2009 Honorees

Friday, October 16, 6:30 p.m.—BABSON ALUMNI ENTREPRENEUR HALL OF FAME DINNER
Babson Campus
$15/person
Babson honors Matthew R. Coffin ’90 and Carlos J. Mattos M’76, whose achievements have created value for their firms, families, and communities. This year, the College also will confer an honorary degree on a global leader in entrepreneurship: Dr. Carl J. Schramm, President and CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Matthew R. Coffin ’90

Matthew R. Coffin ’90 is an Internet entrepreneur and early-stage investor. He was the CEO and founder of LowerMyBills.com, which was sold to Experian for $380 million. In addition to LowerMyBills.com, he was president of Experian Online Customer Acquisition Services and the incubator-like Experian Interactive Innovation Center. Coffin was an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of Year award winner in 2007, and was Southern California Entrepreneur of the Year in 2006.

Coffin is an investor in Demand Media, Rubicon Project, InAdco, eBureau, Mahalo, DocStoc, Market Probability, CyberRain, Impact Radius, 2Tor, and Buscape (sold September 2009 for $342 million). He is a board member of Billshrink, eBureau, Machinima, and Mahalo, and sat on the board of directors for Business.com, which was sold in 2007 for $345 million. Coffin is a Young Presidents Organization member with the Los Angeles chapter. He earned a bachelor’s degree in finance and entrepreneurial studies from Babson College. With his wife, Natasha Esch ’93, and two children, Orchid and Sky, they split time between the West and East coasts.

Carlos J. Mattos M’76

Carlos J. Mattos M’76 is founder and president of Hyundai Colombia Automotriz, S.A. (HCA), the exclusive distributor and importer of Hyundai Motor Company, Korea. HCA ranks second on the local market in terms of sales behind the Colombian unit of General Motors. In 1997, 1999, 2000, 2002, and 2004–2006, Mattos received the award as the Best Hyundai Distributor in Latin America, and, in 2008, was awarded as the Best Hyundai Distributor of the World granted by Hyundai Motor Company. In 2005, Mattos founded Cinascar de Colombia S.A., Cinascar de Ecuador S.A., and Cinascar Automotriz de Venezuela C.A. to import and distribute five brands (Chery, Chana, Zotye, ZX, and SAIC) of vehicles from China. He also founded Hyundai Comerciales de Venezuela C.A. as well as SsangYong de Venezuela. Mattos also has been involved in real estate development in South Florida, Colombia, and Venezuela, as well as coal mining in Colombia.

Mattos has participated in the Babson College Alumni Club of Colombia, as a panelist in the 2006 Symposium on Global Management, and received a 2006 “Global Entrepreneur Award” from the College. Additionally, he has served in the Senate of Colombia that in 2009 conferred the “Order of the Colombian Congress in the Degree of Civil Merit Grand Cross with Gold Plaque,” in recognition to the meritorious task developed in benefit of the national economy. Mattos has been appointed Honorary General Consul of the Republic of San Marino for Colombia, and has received an “Excellence in Leadership” award from the Inter-American Economic Council, an organization that belongs to the Organization of the American States in Washington. Mattos earned his MBA from Babson in 1976.

Honorary Degree of Humane Letters Recipient

Dr. Carl J. Schramm

Dr. Carl J. Schramm is president and chief executive officer of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Under his leadership, since 2002, the Kauffman Foundation has developed innovative programs that expose students to the power of entrepreneurship, open new pathways to effectively move university innovations into the marketplace, create better-qualified angel investors as a critical source of seed capital, and engage economists of the highest caliber to study the impact of entrepreneurship. In 2007, Schramm was appointed chairperson of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economic Advisory Committee, which released its report in January 2008. Schramm has been instrumental in partnering with the Department of Commerce to create Entrepreneurship.gov, an international entrepreneurship resource, and also spearheaded the foundation’s sponsorship of the first Global Entrepreneurship Week, which he announced in 2007 with UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Well-published in many leading academic journals and magazines, Schramm is the author of The Entrepreneurial Imperative. He also is co-author of Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, with Robert Litan and William Baumol, now available in seven languages and named in 2008 one of the “Top Ten Books That Drive Debate” by the National Chamber Foundation. Schramm received two consecutive NIH Career Scientist Awards and was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Science, Institute of Medicine. He is a Batten Fellow at the Darden School of the University of Virginia, a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He received the George Eastman Medal from the University of Rochester in 2005.