The Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center (CRC) has announced the formation of an entrepreneurial mentoring organization called the VT Midas Institute.  The goals of the Institute are to enhance growth of high-potential companies, engage successful business leaders with the university, energize entrepreneurship, and educate the next generation of leaders of the new economy.

The Institute is holding its first campus forum on Thursday, May 21, from 2 - 4 p.m. at the Inn at Virginia Tech.  The program shows owners, managers and advisors to privately held businesses how to dramatically increase the value of these businesses – even in terrible economic times. To register, please call the Institute staff at (540) 443-0034, or register online at www.vtmidas.com. “Our target nominee is a successful mid-sized company who has graduated from the start-up phase of development and is moving into the second growth phase,” said VT Midas Institute Director Joel S. Williams.

The VT Midas Institute is one of many being developed at universities across the nation by Rob Slee, a national leader in private capital markets.  Slee has written more than 150 articles on private markets; and is the author of three books, Private Capital Markets, Midas Managers and Midas Marketing that provide the foundation for continued business advancement. The Institute will leverage the expertise of Midas Mentors, who are successful business owners, to coach Midas Mentorees, who are high-potential company owners.  University students having an interest in entrepreneurship will be used as interns.

The Institute’s Alpha Mentor Board, an advisory board of successful business leaders from the Virginia Tech alumni community, has already met several times. The Board currently includes:

• Richard T. Crowder – formerly ambassador and chief agricultural negotiator for the United States and currently adjunct professor in Virginia Tech’s Agricultural and Applied Economics Department;
• John Emery - managing partner of Stone Circle Capital – a venture fund and formerly CEO of Great Wolf Resorts;
• Thomas H. Garnett, III - formerly the international trade manager for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership;
• Wally Newton - adjunct faculty member of the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business and a CFO consultant for small businesses;
• Mike Quillen - president and CEO of Alpha Natural Resources in Abingdon;
• Nancy Sauer - president of  D2Xchange, LLC in Colorado; and
• Denman Zirkle – currently executive director of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation and formerly CEO of Carret and Company, a New York-based advisory firm.

 The VT Midas Institute Director Joel S. Williams, PhD, is founder and managing principal of Joel S Williams | An Alliance of Wealth Advisors. JSW specializes in assisting wealthy families and family businesses with customized, leading edge solutions for their wealth and estate plans.
The VT Business Technology Center, directed by Dick Daugherty, PhD, will assist the Institute in the recruitment of students for the Institute's programs.

The Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center is a research park located adjacent to the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. The research park houses more than 135 high-tech research and development businesses and employs over 2,000 people in 24 buildings.