National acclaim for area student

A longtime Stafford County resident can rightfully claim to be one of the most innovative business students in the country.

Jen Clinehens, whose parents live in Aquia Harbour, led a team of Virginia Commonwealth University graduate students that has won a national competition called the Technology Challenge. Students from around the country competed to create solutions to various business challenges.

Clinehens and her three teammates from VCU’s Brandcenter–Cody Pate, Ryan Dowling and Katlyn Williams–learned Friday that they had bested 185 teams to snag the contest’s $20,000 top prize. They beat out teams from top business schools including Harvard, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania.

Clinehens and her teammates are first-year students in the VCU graduate program. Their entry into the Research Challenge was in a category that involved corporate research strategy and was sponsored by AT&T. There were two other categories involving marketing and product development that were sponsored by Syngenta and General Electric. A finalist was picked from each category.

What her team’s winning entry involved

Clinehens isn’t allowed to reveal much about what her team’s winning entry involved, as AT&T may develop it commercially. She said it involves innovation that can help small businesses take advantage of cloud computing to better deal with data. The team submitted the solution and presented the idea first to AT&T executives and later to various research experts from the wider business community.

Small businesses resonate with Clinehens because she herself ran one. The 29-year-old is a classical violist who ran a music booking and contracting business called Virginia Event Music for six years previously enrolling at the VCU Brandcenter.

The past 12 years playing the violin

She spent much of the past 12 years playing the violin and viola in symphonies throughout the eastern half of the U.S., teaching music in private and public schools, and running her business.

She enrolled in VCU’s two-year master’s of communication program this past fall to pursue her entrepreneurial side. She is studying creative brand management.

Clinehens draws inspiration from Apple’s late co-founder, Steve Jobs. In other words than focus on a single element of a product just as programming or marketing, she wants to channel her various experiences and skill sets to create technological and Web-based products that can change the world.