Bara Watts
Center for Food Innovation
CEO, Center for Food Innovation
Bara Watts is a serial entrepreneur and leader in business management, innovation, marketing and alliances. She is currently CEO at the Center for Food Innovation working to convert Northeast Ohio into the largest year-round food production region in the country. Until recently Ms. Watts was Executive Director of Entrepreneurship at Loyola University, New Orleans and prior to that, Director of Entrepreneurship at Oberlin College. In Cleveland she launched UNCOMN.tv, a webtv network focused on career and community for young professionals and featuring her originally produced programs Got*City Game! and The Flannel Channel (jobs you'll feel good in). She was also interim Executive Director for Cleveland's Red (an orchestra) and Chief Marketing Officer for the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Greater Cleveland.
Prior to that, Ms. Watts held senior positions in leading multinational corporations including VP, Universal Studios; Director Worldwide Promotions, Twentieth Century Fox; and Director, MGM/UA Home Video. Ms. Watts also formed and sold several companies including Barbara Watts and Associates, Inc., a full-service agency representing Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, Hollywood Video, Andrew Jergens, Universal Television, HBO and others in multimillion-dollar corporate marketing partnerships with fast food and package goods partners.
Ms. Watts consults with FedTech, a company assisting entrepreneurs to commercialize technologies coming out of NASA, the Department of Defense, Homeland Security and other government laboratories. She is a long-time Board Member of Burton Bell Carr, a nationally recognized Community Development Corporation in Cleveland.
Website: foodinnovationneo.org
