Guest Speakers
Wendy Kennedy

Chad Barden is a self-proclaimed “serial – entrepreneur” with a very diverse professional career. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Finance from Purdue University. Following his graduation, he held positions in the insurance and banking industries with Gibson Insurance Group and 1st Source Bank in Northern Indiana. During the late 1990’s, his career path followed a similar path to others in that time as he dove head first into the technology industry. As a product manager, he successfully launched a new product licensing the MasterLock brand name for Fortres Grand Corporation, a security software company in Plymouth, Indiana.

During his time at Fortres Grand, his consulting activities with other high-tech startups led him to leave Fortres and co-found Nuron, Inc. Nuron was a hardware company originally based in South Bend, Indiana, but quickly grew to have offices in New Jersey and Silicon Valley, California. Just one year after founding that company, it was sold to Intel Corporation. Mr. Barden moved to San Diego, California to work for Intel running Business Development for the Network Equipment Division, focusing his efforts on technology licensing, strategic supplier agreements, and mergers and acquisitions. The technology purchased from Nuron was spun out from Intel as another new venture known as Tarari. He ran the business development organization for Tarari and then became interim CEO of Tarari’s largest customer, National Broadband. 

Upon successfully filling the permanent top executive position at National Broadband with the former CEO of High Speed Access, Inc., he assumed the role of Executive Director of Crossroads Academy in Plymouth, Indiana. Crossroads is a Lilly Foundation funded technology learning center and incubator for emerging technology oriented companies. While assisting Crossroads, he co-founded IN-Vivo Ventures, a venture group focused on harvesting new research technologies from mid-western research universities and creating commercially viable companies based on those technologies.

As part of his role with In-Vivo Ventures, Barden has assumed the full-time role of CEO of Quadraspec, an IN-Vivo portfolio company. Quadraspec is a protein-array company focused on the drug development and diagnostics market segments.

Chad has held numerous positions with not-for-profit organizations. He has served as Chairman of the American Red Cross of Marshall County, as Large Industry Chair for the Marshall County United Way, was a founding member of the Crossroads Technology Group that eventually established Crossroads Academy, and served as Chairman of the Michiana Venture Network, an organization focused on matching local entrepreneurs with local investors. He now sits on the Nanotechnology Advisory Group to the office of the U.S. President and on the entrepreneurial advisory committee for BioCrossroads.