Meet the Team

Lilly Tench is a builder, author, and strategist, specializing in innovation infrastructure. She has held roles such as Executive Director of the Spark Innovation Center at the University of Tennessee, Chief of Staff at SkyNano, a climate tech startup, and Director of Membership at Newlab, an innovation center in Brooklyn, NY.  Lilly has designed and implemented entrepreneurial programming for sustainable agriculture companies at AgLaunch and cleantech startups at Columbia University. Lilly holds a BA from Berea College, an MBA and MS in Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics from the University of Tennessee. She is author of the book Good Business: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating a Better World, published by Red Lightning Books in 2024, and was selected for the 2025 "40 Under 40" cohort by Knox News.