Samantha Dewalt on Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley

Image by iStock/Natalya Kosarevich

In this episode of Lehigh University’s College of Business ilLUminate podcast, host Stephanie Veto talks with Samantha Dewalt about Lehigh West and the importance of preparing business leaders of tomorrow through authentic experiences in Silicon Valley. 

Listen to the podcast here and subscribe and download Lehigh Business on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Below is an edited excerpt from the conversation. Read the complete podcast transcript [PDF].

Veto: Why is it important that Lehigh has a presence in Silicon Valley? 

Dewalt: Lehigh has had a presence in the Bay Area officially since 2016 with the launch of the Western Regional Office. Although prior to that, we had run Lehigh Silicon Valley, which is a program of the Baker Institute. It’s still running strong today as a flagship program offered in the West. It was created to extend the university's reach and impact on the West Coast and in key innovation hubs. It connects students and faculty to key innovation hubs across the West Coast, where they can engage in real-world learning, applied research and innovation. It also creates opportunities for the West Coast communities and here in Northern California to connect with Lehigh, Lehigh talent, Lehigh faculty. 

We've been able to recruit the next generation of Lehigh students to the university since being out here. Lehigh West is an integrated platform across student recruitment, engagement, academic programs, industry partnerships, alumni engagement and career pathways. Since being out here, we've seen a 250% increase in enrollment from Northern California and an 87% increase in applications from West Coast states. We've had more than 1,800 students participate in programs across 84 disciplines. More than 200 industry partners engage, and more than 1,300 students placed in internships and full-time roles. So, I think it's working. 

Veto: You had a partnership with the NASDAQ Center for several years that recently ended. What are some key takeaways from that experience? 

Dewalt: That was an incredible partnership. It helped us lay the foundation for a lot of the programs that we've now built and scaled. It was truly an education industry partnership coming together for the mutual value of society. Some of the programs that we built that are still running strong today were built on the notion of serving the needs of the talent community. 

Students want access to real-world, hands-on learning in the innovation ecosystem. They want to learn what it takes to build and grow a company and what better way to do it than to sit beside a founder who's doing it in real time and to help them. In fact, the NASDAQ Center pulled their founder community and said, "What's the number one thing that keeps you up at night?" And they said, "Talent." And we said, "Well, we have this perfect partnership where we can bring together the talent community with the startup community.” 

We've placed hundreds of students with hundreds of startups in these internship experiences that really help accelerate businesses and talent and skills for these students. We learned a lot and were able to do that with an industry partner where we sat at that intersection of theory and practice. And we're able to practice in real time. 

We used our own programs as living labs for research, interviewing and surveying founders in real time to really understand their needs, pain points and opportunities. We would then take the knowledge that we were generating and develop it-- whether it was opinion pieces or research articles that have now appeared in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Fortune, Startups Magazine and University World News. 

We wanted to make sure that we were generating valuable insights in real time that supported current and aspiring entrepreneurs in real time. That partnership gave us the vehicle to really get the insights out to the practitioner world in real time and benefit our students who are going through the learning journey. We learned key lessons through that partnership– how to work with industry, how to work with the startup community to really build and scale innovation in education, and innovation in building the next generation of companies. 

Veto: You work in an industry with an ever-changing landscape. What is the program focusing on in terms of academics and keeping up? What do students have to look forward to in being prepared? 

Dewalt: Being situated here, in Silicon Valley-- which is one of the world's most innovative hubs, you've got startups, you have major corporations, you have the universities, you have the accelerators all coming together in this intellectual community where ideas are born and developed and furthered. So, being on the ground here and a part of that is amazing because we lean into that community to help teach the next generation. 

All the courses and programs that we teach are integrated with real-world experiences. Students are working beside founders. Tech leaders are coming into the classroom to talk about what they're seeing in Silicon Valley, how to differentiate yourself when you're applying for jobs in a world where AI is transforming all our roles. We intentionally stay very timely and relevant to make sure that what we're teaching can be implemented in real time and practiced in real time by those students. 

You need to be thinking 10 steps ahead, always. We're constantly integrating topics that are timely and relevant into the classroom. At the core, it's a lot of entrepreneurial mindset, skillset development, but it's also about emerging tech. It's about human-centered skills. It's about what's happening across industries, from AI to energy, to healthcare and biotech. They see the span of industries and innovation happening. AI is changing every industry and every field. So, of course, that's been a big part of a lot of our curriculum. Students are building real AI applications for their companies in their jobs. So, they're not just learning about it, they're doing it. They're building it.