Dana Rupe, the new director of the University of Iowa John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center, said she thinks AI can democratize entrepreneurship.

“I think about what it took to start businesses, even 10, let alone 20 years ago, you had to have such a staff of knowledge,” she said, noting that entrepreneurs need expertise in areas such as building a website and accounting. “You needed all these different things. Now you can have a solo entrepreneur. You can figure out most of that on your own with AI tools. So it really changes the face of it. I think you can have an idea at breakfast and test it, and you can iterate and change at noon, and you can do that in your dorm room or your kitchen table, or wherever you may be. 

“And I think that really opens up possibilities for people.”

She said a lot of her efforts will be focused on AI tools for entrepreneurs. Rupe said that the Iowa JPEC needs to provide entrepreneurs with a toolkit.

“The biggest thing is just using it,” she said. “We’ve got to just encourage people to overcome a little bit of their fears and just start, so I think however we can incorporate that into our programming, or just meeting with coaches who are in their space, showing them, helping them. I think all of those things are going to be really important to our entrepreneurs’ success.”

Rupe, 55, is an entrepreneurial leader with more than 20 years of experience launching and scaling businesses. She began her role at Iowa JPEC on June 9. She succeeds longtime director Lynn Allendorf, who remains on staff as a program assistant.

A native of Eddyville, Rupe’s entrepreneurial experience has centered on apparel and sports brands. She founded and led women’s activewear brand Alex + Abby as well as Daden Group, an apparel licensing enterprise. Rupe also co-founded Valley Apparel, which became a licensing partner with adidas, the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and more than 300 collegiate teams. After the company was acquired by adidas, she served as vice president of its team division, leading product development, international sourcing and sales.

At the UI, Rupe recently served as an adjunct instructor, teaching social media marketing for fashion and lifestyle brands in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. 

Iowa JPEC is based in the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa and serves students across all majors. 

The Business Record sat down with Rupe to talk about her first few months at Iowa JPEC and her views on innovation and entrepreneurship.

This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Tell me a little bit about your new role.

I’m the new director at JPEC. My predecessor in this role was here for 20-plus years and was really part of building the foundation on this and, luckily, she is still here part time, so it’s a great luxury for me to have access to her expertise and knowledge. But here at JPEC, one of the fascinating things for me coming into this role is the breadth that we have. We touch a lot of stakeholders. So we’re sitting here in Tippie College of Business on the University of Iowa campus, and it’s easy just to think about only students. But while we do a lot for students, we also work with post-docs, faculty, other researchers and then residents of Iowa and alumni. We have a really broad stakeholder base, and what comes with that, then, is programming for each of those different stakeholders. We really try to meet entrepreneurs where they are and give them a lot of individual access to mentors and coaches, depending on what their startup needs are, or if they’re in a specific industry. Again, being in Iowa, we have a lot of medical or biomedical entrepreneurs, and that’s a slightly different skillset than some of the other ideas. Being here and really immersing myself these last 90 days in that, I’m always amazed at the breadth that we’re touching and the access we provide to so many different types of entrepreneurs.

How do you advise entrepreneurs who want to start a company? What do they need to know when they’re just in that early stage and they have an idea?

We have a lot of different steps for entrepreneurs. People come to us at various stages. When it’s somebody, and a lot of these are students, where they don’t have an idea, they’re just interested in entrepreneurship, or maybe they knew someone who had their own business, or they’re just intrigued with this idea of having a company or not having a boss, then we’re just talking to them about learning about entrepreneurship. We have classes in entrepreneurship as well as a student incubator building. We call it the BELL. We can get students involved in some of those early discussions about what it means not just to have your own business, but what it means to think like an entrepreneur. Those are early, more student thoughts, versus people who approach us where maybe they’re working at a company and they’ve come across a problem in their everyday and all of a sudden they have a solution to it, and they want to start a business solving this problem, versus somebody who’s wanted to open a business their whole lives. And now they’re nearing the end of their career, and they want to do this, and it’s time, so we have to really listen and again, try to meet them where they are, and then figure out which of our programs or mentors or coaches can help them flesh out that next step. And that next step a lot of times comes around a product market fit, where they’re really doing a deep dive in discovery on. ‘Is there a need for this? Are there customers who want this?’ Who are those customers?’ and forcing them to get out there and talk to those customers. 

How do you cultivate an entrepreneur’s mindset? What is that?

It’s not necessarily what people think. I think we think of, we’re sitting here at University of Iowa, we have all this amazing groundbreaking research going on, and scientists, then you think, well, that’s somebody who’s innovative. That’s innovation, that’s entrepreneurship. Really, the most successful entrepreneurs are those who have grit, who have resilience, who have determination. It’s a lot of those personal characteristics that I think are important, then you have to couple that with this curiosity, this problem-solving mindset, having a bias toward action. You want to have this desire to take an idea and make it into impact, idea to action.

How do you cultivate those in a person, or do they just come pre-baked?

No, I don’t know if it’s chicken or egg. I think it’s probably a little bit of both. I think we can really help teach people this process and thinking about problems in a new way, in a critical way, but I think you have to come with your own grit and determination and resilience.

How do you help students when they’re at the low points, because there’s a lot of uncertainty in the entrepreneur’s journey.

I think that’s a big part of it actually, is getting people to be comfortable with this uncertainty, comfortable taking some calculated risks, having the confidence that you can work through it. Keep going. Failure is a great teacher, and it’s how you frame that, what you learn from it. We’re constantly in this feedback cycle-loop: learning from mistakes or learning from what didn’t work. You pivot, you make a change, you keep moving. And I think you have to really encourage people through those moments that this isn’t the end of the journey. This is just a stop along the way to learn something. What did you learn? What changes can we make? And you keep going, and having that momentum again, this bias toward action, to keep moving through it.

Everyone has their own innovation process. Can you walk me through what yours is? 

Innovation isn’t this magic. It’s a process, and that’s the important part of it. I think coming from some point of identifying this problem that you want to solve, or that you think you can solve, getting a product-market fit is crucial. Going out and talking to people, not just your friend or your significant other who says, ‘Yeah, this is a great idea.’ You have to really talk to your end user, get feedback on that, because something always comes out of that you didn’t expect. I think the process probably never stops. The important part of what we’re doing is trying to also provide this ecosystem for people so you don’t feel alone, so you have other people to work with, to bounce these ideas off of, to help you when you’re in some of your valleys. 

Where did you learn your process? 

I don’t think it was something formal. My background is in apparel merchandising, so we’re constantly in a design process. You think about how many apparel lines a year are developed. You’re releasing four or five new lines every year. Each line is in a slightly different process, and you’re working on them all at the same time. You’re selling fall ’25 right now. You finished spring ’26, which you’re placing purchase orders for, and are going to start shipping to your warehouse soon, but we’re already thinking about summer of next year. What are trends?  I think the industry I am in is very cyclical and process-oriented, and that probably started me on developing my critical thinking skills and my habits around development and problem solving.

What have been some of the high points, and what have been some of the learning points in your own journey as an entrepreneur?

I think it’s exciting to work with large brands, their processes, from my background in apparel, their product development, they have such access to technical fabrics and the latest innovations, whether it be footwear or apparel. They have big marketing power, so they are doing very exciting things. Those have been high points to be a part of that and get to learn and experience that. I think some of the more challenging times are the same thing: Working with these large brands also has its challenges of managing contracts and licensing agreements and market shifts when you’re dealing with an outside entity that’s that large.

What have you learned from those challenges?

A lot of it goes back to momentum and continuing to pivot and shift, always having to innovate. You can’t be stagnant. So I think always keeping your own feedback loop going. And remembering to iterate and change as you’re processing all of these other external factors in your own ecosystem.

How do you take someone who’s on that tenure track and say, ‘Hey, have you thought of starting a business with this idea?’

We have some programming here that is built for that situation. It’s a four-week program where they come, they have mentors and coaches and learn about how to pitch your idea. We introduce them to funding sources and help them along that journey. We have all this groundbreaking research going on around us. It’s a really great option to help those people take their idea and their discovery and bring it to the world.

I’d love to hear an update about how the Venture School is going. Are you thinking about making any changes there upon taking your leadership position?

Venture School is one of our flagship programs [with a new cohort that started in October]. It’ll be my first opportunity. I’m going to sit in on a full one just to go through. I’m really interested to hear the other entrepreneurs and their questions, and how they process the material. Some of my goals for JPEC in general, are just to take the foundation that’s here and make sure we’re offering the most modern programming that we can. How can we interject new tools into it that might be helpful for our entrepreneurs? I think all of our programs are very solid with the curriculum and what we’re teaching, and I feel like my role is, how can I enhance those? We need to keep iterating and innovating as well, so making sure we remember our own entrepreneurial spirit throughout all of our programming.

I was curious how your upbringing has influenced your leadership style today.

Growing up in a small rural town, I don’t remember titles. What I remember are people solving problems and working together. And I think that’s probably a really good foundation for building companies, building teams for leadership. I probably didn’t realize all of that when it was going on around me, but I felt like I came from a good foundation.

What impact do you want to have on the entrepreneurial system in Iowa through JPEC?

Some AI and the last few years of remote work has really changed things. I think you probably in the past would consider Silicon Valley is where there’s innovation and entrepreneurship, or certain East Coast hubs, and I think that’s not the case now. I think we can have our own ecosystem in Iowa. I’m from here, my businesses have all been here, and I want to show other people what’s possible here, that this is a good place, that you can build a business or a career. So I think if you have this ecosystem of people, it begets other people. I think if you can get some people together, sharing their ideas and their experiences, it’s the high tide lifts all boats. I think we can create a better ecosystem that comes through awareness, as I was mentioning, just helping people have an understanding of what’s possible, and then our job is equipping them with the tools to get there.

How would you describe your leadership style?

My role is to provide the North Star. I think it’s really important that everyone understands the mission of what we’re doing, and that they understand how their daily activities roll up to that mission. I view my job as giving them the tools to get there and removing the roadblocks that are in their way.

What is the JPEC’s mission?

We’re really here to help entrepreneurs take their idea to impact.

What do you like to read?

I’m reading “War and Peace.” I’m reading a chapter a day. It’s called a slow read. I didn’t know that was a term before I started. So you read a chapter a day, which I’m actually enjoying. Sometimes it’s hard not to read ahead, but the idea is, by the end of the year, you will finish “War and Peace.”

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Hometown: Eddyville, Iowa 

Education: Master of Science degree in textiles and clothing from Iowa State University and a Bachelor of Science in fashion merchandising and consumer studies from the University of Arizona

Family: A significant other and two dogs, Scout and Dakota

Hobbies: Voracious reader, runner, likes to travel.

Resides: Iowa CityEmail: dana-rupe@uiowa.edu