Deborah Mills-Scofield Operating Partner

Ms. Mills-Scofield has her own consultancy helping organizations create and implement highly actionable, measurable, and profitable strategic plans and cultures to foster innovation. Her work on innovation uses Aristotle’s Classic Virtues to create a sustainable culture of innovation. Ms. Mills-Scofield has over 20 years of experience in strategic planning and implementation with various manufacturing, service and high-technology companies ranging from multinationals, mid-sized, early-stage, publicly and privately-held. She has also been involved in several start-ups, including her own. In the spirit of Open Innovation and Collaboration, she is a co-creator of the recently released book Business Model Innovation.

Ms. Mills-Scofield started at AT&T Bell Lab, holding a patent for an integrated multimedia messaging service developed in the early 1980s. She was instrumental in getting AT&T to recognize and embrace the Internet's impact, working with AT&T's senior executive team to create AT&T's entrée into that new market. She also spearheaded AT&T Internet and E-commerce strategies, business plans and execution, including an AT&T “Carve-Out Startup” known as AT&T WorldNet® Services and is formerly Director of Internet Public Policy at AT&T.

Ms. Mills-Scofield is active at Lake Ridge Academy, where her children attend. She also is involved in several activities mentoring entrepreneurs in Northeast Ohio and through her alma mater via the Brown University Entrepreneurship Program, Brown’s Women's Launch Pad Program and Alumni Career Mentoring. She has taught in the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz School of Business Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence Fellows Program and at CWRU’s Weatherhead School of Management. She is a Global Fellow, member of the Advisory Group, and Strategy Team member at Baldwin-Wallace College’s Center for Innovation and Growth, helping create and lead several of the innovation and leadership programs and involving Student Fellows for hands-on experience in Glengary’s due diligence. She is also a member of Oberlin, Ohio’s Giving Women whose goal is to increase the amount of fresh produce available through Oberlin’s Community Services Food Distribution program. As part of her consulting practice, Ms. Mills-Scofield asks her clients to match and donate 10% of her fee to improve lives in the surrounding community and mentor and/or assist an entrepreneur where and when appropriate.

Ms. Mills-Scofield is a graduate of Brown University (1982), completing her degree in three years. She helped create the Cognitive Science concentration at Brown, one of the first undergraduate programs of its kind in the country at that time. She resides in Oberlin, Ohio with her husband, a professor of Physics at Oberlin College doing research in energy and sustainability, and their two children.