Deborah Osgood is President of FERAD. With over 25 years experience as an author, consultant, mentor and expert in entrepreneurship, she has been named Women in Business Champion by the U.S. Small Business Administration, and has received awards for Excellence in Business Services, Enterprising Woman of the Year, Women's Entrepreneurial Spirit Award, Outstanding Woman in Media, Self-Made Person of the Year and Above and Beyond in Youth Leadership. Advocating on behalf of entrepreneurial education and innovation, Osgood has been featured on multiple television and radio shows across the country including New York's WPIX morning news, FOX in the Morning, WMUR NH Businesses, Boston WCVB-TV Chronicle and WBZ-TV Evening Magazine.

As an architect of public/private entrepreneurial communities, training programs and direct mentoring, she has helped millions of individuals to start, grow and succeed in business. This includes the Business Utility Zone Gateway, and specialty networks such as buzVR that facilitates self-employment for individuals with disabilities, myExpertNet that connects entrepreneurs to expert practitioners, and myWomanBiz, VetBizGo, and myYouthBiz that connects women, veterans and young adults respectively to entrepreneurial resources.

These unique and interactive entrepreneurial communities are serving to effectively facilitate collaboration among multiple stakeholder groups including government, nonprofit and private sector business-to-business influence leaders. The economic and community development impact generated at federal, state and local levels has earned Deborah numerous commendations from U.S. Senators, Congressmen, and leading economic development agencies.

Deborah's mentoring skills have earned her an invitation to participate in a historic event pioneered by the U.S. Department of State where she served as 1 of only 9 women in the U.S. to mentor 1 of 9 businesswomen in Iraq under the U.S. Iraqi Businesswomen Partnership program. Her mentoring and advisory talents have also contributed to progress within SCORE Counselors to America's Small Business, Jobs for America's Graduates and Big Brother Big Sister's.

In the Federal arena, Deborah provides advice and counsel in Washington, DC working with Congress, the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Small Business Administration on issues of communications, economic development, fund raising, and government resource development. She serves on the U.S. Small Business Administration Regulatory Fairness Board and New Hampshire Governor's Economic Development Advisory Council.

Her expertise has been sought after and published by The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, NASE, Entrepreneur.com, Associated Press, and myriad leading social media venues. As IBM and The World Bank's national spokesperson in support of women and minority entrepreneurs, Deborah hosts a blog and is featured in multiple on- and off-line learning initiatives as part of the SMEToolKit.

Deborah holds a Doctor of Arts degree in Leadership having leveraged entrepreneurial development techniques to create a successfull systems approach to dropout prevention and entrepreneurship for high school students, an MBA and a BBS in Marketing Communications.