Dr. Mierzwa has more than 20 years of teaching experience at University of Maryland and other universities, where he has taught courses in strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship. This includes teaching with the Minor in Technology Entrepreneurship, and Master of Technology Entrepreneurship, and the Gemstone Program in the Honors College. His teaching philosophy centers on building student competency through course design and teaching exercises, and his research interests include innovation processes, opportunity recognition, design thinking and conceptual tools for learning objects. Dr. Mierzwa founded The Fountainhead Group, a team of specialists who conduct innovation audits, and is the founder of Creative Agreements, a professional services firm that uses a mediation approach to form working agreements among business owners during venture start-ups. He serves on advisory boards of several Maryland businesses. At the Academy of Management, he chairs a committee on non-traditional academics and is active on the Teaching Theme Committee. He is also a board member of the Executive DBA Council, an institution of member schools fostering development of practitioner-scholar doctoral programs worldwide. Dr. Mierzwa earned a Doctor of Public Administration in strategic management from the University of Southern California and a masters in urban design from Harvard University.