Dan Cohen, PhD, is the John C. Whitaker Executive Director and Professor of Practice at the
Center for Entrepreneurship at Wake Forest University. Over the course of his career, he has
taught entrepreneurship and strategy at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive levels. Since
coming to Wake Forest University in 2015, he has cofounded Startup Lab with Greg Pool and
completely revamped all aspects of the Center for Entrepreneurship. Before joining the faculty at
Wake Forest, Cohen was on faculty at Cornell from 2007 to 2015, where he founded and directed
eLab, Cornell’s entrepreneurship accelerator program hailed by Forbes magazine as a major driver
of Cornell’s ascent to a #4 national ranking in entrepreneurship. In 2012, Cohen was awarded Cornell’s
Robert N. Stern Memorial Award for Mentoring Excellence. His academic career began in
2005 when he accepted a faculty appointment at The University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business.
While at The University of Iowa, Cohen earned accolades for teaching, advising, and mentoring
excellence. Cohen earned his PhD in management from Case Western Reserve University. He
studies how nascent entrepreneurs develop a passion for entrepreneurship and how, and under what
conditions, they form an entrepreneurial identity. He also researches how entrepreneurs develop
key capabilities, such as how to spot and develop valuable opportunities.
Before his academic career, Cohen had a successful 15-year entrepreneurial career that
included founding, growing, and successfully exiting his startup in 2005.
