Jack is a professor within the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts where he teaches separate courses in marketing and in sales. Jack has taught at Tufts for 20 years and was the prior director of the Entrepreneurship Center. The Derby Entrepreneurship Center encompasses the study and practice of entrepreneurship through all the Tufts schools and is home to the Entrepreneurship Minor, the largest minor on campus. Jack individually coaches approximately 20+ Tufts student startups each year and in 2022 co-founded a nutrition startup with another Tufts professor
In 2015, Jack received the Henry and Madeline Fisher Award, an award given annually to a faculty member of the School of Engineering judged by graduating seniors of the School of Engineering to be “Engineering’s Teacher of the Year.”
Prior to stepping down as Director in 2020, due to family health issues, Jack was the Cummings Family Professor of the Practice in Entrepreneurship. For 22 years, he has taught business planning and marketing in MIT’s Mechanical Engineering Department where he continues to teach.
In 1990, Jack founded Derby Management, a regional consulting firm specializing in strategic and business planning with deep expertise in the specializations of business planning, sales productivity and marketing optimization. Prior to starting Derby Management, Jack served as CEO of Mayer Electronics and President of CB Sports. He is or has been a board member of 21 companies.
Jack’s 17 years of corporate background consisted of being President of Litton Industries Medical Systems, CEO of Datamedix, and Executive Vice President of Becton Dickinson Medical Systems, a market leader in hospital monitoring.
For his work as an entrepreneur, Jack was named to the Boston Business Journal’s Mass High Tech’s All-Star Team, he received MIT Enterprise Forum’s Vince Fulmer Award for his work as chairman, and in 2019, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Corporate Growth of Boston for his work as long-term chairman of this leading M&A organization. Jack has founded or co-founded nine startups prior to 2021, acting as CEO in eight.
Today, Jack is an active and highly engaged board member with a long investing history as an early-stage investor as General Partner at Kestrel Ventures, Chairman of Common Angels and currently as a General Partner at Converge Ventures.