990 and inducted into the Entrepreneur of the Year Institute. Dr. Smilor earned his PhD in U.S. History from the University of Texas - Austin. His newest book, Daring Visionaries: How Entrepreneurs Build Companies, Inspire Allegiance and Create Wealth, was released in June 2001.