Elizabeth Benson

Entrepreneur

Products Built:
ReaLifeSim & VetReaLifeSim wearable, high fidelity IV task trainers

Personal Awards:
• Microsoft BizSpark Plus Entrepreneur Award Recipient. 2016.
• One Spark Ventures Spark Tank Award Recipient. 2016.
• Design Award Nominee, Maryland Distance Learning Association. 2014
• Adjunct Faculty of the Year Nominee, College of Southern Maryland. 2013, 2014.
• Faces of Nursing – Award winner, Maryland Nurses Association, 2007.
• Nurse Educator of the Year, Maryland Nurses Association, 2006.
• Emergency Preparedness Train-the-Trainer Award, National Capital Region, 2005.

Serendipitously fell into it...

SoFriendly

Frustrating: A seemingly universal lack of the ability to communicate clearly, completely, and in a timely fashion.
Rewarding: The many steps taken at breakneck pace blur to a hazy mosaic of milestones met.

THE #1 mistake is the unwillingness to pivot.

When you create something disruptively innovative, the greatest gift you can give yourself is perspective. The difficult part of perspective is the balance between an evangelistic belief in what you're creating balanced with the ability to step back, listen to/heed some criticism, and then move forward again. Never lose sight of the problem you identified and solution you've created.

An engineer (biomedical/life sciences) by training, a nurse and educator by choice and now an inventor/entrepreneur by need, I find myself blending all aspects of more than 35 years’ experience as a RN and higher education specialist into designing and developing disruptively innovative training tools to change the paradigm in clinical simulation education.

I believe any challenge can be successfully overcome by the creative integration of people and processes toward clear and measurable outcomes. Solutions may require going over, under, around or through an obstacle. They may require seeing the challenge in a new light to recognize it as an opportunity to grow in a different direction. The key is to embrace the process and enjoy the journey.

Creating and developing program, product and service lines are activities at which I excel, including choosing from multiple evaluation strategies to effectively measure success. I am particularly adept at establishing and communicating clear priorities; developing detailed work plans and milestones; writing, interpreting and applying policies and/or guidelines; tracking progress; and working with a wide range of people at all organizational levels to creatively solve problems and deliver successful, measurable results.