Caroline Ford has joined the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) as the incubator’s new Investor Connect Catalyst.

ATDC is the internationally recognized state-funded technology business incubator. It is a program of Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute, the nation’s largest, most comprehensive, university-based program of entrepreneurship and startup development, business and industry growth, and international outreach.

At ATDC, Ford will work to connect Georgia startups with investors. “We’re the advocate,” she said, “as [our companies] negotiate or talk to venture capital or other private equity investors about investing in their business.”

It’s a position that’s hardwired into her DNA, she said. Her father was involved in tech startups in her home state of Arkansas, and she worked in or founded several successful family-owned startups in the marketing technology space. That background gives her a strong understanding of the tech companies that are part of ATDC and adds to the excitement she feels about this new position.

“I worked in an incubator in Arkansas,” she said, “and it was the most stimulating, challenging, invigorating workplace that I’ve ever been in — just the energy, the hope, the optimism. Everybody wants to be there, because everybody’s got an idea. To me, it’s like a microcosm of possibility,” she said.

Her enthusiasm for the optimism and excitement of incubators – happy places, she called them – led her to write and present an academic paper Beyond a Social Capital Agenda: Exploring Metrics and Motives Inside Business Incubators in Arkansas, for a conference.

She has also run Arkansas-based nonprofit organizations, including the Wolfe Street Foundation, which serves women in recovery from alcohol or drug addiction, and Dills House for Women, a transitional facility for underserved women struggling with addiction. It’s not her first time working on a college campus, either. She’s been an assistant marketing professor at Kennesaw State University and a part-time faculty member at Hendrix College in Arkansas.

Ford holds degrees from cross-town institution Georgia State University, where she received a bachelor’s in French, a master’s in marketing, and an executive doctorate in business administration.

In her quest to find her own happy place outside of work, Ford escapes underwater as a scuba diver. Her favorite spot: St. Maarten in the Caribbean. Her other passions include Orange Theory exercise classes, and last, but certainly not least, her two college-age kids.