Bryan K RitchieBryan Ritchie - BioBryan Ritchie is a proven serial entrepreneur who advises venture capital startups and private equity growth-stage companies. As a Partner at Atua Partners and CEO of GrowthSPORT, he advises venture capital startups and private equty growth-stage companies, helping organizations scale and execute their strategic intent.Before GrowthSPORT, Ritchie was the Chief Executive Officer of Simba Chain, where he helped raise over $37m to fund rapid growth.Prior to Simba, Ritchie was Notre Dame's first vice president and associate provost for innovation, leading the University's IDEA (Innovation, De-risking, and Enterprise Acceleration) Center, where he worked closely with deans, alumni, faculty, and students to commercialize intellectual property. Over 5 years he oversaw the formation of over 150 companies, was the general partner and chief investment officer for the Pit Road Venture Fund, and was the founder of the IDEA Week entrepreneurship conference and celebration.In addition to these roles, Ritchie has formed multiple information technology companies of his own during his career and also held management positions with Century Software, Dayna Communications, IBM, Novell, IOMEGA, Megahertz, and 3Com. He has consulted for Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Ericsson, Seagate, Verizon, Givaudan, and over 100 other companies.He also spent four years directing technology commercialization at the University of Utah, first as associate vice president for technology venture development and then as associate vice president for research. He oversaw more than 200 new startups, more than $700 million in investment and grants, an average of 90 licenses per year, and 90+ patents per year. Ritchie received a B.A. degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, an M.B.A. from the Marriott School at Brigham Young University, and a Ph.D. in political economy from Emory University. Fluent in Thai and conversant in several other Asian languages, Ritchie is the author of several books, including Culture Code: how to connect your organization's strategic intent with daily execution, Systemic Vulnerability and Sustainable Economic Growth: Skills and Upgrading in Southeast Asia and, with Lindon Robison, Relationship Economics: The Social Capital Paradigm and its Application to Business, Politics, and Other Transactions. Read More Read Less