Buerk Center Director Honored as PSBJ 2024 Woman of Influence
The Puget Sound Business Journal selected Amy Sallin and 16 others as 2024 Women of Influence
Written by: Charles Trillingham, Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship
You’ll have to excuse the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship’s Amy Sallin for shying away from the spotlight. As director of the Center in the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, she would rather see headlines about their programs and the entrepreneurial students and alumni her staff regularly support. This combination of modesty and dedication is why she is described by others as a “powerhouse” full of “integrity and passion for making a positive impact on her community.” It’s also a big reason why the Puget Sound Business Journal (PSBJ) honored Sallin as a 2024 Woman of Influence.
For the past 21 years, the PSBJ has recognized female leaders for their professional accomplishments and industry impact. Sallin was selected from a pool of nearly 200 nominations into a cohort of 17 women who have “shaped the strategy and culture at some of the Puget Sound region’s most prominent institutions.” She is the only honoree to represent an educational institution — a great source of pride for her.
“We embrace and tap into the innovative mindset at UW to launch impactful offerings like the Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership program (WE Lead), which is entering its second year this fall,” said Sallin. “I believe entrepreneurship can empower students of all levels and backgrounds to find a sense of self, believe in their ideas, and either create a startup of their own or support our thriving ecosystem in the Seattle area.”
WE Lead represents a signature passion project for Sallin, who spent years taking it from concept to an official launch in 2023. The program “promotes the advancement of women as entrepreneurs, leaders, investors, and agents of innovation.” And in its first year, WE Lead hosted 24 events across campus, with over 300 students and 70 leaders from the Puget Sound entrepreneurial community participating.
Leadership Creates Opportunities
Under Sallin’s leadership, the WE Lead program and the Center continue to grow with an eye toward the future. In September 2024, the Buerk Center took the first steps to roll out Amy’s vision for a new student incubator program hosted in UW’s Startup Hall. Building on 15-years of success stories from the annual Jones + Foster Accelerator, the new Incubator’s goal is to provide year-round workshops and mentoring to give students the tools to learn how to build a startup from idea to launch.
“The work to expand the Buerk Center into West Campus could not happen without the support of Foster School leadership and our partners across UW and the community,” said Sallin. “Startup Hall is positioned to play a role in UW’s future plans for an innovation-focused redevelopment in the area and we want to be as available to students as possible. This is how we fulfill our mission to meet them wherever they are in their entrepreneurial journey.”
Sallin understands how mentorship isn’t just something you provide to those at the beginning of starting something. Any innovator or entrepreneur can reach a crossroads in need of help.
In a letter of support for Sallin’s nomination as a PSBJ Woman of Influence, a Buerk Center staff member noted, “Amy’s real superpower is the way she has nurtured and fostered the culture of mentorship and continues to build a whole community around it. Every year, Amy and her team bring in hundreds of volunteers from the entrepreneurial community to coach, judge, mentor and advise students. Some volunteers may participate for a day, judging a competition or class and providing valuable feedback. Other mentors may work with a team in developing their business for a class or competition for a quarter or several months. “
The mentor-focused mindset has followed Amy since her time in higher education at Portland State University and Whatcom Community College. She joined the Buerk Center in 2012 and grew the Accelerator and the Business Plan Competition (now Dempsey Startup Competition) under the guidance of Connie Bourassa-Shaw — a leader described as the ‘heart and soul’ of UW entrepreneurship.
In 2018–19, Sallin took the reins as director. In announcing her promotion, Dean Frank Hodge noted many of Amy’s goals — including how her focus on innovative learning spaces, inclusion, diversity, and “making the Foster School the epicenter of all things entrepreneurial at the UW” aligned with initiatives he intended to pursue.
And indeed, six years later she has carved out a significant legacy of her own, while championing the dedication to impact the Foster School was making at the administrative level. The Center has expanded its collaboration across campus, emphasizing a cross-disciplinary “team” approach. The Center also took steps to solidify UW as a beacon for early-stage entrepreneurial growth in the region.
In 2019, the Center’s three annual student new venture competitions — the Hollomon Health Innovation Challenge, Environmental Innovation Challenge, and Dempsey Startup Competition — opened up to students across the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. Over the past two years, the competitions have repeatedly set new records for participation.
“In 2024 alone, over 2,500 students were impacted by the competitions, workshops, accelerators, academic courses and co-curricular programs offered by the Buerk Center,” said Sara Weaver, chair of the Buerk Center’s advisory board. “That is a testament to Amy’s remarkable leadership.”
At the same time, student-created ventures like A-Alpha Bio, Membrion, OneCourt, CathConnect and hundreds of others have launched and grown exponentially. A recent survey revealed that over the past 10 years, undergraduate and graduate students have gone on to launch nearly 3,000 ventures, bringing in over $2 billion dollars in fundraising.
These achievements, and the incredible work by campus partners like UW CoMotion, the College of Engineering, and others did not go unnoticed nationally. For the first time ever, UW ranked in the top 10 for “Best Entrepreneurship Program” on both the undergraduate and graduate side in 2024 by the Princeton Review and Entrepreneur Magazine.
But Sallin refuses to rest on past success. While the Buerk Center has remained entirely self-funded, with no financial support from the University of Washington or the State of Washington, she continually champions new programs and expands existing ones.
Just don’t ask her to take all the credit for what has been accomplished.
“Without these incredible students, our passionate partners at UW and across this remarkable city, the instructors who teach in the classroom, and the most impressive, dedicated staff a director could ever ask for, this wouldn’t be possible,” she’ll say — before likely asking you if you’d like to get involved.
A woman of influence, through and through.
Honorees to be Celebrated by PSBJ on November 14
The PSBJ will celebrate the 2024 Women of Influence cohort on Thursday, November 14 at an evening reception at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue. An official release of the annual Women of Influence publication takes place the next day.
More than 300 women have been honored since the Women of Influence program was launched in 2004. Former honorees include Fortune 500 executives, community champions, local icons and industry pioneers.
This year’s honorees are:
· AyeNay Abye, Tubman Center for Health and Freedom
· Andrea, Anderson, Girl Scouts of Western Washington
· Gillian Crossan, Deloitte & Touche LLP
· Patty Eakes, Morgan Lewis
· Leslie Feinzag, Graham & Walker
· Jennifer Hare, PNC Bank
· Alissa Leinonen, Gourmondo
· Jamie Peha, Auction of Washington Wines
· Amy Sallin, University of Washington, Foster School of Business
· Alice Shobe, Amazon.com Inc
· Michele Smith, Museum of Pop Culture
· Heather Snavely, AAA Washington
· Alysa Taylor, Microsoft Corp.
· Cara Thompson, Umpqua Bank
· Elizabeth Wako, Providence Swedish
· Mary Yu, Washington Supreme Court
To read more about the Women of Influence, visit the Puget Sound Business Journal’s website. To get involved with the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship, head to startup.uw.edu.
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