Robert Vera’s entrepreneurial journey started with a challenge in a poem by Mary Oliver.
“What will you do with your one wild and precious life?”
“That sent me on a quest,” recalled Vera, who quit a job in finance to become an entrepreneur with “a personal mission to be significant in the lives of others.”
That journey brought him to Grand Canyon University in 2019, when he became director of Canyon Ventures, a startup business accelerator that has produced several successful student entrepreneurs – including Noggin Boss and NineteenTwenty that received national notoriety on the television show "Shark Tank."
Vera’s impact on students and entrepreneurs was evident Tuesday by the dozens of those who watched him receive the 2025 Blazer Award at the fourth annual AZ Inno Fire Awards at Papago Golf Course in Phoenix.
“Robert's work empowers students, many of them who are here,” said 2023 Blazer Award winner Diana Vowels, co-founder and cheif operating officer of Pet Ortho Braces and former CEO of StartupAZ. “I got to meet students and entrepreneurs from Arizona to Medellin, Columbia, to turn breakthrough ideas into scalable businesses.”
The Phoenix Business Journal and AZ Inno, which measures the state’s innovation economy, honored Vera for his efforts as a builder and leader among Arizona startups, as well as finalists in four categories – female founders, Inno picks, biotech/health care and software – for their performance that has put Arizona in the national spotlight.
After delivering a passionate eight-minute speech, Vera – who was presented with a red blazer and plaque - unveiled a surprise as each company received an oversized Noggin Boss hat with their logo across the front.
Coincidentally, Noggin Boss won the Inno Picks award in 2023.
Two Canyon Ventures companies, Hoolist (biotech/healthcare) and the Vox Company (software), were finalists in their respective categories.
Susan Sly, co-founder and CEO of the Pause Technologies that won the Female Founders award, was fully aware of Vera’s efforts to help students and entrepreneurs.
“The things you do for the students, people have no idea,” said Sly, whose son attended GCU. “Robert is there sometimes 16 hours a day. He’s amazing.”
Several winners of GCU’s Canyon Challenge (a "Shark Tank"-like contest) and Demo Day showed their support for Vera by attending, as well as Provost Dr. Randy Gibb and Vice President of Athletics Jamie Boggs.
Vera praised several GCU administrators, including Gibb and Boggs, for their support, as well as Arizona gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson and former Phoenix economic development executive officer Hank Marshall for their commitment to entrepreneurship.
“The next opportunity is to teach entrepreneurs across the globe, and I know that Arizona is the No. 1 place to be an entrepreneur,” Vera said. “It's true. I've had the opportunity to see this, Arizona, become the No. 1 place for manufacturing jobs and the No. 1 place for direct foreign investment. $100 billion has come into Arizona through Taiwan Semiconductor alone.
“This creates a structural tailwind for all our entrepreneurs. There's no better place and no better time to launch a company than right here, right now. I'm not alone in my mission.”
Vera is at the center of a partnership between the city of Peoria and the Colangelo College of Business that launched the GCU Entrepreneur Training Program last spring, and nearly a dozen Peoria business owners were in attendance.
“I’m super happy and proud of Robert and the work he's done,” Gibb said. “He's touched so many lives, and it's demonstrated here this evening by the number of GCU students, as well as the Peoria cohort that he's teaching and mentoring at the Peoria entrepreneurship initiative that we just started with the city.
“It demonstrates GCU’s role in the Phoenix entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
Vera also staunchly defended college students that he hears have been labeled as entitled and unmotivated. To illustrate his point, he asked the nearly three dozen students and recent graduates to stand.
“I see them driving at dawn in their streets ready to make calls to drive revenues. I see them stay late at night and during the day and night to get orders out.”
Vera singled out Andrew Bussmann (graduate director at Canyon Ventures) and CCOB student Will Post for serving in the National Guard, as well as his children Matthew and Haylee, whom each hold full-time jobs in addition to taking a full load of classes at another university.
“This is not entitlement,” Vera said. “I'm so proud of all of you.
“I can confirm that the next generation of college students has our future in its various situations.”
GCU News senior writer Mark Gonzales can be reached at [email protected]
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