Stephen W. and Bette Gibson
The Academy in the Philippines
“Microenterprise: Sustaining The Profit”

Biography:

Stephen W. Gibson is an entrepreneur, teacher, author and newspaper columnist. He has started nine companies and has had more than a dozen partners in his entrepreneurial ventures.

He and his wife, Bette moved to Provo in 1994, shortly after selling Barclays Oxygen Homecare, with its eight offices in six states, to a national medical company. The year before it was sold, Barclays was listed by Inc. Magazine as one of the 500 fastest growing privately held companies in the U.S.

For the last seven years, he has been a volunteer at Brigham Young University where he has helped grow the Center for Entrepreneurship into one of the 25 top Centers in the nation. He joined the Marriott School faculty last year.

His current BYU assignment, as senior entrepreneur in residence, is that of helping BYU Hawaii, BYU Idaho and LDS Business College develop stronger Entrepreneurial programs on their campuses. He and his wife also teach a Basic Entrepreneur Skills class in the Marriott school for non-business majors.

Last year, he was named BYU Hawaii's Executive of the Year. He was also awarded the SBA Media award for his writing about entrepreneurship in the state of Utah. In 1998, he started a Provo based organization called The UtahAngels which, in the past 5 years, has invested more than $9 million dollars in Utah based start up companies.

However he and Bette are most excited about their latest entrepreneurial venture. Desiring to do something for the poor in the Philippines, he conceived the idea of teaching Filipino LDS returned missionaries how to become self reliant by starting small Micro Enterprises on the Islands of the Philippines.