Meet the Blackstone LaunchPad Team
Leadership Team
The UNF Blackstone LaunchPad team provides multi-disciplinary skill sets and mentoring services to help the UNF community explore innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship, and build professional and personal skill sets to succeed.
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Diane Denslow, Co-Director |
Martin Luytjes, Co-Director |
Diane Denslow
Diane Denslow is an Associate Instructor in Entrepreneurship at the University of North Florida where she has taught numerous university classes on Entrepreneurship and Management. She is the 2017 recipient of UNF Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award. Recently, Diane was honored by the Jacksonville Business Journal for an award as an “Innovator in Education.”
At UNF, she started the Entrepreneurs Creators Innovators, ECI, a student professional was offered to students. She also created a campus-wide Idea Pitch Competition. Additionally, she planned and implemented the Innovation Ideation Challenge which was offered to students across disciplines.
Diane is a Certified Business Analyst for the Small Business Development Center where she has consulted with small businesses for the past 17 summers. Additionally, she is a certified Export Marketing Specialist where she consults with businesses about export opportunities.
She was previously on the faculty at Florida State University teaching Entrepreneurship courses. She also served as the Associate Director for the Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship at FSU where she consulted with small business owners and developed programming to enhance small business development.
She has more than 25 years of experience consulting with businesses. Diane previously owned ABN Group, Inc., a Jacksonville, Florida based consulting firm specializing in business plan development, strategies for growth and financial analysis.
Dr. Martin Luytjes
Experience includes ten years of Corporate Banking, the last five with SunTrust. Following that, he worked on entrepreneurial ventures as well as teaching at the collegiate level at Florida International University (FIU), where he was also a founding faculty member of the Pino Center for Global Entrepreneurship. He continued until taking a leave to open a Chicken Kitchen franchise in Miami (and a second one two years later).
After six years, he sold both businesses and returned to academia. He has been teaching at UNF for three years, previously building the entrepreneurship program at Jacksonville University for about four years, including the inception of the JU Dolphin Pitch Contest and the rekindling of the Davis Entrepreneurship Organization. He has been involved with the Florida Veterans Entrepreneurship Program (FVEP) for two years and spent the Fall of 2021 as the Lead Instructor for the Swisher Growth Cohort for Underrepresented Entrepreneurs.
Blackstone LaunchPad Mentors
The LaunchPad provides mentors to help student startups shape their ideas and get them started on their own unique entrepreneurial journey. The LaunchPad is fortunate to benefit from the expertise of successful entrepreneurs from the community, as well as alumni entrepreneurs. Innovation Mentors serve as peer advisors to a portfolio of student startups, coaching them on strategy, venture development, and pitch presentations.
Stewardship Council
The Blackstone LaunchPad Stewardship Council brings together campus leaders to support the objectives and goals of the Blackstone LaunchPad and foster its success university-wide.