Our Team
Caroline Cannon
Professional Focus
Caroline has an 18-year history of creating and pivoting companies across a broad range of industries including digital health, sustainability, education and non profit. Her specific expertise is in developing business models/feasibility for growth including revenue development, cost savings and qualitative measures associated with customer need/positioning, labor, culture and impact on the organization.
Caroline has a BA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
Personal Statement
For the past 18 years, I’ve started and/or advised early-stage companies and those in transformation. Out of that work, I’ve developed niche expertise particularly crucial to the very early-stages of product and company development.
Most recently, my work has focused on thought development and discoveries originating from academic research and student exploration. Currently, I advise entrepreneurs at Dartmouth, Thayer School of Engineering and the Tuck School of Business. This work includes program development, lecturing, and workshop engagement deployed across many pan-Dartmouth activities. I enjoy seeing early-stage entrepreneurs explore, develop the skills and eventually put the process in place to find a market for an idea.
Over the years, I’ve tested entrepreneurial and design-thinking best practices and developed a series of thought exercises and activities that encourage and enable a hypothesis-driven approach for determining whether an idea meets a market need and then whether a business can be built around satisfying that market need. I’ve modified and tailored versions of these exercises to the different audiences with which I’ve engaged in my advising capacities.
My ethos, approach and program have been informed by my early-stage founder work as well as my more recent academic advising and lecturing. I love helping people define their ideas, develop themselves and thrive finding solutions. The following represents my current activities.
Student Coaching and Advising:
In my consulting capacity for Tuck, I am a career advisor primarily in the entrepreneurship and social impact sectors. As an advisor, I’ve created frameworks for students to develop personal and professional value propositions and focus on filling gaps in knowledge and experience to position for highly targeted careers. In addition, I am a Leadership Coach through the Tuck Leadership Development Program.
Entrepreneurial Thinking and Development:
I am a Faculty Adviser for Tuck’s First Year Project course, the Tuck Incubator and the Diverse Entrepreneur Collaboration. I am also the co-creator, workshop developer, lecturer, and entrepreneurial team mentor for Dartmouth’s National Science Foundation I-Corps site program which is available to students, faculty and researchers across Dartmouth’s many undergraduate and graduate schools. Most recently, I’ve been appointed adjunct professor with the National Science Foundation national I-Corps program.
Early-Stage Founder Advising:
Successful co-writer and writer of government innovation grants including EDA RIS i6, NSF SBIR Phase I & Phase II grants as well as of large foundation grants and investor pitches
Co-founder and Board Member of Clarisond, Inc.; InspiringKids; Black Thistle; and HIP
Advisory board member of Connection 101 and the Social Ventures Foundation, EPIC Education
Business advisor to HealthPal, TerraVillam, and Stone Leaf
Current Work
Whit Spaulding
Whit Spaulding has spent 28 years enabling Dartmouth students to build project management and managerial skills through leadership opportunities in his many business ventures. His managers have gone on to medical schools, business schools, and been hired into leadership positions earlier in their careers than their peers. Prior to founding businesses and mentoring students, Whit was a UDT/SEAL student in the Navy Special Warfare program and a wilderness survival instructor in the Idaho desert.
Whit brings his leadership coaching skills to AVL’s workshop and private coaching opportunities for students and entrepreneurs. In addition, he supports early stage teams with project management, team building and business modeling. Whit has served on the boards of numerous organizations seeking to enhance their social impact- from low-income housing, to rural education/literacy, to student engagement beyond the class room.
Whit has a BA from Dartmouth College.
Megan Grimes
Megan Grimes is a senior at Yale University. As a member of the class of 2024, she is a skipper on the varsity sailing team and studying environmental engineering. Megan brings her knowledge of the target collegiate audience to further marketing and process design efforts.