A note from our founder, Richard Witten.
January 2025
I am delighted to announce that the Columbia University Board of Trustees has approved the establishment of the William V. Campbell Center for Entrepreneurship at Columbia University as the successor to Columbia Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Design.
Now a named and endowed Center, the Campbell Center is a permanent Columbia institution dedicated to carrying out its essential mission, in memory of Bill Campbell ’62CC, ’64TC, to support, encourage, and stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship across the entire University.
Bill and I founded Columbia Entrepreneurship in 2013 because of the clear need to support the brilliant, burgeoning, but still disconnected startup scene that we saw all over Columbia. In the years since then, I’m proud to see that what’s now the Campbell Center has become deeply woven into the fabric of the University, connecting with Columbia alumni, schools, students, faculty and our community. We have created a vibrant ecosystem supporting entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial thinking on campus and beyond. We are thrilled to be able to honor Bill’s legacy of mentorship and generosity with our work, which will continue and grow under his name.
We look forward to working with you, whether it’s as a student in our classrooms or at the Columbia Startup Lab Uptown; a competitor or judge in the annual Startup Columbia venture competition; a faculty member creating a new interdisciplinary class in the Collaboratory; or an alum breaking new ground with their venture in the Columbia Startup Lab Downtown in SoHo.
– Richard Witten ’75CC
Special Advisor to the President of Columbia University
Founder and Senior Managing Director, William V. Campbell Center for Entrepreneurship at Columbia University
Vice Chair Emeritus, Columbia University Board of Trustees