Allen Dines

Executive Advisor at WICS Partners, longtime leader in the Wisconsin startup community

Allen Dines is an Executive Advisor to the General Partners at WISC Partners and a member of the Business Advisory Board at Child Health Imprints, a data integration and predictive analytics healthcare IT company. Allen has more than 30 years of experience at the executive level working at the interface of science and technology. In addition to MERLIN mentors he is active at 100State, gener8tor and Madworks Seed Accelerator. During his tenure at UW-Madison (through 2014) he created the New Ventures program and ran the cross-campus entrepreneurship program funded by the Kauffman Foundation. Those efforts resulted in many of the mainstays in Madison’s startup scene. He founded the Midwest Research University Network (MRUN), an alliance of Midwest university commercialization managers where he served as president 2005-2015. Prior to joining UW-Madison, Allen co-founded and led two startups in the biotechnology sector which sold to leaders in their respective industries. He was the business lead at Agracetus, a pioneer in crop genetic engineering, prior to its sale to Monsanto. Allen came to Madison from the Washington DC area where he was with a consultant  at Booz, Allen & Hamilton, Inc. Allen holds degrees from the University of Michigan including a B.S, a Masters in Natural Resources and an MBA.