The Side Hustle

Deborah Streeter is the Bruce F. Failing, Sr., Professor Emeritus of Personal Enterprise and Small Business Management at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. Entrepreneurship and small business management are the focus of Dr. Streeter’s teaching, research, and outreach activities. Her research interests include: university-wide models for teaching entrepreneurship, the use of digital media in teaching, and gender issues in business and entrepreneurship. Dr. Streeter has received acclaim as an educator based on her promotion of experiential learning, active learning, and innovative uses of technology inside and outside the classroom.

In 2007, Dr. Streeter was given the Olympus Innovator Award by the Olympus Corporation. She received the Constance E. and Alice H. Cook Award in 2004 and the Professor of Merit Award in 2002, and she was named influential to a Merrill Scholar in 1999, 2000, and 2003. Dr. Streeter was awarded the 2001 CALS National Food and Agricultural Sciences Excellence in College and University Teaching and was named a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow in 2000 (Cornell’s most prestigious teaching award). She also received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2000 and the Innovative Teaching Award in 1996. Dr. Streeter holds an M.S. (1980) and Ph.D. (1984) in Agricultural Economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Prior to her role as Program Director for the Institute, Kirsten Barker was the Senior Lead Instructor for eCornell’s Women in Leadership certificate program. She instructed and engaged with many of the first thousand women who completed the Leadership certificate.

Preceding eCornell, Kirsten Barker co-founded Prendismo, LLC with Dr. Streeter. At the company’s founding, Kirsten led the operational and tactical efforts of Prendismo as it was transformed from a ten-year academic research initiative into a high growth commercial enterprise. Before co-founding Prendismo, Kirsten was an early member of Cornell University’s eClips project team where she was involved in the design, construction, database interface and IT integration of the initial product prototype. Prior to Prendismo, Kirsten was Chief Information Officer for NSF International where she developed and implemented the organization’s technology vision and strategy with the CEO and Board of Directors. Kirsten has also served as Senior Director at the healthcare software company Solucient and as a consultant with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture).

Kirsten Barker earned her B.S. from Cornell University (1992) and M.S. from Johns Hopkins University (1997).