Dr. Aaron S. Marks (pictured, left) teaches courses in business, consulting, leadership, and sports management. Before earning his DHSc, he worked in an entrepreneurial start-up sports venture that designed equipment to mitigate concussive impacts and worked in secondary education in North Carolina and Connecticut, and higher education at Fairfield University in academic advising and, most recently, the University of New Haven as an academic advisor as well as in its Pompea College of Business and College of Arts and Sciences developing and teaching courses in entrepreneurship and sports psychology. He holds from the University of Michigan a Sport-Related Concussion Training Certification, and a State of Connecticut Coaching Certification for purposes of coaching high school softball. Aaron was a Maynard National Teaching Fellow at Elon University. His current research interest focuses on concussion education, awareness, and injury disclosure, leadership and entrepreneurship, and the application of game theory to athlete perspectives on injury disclosure. Dr. Marks published on January 29, 2024 and September 19, 2024, editorials on the issue of concussion disclosure and the lack of reporting in the Hartford Courant.
Aaron lives with his wife, Nicole Dunn Marks, who is an educator and a field hockey coach and track and field coach, and a former collegiate student-athlete; and, they have a dog named Beau, an Australian Labradoodle.
Brian A. Marks, J.D., Ph.D., Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics & Business Analytics (pictured, right), has over 30 years of experience in entrepreneurial and international business, as well as a background in government service. As a member of the Pompea College of Business Department of Economics and Business Analytics and the University Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovation with a secondary appointment in the School of Health Sciences Department of Population Health & Leadership, he brings his experience to and teaches and mentors undergraduate and graduate students in economics, entrepreneurial finance and governance, game theory, healthcare, and the regulatory environment, and design thinking and the art of the pitch.
Brian held various executive positions, including Chief Administrative Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and General Counsel, for entrepreneurial and technology firms headquartered in Canada, England, Scotland, the United States, and the Netherlands. He currently serves as an advisor to: the CEO of Veridify Security Inc., a cryptography company where he is a co-inventor on a patent pertaining to low-resource device ownership management and enrollment through the supply chain; and the Chairman and CEO, and member of the board of directors of DFN Freight Exchange Inc. (Waterloo, ON), a start-up company developing a digital freight network. He has advised entrepreneurial ventures on, among other things, funding options, budgeting and planning, cybersecurity, information technology and privacy, and export compliance. He has recognized industry expertise in the areas of intellectual property licensing, risk and vendor assessments and audit compliance, and developed and implemented strategies, policies, procedures, and guidelines related to information security and privacy, and the transfer of “personally identifiable information” from the European Union to the United States. He has formulated and conducted awareness, training, and compliance programs, spearheaded the establishment of a company’s ability to perform work on U.S. classified programs, and negotiated contracts applicable to various domestic and international jurisdictions. Brian has also served as an attorney in private practice focusing on corporate law and finance, and administrative law, and held the position of Special Assistant, Legal and Economic Advisor, to Robert R. Davis, Commissioner, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He has been on faculty or staff at the John F. Welch College of Business at Sacred Heart University, Babson College, University of Bridgeport, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Washington University, and The Hoover Institution, Domestic Studies Program, at Stanford University.
Brian earned his Juris Doctoris and Philosophiae Doctoris in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a Bachelor of Arts from Union College, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Omicron Delta Epsilon, the International Economics Honor Society. He is also a member of Beta Gamma Sigma, the International Business Honor Society. He is a licensed attorney in the District of Columbia and a member of the American Institute of Parliamentarians. His research interests are interdisciplinary, encompassing corporate governance and entrepreneurial enterprise, applications of game theory, and political economy. Brian is a frequent commentator in the media on economic, legal, and regulatory local, national, and international issues. See https://www.newhaven.edu/faculty-staff-profiles/brian-marks.php, for his University of New Haven faculty biography for additional information.
Brian, a long-time softball umpire ranging from youth to women’s majors, lives with his wife, Lynne, who is a retired preschool educator; and, from time-to-time they take care of a dog named Beau, an Australian Labradoodle. Brian and Lynne are parents of two, Aaron and Madeline R. Marks, Ph.D., an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and are also grandparents of two.