Donna De Carolis

Founding Dean

Silverman Family Professor of Entrepreneurial Leadership

decarodm@drexel.edu
215.895.1795

Donna Marie De Carolis, Ph.D., is the founding Dean of the Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship and the Silverman Family Professor of Entrepreneurial Leadership at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Her career itself is entrepreneurial – one of reinvention from high school history teacher to consultant to professor and university dean. She characterizes her strong motivation in both her personal and professional life as “small acts of entrepreneurship"– those decisions that require a leap of faith onto a new path.

As founding Dean of the Close School, the nation’s first stand-alone, degree-granting school of entrepreneurship at a university, De Carolis initiated a pioneering approach to entrepreneurship education. Her vision is to empower all university students with the mindset that they can be entrepreneurs – by broadly defining entrepreneurship as an attitude that incorporates innovative thinking and doing in all facets of life and career.

De Carolis has been a champion of entrepreneurship education in her various roles as Associate Dean and Management Department head at Drexel’s LeBow College of Business, and as Associate Vice-Provost for Entrepreneurship Education at Drexel University.