Miramar College Associate Professor Tanya Hertz was honored as the 2022 Woman of the Year by the San Diego Chapter of the American Association in Community Colleges. Hertz received her honor May 13 at the chapter’s annual recognition event held at San Diego Mesa College.
Hertz has been an instructor at Miramar College since August 2018. She is currently associate professor of Entrepreneurship, and lead faculty member for the Entrepreneurship program, and coordinator for the REC Innovation Lab at San Diego Miramar College. In addition, she has served as a faculty lecturer of Business and Entrepreneurship at San Diego State University for over a decade.
Hertz joined Miramar College with a vision. After teaching for almost a decade at SDSU, and starting several successful companies on her own, Hertz recognized that there was no place for aspiring entrepreneurs to get help at the idea stage. She was impressed with the success of the SDSU on-campus incubator, but felt frustrated that critical resources were only available to university students for a very short period.
Community college incubators focused on supporting small businesses. She noticed that no one was helping regular people who had an idea and wanted to turn that idea into a high-growth startup. What was worse, she realized that minorities and women were often left out of the entrepreneurship ecosystem altogether and were very rarely targeted for inclusion in incubators.
Hertz started the REC Innovation Lab at Miramar College in March of 2020 to increase equity and inclusivity in the innovation ecosystem and to help everyone have access to cutting-edge technology and the resources needed to turn their ideas into high-growth ventures.
Hertz has won several Entrepreneurship awards and was chosen at SDSU as “Most Influential Faculty” in 2016, 2019, and 2020, and was recognized for advocacy for women and minority entrepreneurs by the Women’s Venture Summit and received the 2020 Female Founder Advocate award and the AAWCC 2021 Woman of the Year award!
“I am proud to be a female academic in the AAWCC and I stand in solidarity with all other professional women as well as all of my fellow educators who strive to create equity, social justice, and antiracism in our classes,” said Tanya Hertz, executive director of the REC Innovation Lab and associate professor of Entrepreneurship at San Diego Miramar College.
“Together we are actively transforming the advancing ethos of our campuses by recognizing inequities and using an antiracism framework to lead our college to transformational change. With the support of my fellow educators and administrators at San Diego Miramar College, I strive to adhere to instructional practices that maximize student access, learning, and success. I am most proud of the work we have done through the Miramar College REC Innovation Lab. The REC is a community business incubator we created at San Diego Miramar Community College dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and to helping our students solve problems by launching high-growth startups. I will continue to educate and elevate my students, and to empower my fellow educators towards institutionalizing equity and social justice at San Diego Miramar College.”
The REC Innovation Lab is a startup incubator on the campus of Miramar College focused on helping entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds to launch scalable, high-growth startups that use technology to solve problems.
There are many incubator programs in California, but often some groups are left out when it comes to joining them. Graduating students lose access to university-based programs, and many professional incubators are priced too high for entrepreneurs from underrepresented communities. Women and people of color are rarely targeted for inclusion and the focus is typically on later-stage companies that can show traction.
“Tanya is a respected leader in the entrepreneurship ecosystem, equity-minded educator, and a champion for diversity, equity, and inclusion,” said Jesse Lopez, dean of the School of Business & Technical Careers at San Diego Miramar College. “I applaud her for serving our students, employer partners, and the community with passion and sincere dedication.”
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