Interview/Lecture: Carl Schramm - Lecture - Entrepreneurial Capitalism

Carl J. Schramm has been the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Kauffman Foundation since 2002. Under his leadership, the Kauffman Foundation has developed innovative programs that: expose students to the power of entrepreneurship, open new pathways to effectively move university innovations into the marketplace, create better-qualified angel investors as a critical source of seed capital for entrepreneurs, and engage economists of the highest caliber to study the impact of entrepreneurship. Schramm also has been instrumental in the development of the Foundation's international entrepreneurship fellowship program, which is funded by the UK government for aspiring British entrepreneurs.

Before joining the Foundation, Schramm enjoyed a successful career in the health care industry. He was a cofounder of HCIA, Inc. and Patient Choice Health Care, and he founded Greenspring Advisors, a consulting and merchant banking firm in the health information and risk management industries. Schramm also served as executive vice president of Fortis (now Assurant) and as president of its health insurance operations. Trained both as an economist and lawyer, Schramm began his career on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University and emerged as a respected thinker in health care finance, regulation, and insurance. He founded the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Care Finance and Management in 1980. He left Johns Hopkins to head the Health Insurance Association of America, which developed a number of industry-wide innovations in health insurance.

Schramm's comments are from a lecture delivered to an audience at Cornell University during his visit to campus as part of the Entrepreneurship@Cornell speakers series. His discussion included thoughts on the concept of entrepreneurial capitalism.

Carl Schramm holds a bachelor's degree from LeMoyne College, master's and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and a law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center.