Burt Chojnowski

Bio

"Imagine every town in the United States with at least five or ten thousand

people nurturing its entrepreneurial class the way Fairfield does.

Imagine a hundred Burt Chojnowskis in every state, mobilizing local

investment from the angels lurking in the shadows."

That is how Michael H. Shuman described Burt in his book, Local Dollars,

Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and

Achieve Real Prosperity.

Burt is an entrepreneurial guru who evangelizes entrepreneurship, economic gardening and asset quilting as ways to transform communities into renaissance cities. In the past year he has spoken at numerous events in the past year ranging from the TEDxSummit in Doha Qatar to the Innovation Summit in Flagstaff Arizona.

He wrote "Turning Fairfield Iowa into a Rural Renaissance City" for the International Economic Development Council Journal. He is the editor of the Fairfield Edge Magazine that describes the success stories and principals of economic gardening in Silicorn Valley - Fairfield, Iowa.

Burt is the Founder and Managing Partner of BrainBelt Consulting in BrainBelt Consulting/

Burt serves as the president of the Fairfield Entrepreneurs Association and played a major role in attracting $289 million of investment in over sixty startup companies in a community less than 10,000.

Burt has created innovative, low cost strategies to support an entrepreneurial culture and creating alternative financing for startup businesses in Iowa including the Iowa Microloan Program and Iowa Community Capital.

Burt hosts the FRED Conference (Focus on Rural Entrepreneurial Development) and an Economic Gardening Boot Camp, annually. He also created and manages the Economic Gardening Group on Linked-in. In fact, he was the 1000th person to join Linkedin.

Burt Chojnowski came up with the term, "Brain Belt" to describe the unique human resource and educational assets of Iowa, Nebraska, the upper Midwest and the Great Plains.

Burt has senior management and capital formation experience with dozens of startup companies in California and Iowa.

He is a serial entrepreneur; and an award-winning speaker, film-maker and chef. You can see his film, Kora, a documentary about Mount Kailash, the holiest mountain in the Himalayas and the world's most important water shed, at CultureUnplugged.com.

He is the founder of the Fairfield Free University, the Fairfield Boot Camp for Entrepreneurs and the the Fairfield Entrepreneur Hall of Fame. He is the host and curator of TEDxFairfield.

He wrote "Turning Fairfield Iowa into a Rural Renaissance City" for the International Economic Development Council Journal.

Titles and Affiliations

Founder and General Manager of BrainBelt Consulting, Inc.

President, Fairfield Entrepreneur Association

President, Fairfield First! and Fairfield First Foundation

President, Fairfield Free University

Focus Team, Seyen Capital

President, BC Productions

Editor, Fairfield Edge magazine

Founding Board Member, Community Vitality Center

Adjunct Faculty, Roundtable Consulting Group

Board Member, Hometown Harvest of Southeast Iowa