Stephen Culp

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT STEPHEN CULP

Stephen is a civic and business entrepreneur.A former U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer, U.S. Navy Reserve Officer, Stanford-educated lawyer, teacher and NCAA D1 athlete, Stephen is also co-founder and former CEO of Delegator, ProDiligence, S Ventures, and Smart Furniture, and co-founder of Chattanooga Renaissance Funds I & II and the non-profit ventures Causeway and CF Smackdown.Earning his J.D. from Stanford Law School and a graduate fellowship at the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation, Stephen earned his B.A. with Highest Distinction (8th of while a varsity fencer at UNC-Chapel Hill. At the Université de Paris VII and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques, he completed an on-site photo/audio journal during the 1989-90 revolutions in Eastern Europe, hammering chunks off the Berlin Wall.After college and a fellowship at the UN Industrial Development Organization in NYC, Stephen served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in post-communist Eastern Europe, honored by colleagues and students as Teacher of the Year.At the 1996 Olympics, Stephen served as an Intelligence Research Specialist for the FBI’s Olympic Squad and was chosen to run with the Olympic torch on its way to Atlanta. While at Stanford Law, Stephen was an Honors Intern at the FBI’s International Relations Branch, working in Washington DC and the American Embassy in Canada.Alongside his entrepreneurial work, Stephen has served as a director to dozens of community organizations and companies including the Chamber of Commerce, Trust for Public Land, River City Company, Rotary, CreateHere, CARTA, Parks & Outdoors, Tech Council, Metro Ideas Project, TheatreCentre, InnovateHere, Variable, CoLab, the Lyndhurst and Benwood Foundations, and as GP for the Chattanooga Renaissance Fund. With the birth of his first daughter, Stephen helped catalyze a successful international research and entrepreneurial effort to battle cystic fibrosis.Stephen is a 5x patented inventor, black belt, surfer, public speaker, Marshall Fellow, and alumnus of Harvard Business School’s Young American Leaders Program, Univ. of Michigan’s Executive Education program, and Leadership Tennessee. He has worked or studied in more than 4 countries and traveled in 50. Stephen has also accidentally suspended a forklift across a drainage ditch, appeared on the cover of Inc. Magazine for not paying himself enough, and, while in high school in the 80s, created a videogame rejected in a letter from Microsoft as “entertaining but tasteless”.Most importantly, Stephen is a devoted husband and father of three beloved children.