Cynthia West

When Cynthia West was young, entrepreneurship came naturally.  Chapman University’s Director of the Leatherby Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics set records selling 200 boxes of Girl Scout cookies door-to-door and launched a babysitting business at the age of 12.

“The neighbors got together to watch sports games, so I offered to take care of all the kids,” says West.  “I would charge per head by the hour and ended up earning pretty good money.”

Not surprisingly, West went on to make her mark as a serial entrepreneur.  Prior to joining Chapman in 2023, she spent 30 years as a sales and marketing leader.  This included ground floor involvement in two successful tech startups—TestDrive, a try before you buy software platform sold to R.R. Donnelley in just 14 months, and Audio Highway, an audio on demand platform and MP3 player that went public in just three years.

Raised in Academia During the Women’s Movement

West spent her childhood years as an “academic brat”—an experience that shaped her worldview.

“My parents were both in higher education, so we moved around a lot.  I spent my formative years in Bloomington, Indiana, which had one of the best business colleges and music schools in the country, and as a result was very cosmopolitan.  I grew up with friends from many different backgrounds.”

West’s mother was another significant influence.  “My mom earned a bachelor’s and master’s while raising a family and went on to a career as a college academic counselor,” she says.  “That was the 1970s—the generation of superwomen raising families and working.  Mom encouraged us to be and do anything we wanted and taught us we’d be successful at whatever we put our minds to.”

West took her mother’s encouragement to heart, exploring her horizons during middle and high school.  This included playing the oboe and piano and becoming a cheerleader and gymnast.  At the end of her junior year of high school, she experienced a pivotal moment when her father accepted a position in the California State University system.

“My parents wisely asked me if I wanted to stay with my older sister and finish my senior year of high school in Indiana or come to California where I could gain residency prior to going to college the following year.  In a brave move, I left my friends behind and moved to California.”

After graduating from high school, she decided to attend UC Santa Barbara, primarily because she was able to get onto the gymnastics team.  There she majored in international relations, earning a Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and PhD.  She graduated in 1998 with a doctorate in International Relations and Political Philosophy, magna cum laude and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honorary society.

Broadening Horizons   

During her undergraduate years, West participated in an international program, spending a year in Madrid, Spain from 1984-1985.  “I traveled during that time and learned about other cultures and different layers of thought,” she says.

Initially, West thought she would follow in her parents’ footsteps and become a college professor, but a part-time job in the advertising sales department at Cox Cable changed her mind.

“It became clear I could make more money in advertising sales than I would as a professor.  I decided to finish my PhD, because my 20-something self thought I might want to teach at the university level later in life.  Now I’ve come full circle by joining Chapman University.”

While working for Cox, she sold ads for ESPN and CNN.  “People would ask why we needed sports and news 24-hours a day, and I’d explain this was a part of new media,” she says.

Following that position, she left Santa Barbara to work in the technical magazine world in San Francisco.  There she was approached by an entrepreneur who needed an advertising salesperson to help him find partners for a new media—software on a CD-ROM.  That business was sold to communications company giant RR Donnelley when West was 28 years old.  She followed this by becoming involved in another tech startup that resulted in the sale of the first MP3 and audio over the internet platform.

While West had a lot of fun with the tech startups, she was ready for a break.  So, when her husband, Eric, who she met at Comdex in 1991, was transferred to Paris, France for work, she welcomed relocating.  There for the next three years, she gave birth to her first son, learned to speak French and wrote the book, Techno-Human Mesh: The Growing Power of Information Technologies, which released in 2001 and predicted the social and political challenges in the tech industry.

After West and her family returned to the U.S., she helped Project Insight, an Irvine-based project management solution, convert from a professional services company to a SaaS software company and was the first female VP of Sales at PROS, an AI revenue management solution.  She then worked for Fresco as their VP of Global Sales, closing the company’s biggest customer in its 12-year history, all via remote in the middle of the pandemic.

Returning to Her Roots

In June 2023, West joined Chapman to head up the Leatherby Center.  Within the first year, she and her team launched eight new programs for entrepreneurs and raised more than $2.2 million dollars in external funding, including a $1 million Accelerate California CalOSBA grant to establish an Inclusive Innovation Hub for Orange County.

“The grant, which we obtained within five months of joining Chapman, is helping to empower anyone in the community, including underrepresented innovators, to use entrepreneurship to better themselves and create new businesses and jobs,” says West.     In addition to funding raised, West is especially proud of attracting mentors to the Center to help aspiring entrepreneurs, creating a female entrepreneur’s group and partnering with Asociación de Emprendedor@s to offer an 8-week summer entrepreneurship 101 course in Spanish.

“Statistics show first generation immigrants start businesses at a 27 percent higher rate than other Americans,” she says, regarding the latter program.  “They create small businesses that support our community, and this program helps them be successful.”

Desiree Patno is CEO of the National Association of Women in Real Estate Businesses (NAWRB) and a mentor at the Leatherby Center.  “Cynthia’s contributions to the Center have been incredible,” says Patno.  “In addition to raising substantial funds very quickly, she knows how to lead and has brought a vast network of resources to Chapman.”

Henrik Cronqvist, Dean of Chapman’s Argyros College of Business and Economics, agrees.  “Cynthia is knowledgeable, ambitious and entrepreneurial, and her contributions so far have been numerous and significant.  These include establishing Orange County’s only Accelerate California Inclusive Innovation Hub (a CalOSBA designation) and the creation of a new startup incubator. She has also revitalized our mentorship program and created an entrepreneur in residence program.

According to West, she’s just getting started.

“Research shows the future of work is shifting.  By 2030, half of all jobs are going to be contract or gig work, and currently, 70 percent of Gen Z want side hustles to make extra money,” says West.  “This means we need to inspire, educate and empower the next generation of talent to run their own businesses.  Once they learn the framework and methodology and have the necessary tools, they can be confident entrepreneurs.”

For more information: https://22561610.hs-sites.com/leatherby-center-for-entrepreneurship-programs