Published: Oct. 31, 2001

Bill Coleman, co-founder, chairman, and chief strategy officer of BEA Systems, will be awarded the CU-Boulder Entrepreneur of the Year Award at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 15.

Coleman will give a public address that is free and open to the public with seating on a first-come, first-served basis. The speech will be presented at Macky Auditorium, 17th Street and University Avenue, on the Boulder campus.

Coleman's address is part of his visit to the Robert H. and Beverly A. Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at CU-Boulder's Leeds School of Business. The Entrepreneur of the Year award that Coleman is receiving is an annual award made by the Deming Center.

BEA Systems is one of the world's leading e-business infrastructure software companies. Its customers include 100 percent of the Fortune global 500 telecommunications companies and computer/office equipment manufacturers and financial securities companies. Customers also include the majority of Fortune 500 healthcare/medicine companies, airline and delivery service companies and commercial banking companies.

Business Week named BEA the No. 1 technology company with the highest shareholder return at 884 percent in June 2000. BEA also is recognized as the fastest growing software company to reach the $1 billion revenue mark.

Coleman founded BEA Systems with Ed Scott and Alfred Chuang in early 1995. Prior to BEA, Coleman held various management positions at Sun Microsystems, including founder, vice president and general manager of Sun Professional Services; vice president of systems software overseeing Sun OS, Solaris and related products; and co-founder of Sun Federal Inc.

Ernst & Young is sponsoring the 2001 CU-Boulder Entrepreneur of the Year event with the Deming Center. The Deming Center for Entrepreneurship is a joint program of the Leeds School of Business and the College of Engineering at CU-Boulder.

The center supports entrepreneurship studies at the graduate and undergraduate levels in a "connected learning" environment between students and Colorado businesses.

Ernst & Young, a global leader in professional services, focuses on business issues of importance to senior executives. With extensive business knowledge and hands-on industry experience, the global Ernst & Young organization implements a broad array of solutions to help companies capture growth, improve financial performance and manage risk throughout the world. A collection of Ernst & Young's views on a variety of business issues can be found at .

For information on the Deming Center, visit the Web site at or call (303) 735-4970.