S O U T H
M E T R O
VOLUME 36 • NUMBER 7 • JANUARY 4, 2018
Since 1982
www.villagerpublishing.com
TheVillagerNewspaper
@VillagerDenver
Entrepreneurial to the Core The Villager’s
Man and Woman of the Year
An innovative choice: The Villager’s Man and Woman of the Year, Vic Ahmed and Dr. Becky TakataTinker, are key drivers on the southeast corridor’s entrepreneurial highway. Photo by Becky Osterwald
STORIES BY JAN WONDRA Each year, The Villager selects a Man and Woman of the Year who have had a profound, positive impact on the Denver-south community where we live, work and play. This year’s Man of the Year, Vic Ahmed, and Woman of the Year, Dr. Becky Takata-Tinker, share characteristics that have made the area an economic powerhouse,
not just for Colorado, but across the nation and around the globe. Among those characteristics: A constant drive to innovate, a deep dedication to the value of education to advance both economic results and individual opportunity, and the belief that flawless execution can make the difference between mediocrity and a strong economic impact.
Man of the Year: Vic Ahmed Woman of the Year: Becky Business leader is CEO of Takata-Tinker Innovation Pavilion Vic Ahmed is driven to innovate. As the CEO of Centennial-based Innovation Pavilion, Ahmed and his team have created a place where there appears to be no such thing as “I can’t.” The Pavilion thrives on the challenge of creating new ways
to do things—imagining products and services that solve problems while advising and solidly vetting startups that are capable of attracting the capital needed to grow. “I think that nobody else in the country has taken this sort of approach,” said Ahmed of the organization he launched in 2011. The model includes an entire
Continued on page 6
President of CSU-Global is dedicated to today’s nontraditional student
It takes a certain kind of woman to take on a challenge that no man had dared to accept. But that is exactly what Dr. Becky TakataTinker did nine years ago when she accepted the role of president of CSU-Global, the world’s first and only 100-percent online university. The school pays its own way, taking no money from the Colorado state budget. Among its many claims to uniqueness is a total focus is on nontraditional learners, and the school’s results
consistently rank it among leading universities. “We’ll be at 20,000 enrollment by early next year, including students getting undergraduate, graduate and doctorate degrees,” Takata-Tinker said of the university located in Greenwood Village. “We’ve graduated more than 10,000, and we’re bringing in 600 to 900 per month from every state and territory and 55 countries around the globe. We’re one of the fastest-growing universities in the nation and we’re working in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, China—we are truly global.” CSU-Global’s model is designed to drive innovation, focusing on competency-based education linked directly to real-world careers and personnel needs of Continued on page 6