Patrick Snyder has been hired as executive director of Milwaukee entrepreneurship organization BizStarts. He started March 1.
Elizabeth Lundberg left the organization in December. She had worked at BizStarts for two years, serving as executive director since December 2017.
“She’s returning to her entrepreneurial roots,” said Dan Steininger, president of BizStarts, of Lundberg. “She had a nice impact on us and operations are smooth as silk, but I think she just wants to head back to being the entrepreneur that she was when I found her.”
Snyder was most recently executive director of the Whitewater-based United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, where he spent five years growing membership and revenue. He also previously started and grew Shoreline Magazine in the Chicago area, making a successful exit; led Visit Illinois as it grew from 30 to 100,000 members; and taught at Roosevelt University and Kendall College in Chicago as an adjunct faculty member. He holds a bachelor’s in mass communications from Eastern Illinois University, and completed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Organizational Management at the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s certificate in executive leadership.
“He was on the BizStarts board, I recruited him to our board, and over the years we would have programs together,” Steininger said of Snyder. “I was very happy to have landed Patrick.”
Snyder’s national experience is expected to aid BizStarts as it begins to explore expansion statewide, and perhaps nationally, Steininger said.
“We don’t have in America a place you can go where (a company is) pre-revenue,” he said. “To me, there’s a market for this and a need for it in America.”
