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Brian Dabson is Associate Director of the Rural Policy Research Institute (RUPRI) and Research Professor at the Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs, Univ. of Missouri-Columbia.

Until Nov. 2004, he was President of CFED (formerly Corporation for Enterprise Development) for 13 years. His work at RUPRI includes oversight of the RUPRI Center for Rural Entrepreneurship and the RUPRI Rural Poverty Research Center. Dabson has written and presented extensively on various aspects of economic development policy and practice, with a particular focus recently on entrepreneurship in rural America.

Don Macke is Co Director of the Center for Rural Entrepreneurship, in Lincoln, NE, a RUPRI National Research and Policy Center with founding support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. He has nearly 25 years of experience working in the field of community and economic development, specializing in rural development and policy. Don’s current work focuses on entrepreneurship in rural America.