Associate teaching professor and director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Robert J. Trulaske Sr. College of Business, University of Missouri.
What is your background/experience with entrepreneurship and business? I started my first business in 1995. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was lucky to be in Columbia where many other business leaders stepped up to help me. I ran that business until 2014, when I started at Mizzou as a full-time faculty member.
Hometown: I am a boomerang! I was born in Boone Hospital, but when I was two my parents moved to Green Lake, Wisconsin, to look after my grandparents. We all moved back in ’86, and I completed my senior year at Rock Bridge and then attended Mizzou.
Favorite quote or motto: Do a good turn daily.
Favorite volunteer/community activity: Last summer I worked with the Alfred Friendly Press Partners (presspartners.org) program for journalists in exile at the Missouri School of Journalism. Hearing the stories of these brave journalists and seeing how they navigated their new professional and personal lives in exile was profoundly inspiring and reinforced my appreciation for press freedom and the power of storytelling. It was an incredible opportunity to contribute my skills to an important mission and I am continuing to work with them.
Why you are passionate about your job: There is no better reward for a teacher than to see your students expand their ability to think critically and meet the challenges they are presented with. Except perhaps to encounter them years after graduation and discover they have grown well beyond your own abilities!
If you weren’t doing this for a living, you would be doing … Traveling and exploring the world with my wife while writing about technology, helping the Press Partners program, and perhaps starting a new company. In fact, this is exactly what I will be doing after this semester, as I am stepping down from my faculty and director positions. (You read it here first!)
It seems like you were talking about AI before most other people even thought about AI. Give us a rundown of your tech/AI background and experience: I have lived through several technological revolutions — the rise of the personal computer, the explosion of the web, and the shift to mobile — and each one has fundamentally reshaped how we work, communicate, and interact with the world. I recognized early on that AI was the next wave and it was reaching a tipping point. It was creeping into our lives in ways most people didn’t yet notice. That’s why I started talking about it — not just as a fascinating technology, but as something we needed to critically engage with before it completely reshaped our world.
Along the way I’ve explored AI’s role in everything from misinformation and deepfakes to how it is changing education and the workplace. I’ve worked with students, business leaders, and nonprofits to help them develop AI literacy — not just learning how to use AI tools, but understanding when, why, and whether to trust them. That means having serious conversations about ethics, bias, corporate influence, and AI’s long-term impact.
What should be business and education’s best response to and use of Generative AI? This is a big question, but at its core the best response from both business and education is to embrace AI with a mindset of critical engagement rather than resistance or blind adoption.
Education must shift from outdated, easily automated assignments to deeper learning experiences. The AI detection arms race — where faculty try to “catch” students using AI — has been a distraction from the real issue: We should be designing assignments that require critical thinking, creativity, and original insight — things AI alone cannot do well. Students should be creating new knowledge by working on real problems, projects, and companies. That means moving away from assignments where the answer is well known and challenging students with problems where the student and instructor discover knowledge together. It also means teaching AI literacy — helping students understand how to use AI, when and why to use it, and what its limitations and biases are.
For business, the challenge is similar: How do we integrate AI in ways that augment human skills rather than replace them? The most successful businesses will be those that leverage AI to enhance decision-making and innovation while ensuring employees have the knowledge and adaptability to work alongside AI tools. That requires moving beyond the hype and understanding that AI is not a magic solution. It reflects the data it’s trained on, it has biases, and it can fail in unpredictable ways.
Biggest lesson learned in your working life: The simple things will account for most of your success in the long run: ask for help, show gratitude, be sincere, and admit when you screw up.
Greatest strength: Relentless curiosity.
Greatest weakness or challenge: Writing reports on past activities. Boring!
Who makes up your family? My wife Ava and our two rescue pups, Schatzi and Frieda.
What you do for fun: Kayak, bike, and travel with my wife, Ava Fajen.
What have you discovered about Columbia — a venue, an event, or a dining experience — that you can’t wait for others to experience (either again or for the first time)? The Museum of Art and Archaeology at Mizzou is an incredible place where you can see everything from ancient artifacts to modern masterpieces, all for free. The collection features European and American art and pieces from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome — there’s something powerful about standing just a few feet away from objects that are thousands of years old. My favorite is a modern piece, “Dido in Resolve,” which is now in the Great Room in Ellis Library. I hope that someday the museum gets its own building again and the funding it deserves.
Most people don’t know … Not much. I am WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get).
