She now serves as a venture manager with Enterprise Angels and the Newnham Park technology cluster and got her start in the early-stage community by running Enterprise Angels' Plenty of Innovation programme.
Mr Murphy said that when he wanted to encourage entrepreneurs for members to invest in, 18 months ago he pulled together a group of young MBAs who had identified themselves as people who wanted to become involved in making a difference in Tauranga. "I used them to brainstorm on how we should create the programme and make it happen."
One outcome was that Ms Jennen and Jo Allum, director of Yojo Design and now one of the partners in the Venture Centre (see sidebar), initiated a major survey, which became part of Ms Jennen's MBA research dissertation.
"I was writing a dissertation on change leadership," said Ms Jennen. "Then I got invited on to the Plenty of Innovation committee, saw the opportunity, pivoted really late, changed my dissertation, started over, wrote a 240-page document about the ecosystem and got the job to run Plenty of Innovation."
Ms Jennen noted the market testing done with new entrepreneurs last year has since been fine-tuned into several improved services including the StartupKit#1 training programme, run in conjunction with the Tauranga Chamber of Commerce and Venture Centre. These and other initiatives had their germination in the original Plenty of Innovation committee.