Entrepreneurs Unplugged: George Kembel, Executive Director and Co-Founder, Stanford D. School

Tags: Entrepreneurship

Quick Left

Silicon Flatirons, ATLAS, Deming Center, and Quick Left present George Kembel as our featured entrepreneur with moderators Brad Bernthal, Brad Feld and Jill VanMatre.

George Kembel

George Kembel, Executive Director and Co-Founder, Stanford D. School

George is an entrepreneur and investor turned educator. He co-founded and now leads the d.school.

Passionate about nurturing the creative potential of others, George spends his time working with students, teachers, leaders, and investors to unlock the latent innovative capacity of their teams and organizations.

Under George’s leadership, the d.school has grown from a few projects and a classroom of students to hundreds of projects, thousands of students, and a cutting edge 30,000 sq.ft. facility at the center of campus. George has scaled the d.school’s impact even more dramatically. From a napkin manifesto to a widely recognized leader in innovation and education, the d.school has helped usher in a larger global design thinking movement. Schools and universities around the world are starting d.school-like programs, and the start-up companies and projects that have spun out of the d.school have already impacted millions of lives.

George’s experiences as CEO, venture capitalist, and now teacher have radically reshaped his approach to leadership. George focuses the d.school on innovators, not innovations. He prioritizes learning over expertise, experimentation over planning, and collaboration over individual excellence. His personal missions include: fundamentally transforming how we educate our children, how we lead our organizations, and how we tackle some of the most significant challenges of our time.

Entrepreneurs Unplugged is a meeting place where faculty, students and community members with technical backgrounds learn about and get involved in entrepreneurship. In particular, the program offers students and faculty an opportunity to learn how a successful start up is created as well as an opportunity to network. Each Entrepreneurs Unplugged meeting features food, drink and – most importantly – an experienced entrepreneur to discuss his/her start-up experiences.


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