Amanda Oborne’s career has always involved entrepreneurs. She's performed market research with small business owners for QuickBooks, nurtured a trade association for small independent health clubs and built a bridge between Northwest farmers, ranchers and fisheries to chefs and restaurateurs with Ecotrust.
At the heart, she's made connections for opportunities. It’s the same muscle she flexes as executive director of Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, a 30-year-old nonprofit that works to support entrepreneurship across the state.
She took over at the end of 2019 and quickly found an organization facing an existential crisis. The rebuild has taken two years. Now, with a new staff, new board members and renewed stability, the group is looking to get some of its major programs back. The monthly PubTalk series is relaunching, the Angel Oregon investor program is back with events focused on food and biosciences and the big annual awards ceremony is slated to return in person later this year.
We caught up with Oborne to talk about her own journey and that of OEN.
How did you end up in Portland? My mom is from Roseburg and she had two sisters who always lived in Portland. I spent every summer in Oregon. I got really familiar with “Old Oregon.” One of my aunts worked for Bud Clark and my other aunt had a clothing boutique that specialized in wearable art on Northwest 23rd in its earliest iteration as a retail shopping street. I’ve lived all over the place, in Germany, in St. Louis, in Chicago, in San Francisco, but when my kids were born and I wanted to actually dig deeper roots. It was Portland that called to me, and I moved here in 2006.
Your career has spanned marketing, small trade organization and then ecosystem building with Ecotrust prior to your role at OEN. What do you see as the common thread there? At heart I’m a generalist. I love to learn and I care about small business and entrepreneurship. If there is any thread that pulls all the way through, it’s supporting this independent, empowered way of making a living.
You joined OEN and pretty quickly were thrust into crisis, not only for the organization and its stability but also the pandemic. What did you learn about yourself going through that? I learned I am good at that kind of crisis. It’s the equivalent of having a blank sheet of paper and putting structure to it.
I like the process of unpacking whatever the business or whatever the situation is and understanding what the latent assets are and how to capitalize on those. As difficult as that time period was and some of the really difficult decisions we had to make in the beginning, I found myself really enjoying the challenge of figuring out how to get this organization on a healthy, sustainable track again. It reminds me of the first couple years of an entrepreneurial journey.
How is OEN now? 2020 was a crisis management year. 2021 was a stabilization year. I was really happy with how 2021 ended. We had an amazing OEN Awards,, even though it was virtual. We had watch parties. We have a new team member Alex (Gamboa Grand) who really took ownership of making the events happen. We’re taking a leap this year to focus on the bioscience sector (with Angel Oregon Bioscience), where I just see incredible potential and promise. This year, for us, we have made a strategic bet on Angel Oregon (programs) as a core and place where we have some real distinction among all the offerings entrepreneurs have access to.
What has you the most excited about the entrepreneurial ecosystem here in Oregon? I think there is a really renewed sense of collaboration as we come out of the pandemic. I see people have reordered their priorities and they know that innovation matters long term to the region’s economic success.
What feels unique coming out of the pandemic is organizations have tried to figure out how to work together. As we get better at that, it’s going to streamline the process for entrepreneurs in a way that they can get what they need without having to do 1,500 coffee dates.
Amanda Oborne
Title: Executive director of Oregon Entrepreneurs Network
Hometown: Logan, Utah
Education: Bachelor’s in Germanic language and literature with a minor in business, Washington University; Master’s integrated marketing communications, Northwestern University
Last book you read: “IQ84” by Haruki Murakami
Go-to podcasts: “The Daily”; “The Ezra Klein Show”; “On Being”; “Hidden Brain”
Last thing you binge watched: “Killing Eve”; “Succession”; “Squid Game,” all shows her daughter recommends
Favorite Oregon camping location: The Wallowas
Go-to Portland restaurant: Shalom Y’all
Last new local brand you tried: Hue Noir lipstick, “I love it.”
