April Lane Schuster
Senior Lecturer
April Lane Schuster is a Senior Lecturer of Entrepreneurship at the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University. She teaches entrepreneurship in the undergraduate business and executive MBA programs.
She sits on the board of Catapult Chicago, a collaborative co-working space for innovative digital startups where she previously served as executive director. Founded in 2012 as a non-profit organization, Catapult Chicago offered office space, educational programming, mentoring, corporate connections, and networking opportunities to some of the most innovative startups in the Chicagoland area. Catapult recently became a part of 1871, Chicago’s technology hub and the #1 ranked private business incubator in the world.
At DePaul University, from which she holds an MBA in Entrepreneurship, she spent nearly seven years as the associate director of the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center providing strategy consulting to startups and small businesses in the Chicagoland community as well as helped students start new ventures and taught in the entrepreneurship program.
April has also started a few businesses of her own, regularly advises startups from the community, and teaches entrepreneurship workshops in the startup community. Prior to DePaul, she also had a career in marketing research and brand consulting for Fortune 500 companies.
Education
- BA, Communication Studies, University of Michigan, 1999
- MBA, Entrepreneurship, DePaul University, 2006
Courses Taught
- ENTR 201 Innovation and Entrepreneurship
- ENTR 313 Entrepreneurial Global Opportunity Scan
- ENTR 345 Entrepreneurship Marketing
- ENTR 390 Entrepreneurship Strategies
- ENTR 399 New Venture Lab
- MGMT 481E Innovation and the Entrepreneurial Mindset