November 19th, 2012 
Tony Mendes, Director of the MCE presents Jerry Jones with the Lifetime Achievment in Entrepreneurship Award. (Photo Credit: MCE)
On Friday, November 9, the 11th Annual Leadership Luncheon benefiting the Murphy Center for Entrepreneurship was held in the Chantilly Ballroom at the Hilton Anatole. Cowboy’s football franchise owner Jerry Jones was honored as this year’s Murphy Award for Lifetime Achievement in Entrepreneurship. He joins the impressive list of honorees that include Craig Hall, Mark Speese, Nolan Ryan, F Trammell Crow, H. Ross Perot, Ebby Halliday, Sam Wyly and Bill Winspear.
This year’s ambassador was Karen Hughes, whose credits include being a past executive director of the Republican Party of Texas, former television news reporter for NBC DFW affiliate, serving as undersecretary of state for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, counselor to President George W.Bush and author of Ten Minutes from Normal, a memoir of her experiences working with the president. She shared some very humorous and serious stories with the captive audience.
Bill Wallace, Karen Hughes and Dena Miller (Photo Credit: MCE)
On October 26, nine finalists in the Murphy Center for Entrepreneurship’s New Venture Creation Contest presented their business plans to a panel of judges on the University of North Texas campus. The students had been working on the business plans for close to one year and were the finalists selected from 27 students who applied in May. The Murphy Center supported the development of the business plans through individual consultation sessions, the Entrepreneurs Boot Camp (offered during the summer of 2012) and mentoring from local entrepreneurs.
Students among the finalists in the competition were from diverse majors including: history, film, communication, marketing, TAMS and entrepreneurship. Four winners were selected and received a total of $40,000 in prize money. They included a first place winner, Brian Ivanchan of Avant Solutions, awarded $20,000, second place Wesley Kirk of Click Clack was awarded $10,000, while third place went to Brian Cheatham and Cory Pung of Growin Green EcoFarm who received $5,000. An award of $5,000 was also granted to the business plan with the greatest social impact (the Social Enterprise Venture Competition) with PCs2Prosper the winner in that category.
Funding for the New Venture Creation Contest comes from proceeds of the Murphy Center Annual Leadership Luncheon, where the scholarship winners were presented.
