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Greenville Business Magazine

Johnson Innovation Speaker Series To Feature Zipcar Co-Founder

Oct 09, 2018 11:08AM ● By Kathleen Maris

The George Dean Johnson, Jr. College of Business and Economics at the University of South Carolina Upstate will feature Robin Chase as the speaker for its annual Johnson Innovation Speaker Series on Thursday, Nov. 1. Chase will present “Disruptive Innovation and the Sharing Economy” in the BWM Classroom from 12:10-1:00 p.m. The event is free, but requires advance registration.

Chase, a transportation entrepreneur, is co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest car sharing company in the world; Buzzcar, a peer-to-peer car sharing service in France (now merged with Drivy); and GoLoco, an online ridesharing community. She is also co-founder and executive chairman of Veniam, a vehicle communications company building the networking fabric for what it calls the “Internet of Moving Things.” Chase is the author of the newly released book Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing CapitalismHer current passion is working with cities to maximize the transformation possible with the introduction of self-driving cars.

Chase is on the boards of Veniam, the World Resources Institute, and Tucows, Inc. She has served on the boards of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation; the National Advisory Council for Innovation & Entrepreneurship for the US Department of Commerce; the Intelligent Transportations Systems Program Advisory Committee for the US Department of Transportation; the OECD’s International Transport Forum Advisory Board; the Massachusetts Governor’s Transportation Transition Working Group; and the Boston Mayor’s Wireless Task Force.

She lectures widely, has been frequently featured in the major media, and has received many awards in the areas of innovation, design, and environment, including Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People,” Fast Company’s “Fast 50 Innovators,” and BusinessWeek’s “Top 10 Designers.” Chase graduated from Wellesley College and MIT’s Sloan School of Management. She was a Harvard University Loeb Fellow, and received an honorary Doctorate of Design from the Illinois Institute of Technology.