THE POWER OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND THE JOURNEY OF AN ENTREPRENEUR

·         Lakami Baker

Managing Director, Lowder Center for Family Business and Entrepreneurship and Russell Foundation Professorship in Entrepreneurial Studies

Russell Foundation Associate Professor in Entrepreneurial Studies and Managing Director, Lowder Center for Family Business in Entrepreneurship

LaKami T. Baker serves as the managing director of the Lowder Center for Family Business and Entrepreneurship in the Harbert College of Business and manages the Tiger Cage Accelerator—a co-working space for student entrepreneurs. In this role, she guides students and faculty to creatively generate business ideas, refine their plans to maximize success potential and acquire the resources needed to implement their ideas. She teaches courses in strategy and technology commercialization at the MBA and executive levels and guides students in developing commercialization plans for the National Security Agency. She serves on the board of the Southern Management Association. Her academic research has appeared in top journals such as Academy of Management Journal, The Leadership Quarterly and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice.

Baker is the co-director of the Economic Development Administration University Center at Auburn focused on advancing entrepreneurship and innovation across the state. She is part of a research team that recently received a three year, $1.275M grant to develop and commercialize biomedical implants and rehabilitative orthotics using additive manufacturing.

Prior to her academic work, Baker worked 11 years for 3M Corporation in a variety of positions centered on engineering and product management and served as the leader of the Electrical Supplies Business Unit.

Baker earned her doctorate in management from the University of Texas, San Antonio and holds a Master of Science in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas, Austin and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Prairie View A&M University.

Haitham Eletrabi

CEO, Tennibot

Haitham Eletrabi serves as the Chief Executive Officer at Tennibot since inception in January 2016. Tennibot—the world’s first autonomous tennis ball collector—is a patented robot that cleans up the court for players. It can hold up to 80 balls and works on both clay and hard surfaces. Funding for Eletrabi’s start-up came in the way of a $40,000 prize the company was awarded from the Auburn Regional Alabama Launchpad competition.  Eletrabi also raised money through Kickstarter – collecting more than $80,000 and far surpassing his initial goal of $35,000.

As CEO, Eletrabi oversees the overall development of the product (autonomous tennis ball collector). He helped transform Tennibot from ideation into an award-winning robotics startup that is revolutionizing the sports industry. Tennibot has been widely covered by the media including BBC, Forbes, Discovery Channel, TIME, Mashable, TechCrunch and others. In addition to running the company, he helped secure key investors from companies like iRobot, Facebook and Har-Tru.

Prior to Tennibot, Eletrabi worked as a teaching and research assistant at Auburn in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering and Raymond J. Harbert College of Business. His research covered a wide variety of topics spanning from progressive collapse prevention to helping businesses identify and seize blue ocean opportunities. 

Eletrabi earned his doctorate in civil engineering from Auburn and holds a Master of Business Administration from Auburn University, a Master of Science in civil engineering from Cairo University and a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Cairo University, Egypt. 

Lincoln Wang

Chief Technology Officer, Tennibot

Lincoln Wang serves as the Chief Technology Officer at Tennibot, a role he has held since October 2016. In this role, he oversees development of the computer vision and artificial intelligence algorithms that are implemented in Tennibot. He developed and implemented algorithms to improve the robot localization and path planning. He also handles the integration of the mechanical, electrical and software systems in the product. He helped transform Tennibot from ideation into an award-winning robotics startup that is revolutionizing the sports industry. Tennibot has been widely covered by the media including BBC, Forbes, Discovery Channel, TIME, Mashable, TechCrunch and others. 

Prior to Tennibot, Wang worked as a research assistant in Auburn University at Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. His research focused on adaptive control systems and nonlinear dynamics.

Wang holds a Master of Science in mechanical engineering from Auburn University and a bachelor’s degree in automotive engineering from Jilin University, China.