Carr is the Chief Wrangler of a regional business accelerator in the heart of Oregon Wine Country. The Chehalem Valley Innovation Accelerator’s purpose is to build economic and community capacity in the region by helping startups and existing business succeed and grow. The Accelerator also focuses on building regional workforce and talent. With extensive experience in strategic planning, project and process management, and leading teams, Carr embraced Strategic Doing to effect change in a highly collaborative world – especially when engaging groups of citizens, government and non-profit organizations, and industry. Together with the University of Oregon’s Institute for Public Research and Engagement (IPRE), Carr is leading a regional effort to establish Strategic Doing as the common framework for forming collaborations that create measurable outcomes.

A graduate of Duke University, Carr holds an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. Carr has broad, international experience in companies of all sizes and stages – large enterprises, small businesses, startups, IPOs, and turnarounds. He has held executive positions in sales and marketing, business development, investments and acquisitions, and information technology across a variety of industries including manufacturing, legal and professional services, finance, food and beverage, education, and agribusiness. Carr has served as an officer and director in public and private companies and currently owns two small businesses. Carr is a director on the board of two foundations focused on transforming education for the 21stCentury, a director for a mutual savings bank, and twice the President of the local chamber of commerce.

Bob Parker is Executive Director of the University of Oregon’s Community Service Center (CSC) and Program Director of the Community Planning Workshop.  Over the last 25 years, Parker has managed more than 400 policy and planning analysis projects with communities and state officials throughout Oregon.  Community Planning Workshop is known widely throughout Oregon as one of the state’s critical policy analysis resources, connecting expertise of University faculty and students with communities and agencies.  These relationships, as well as the vast policy analysis experience, help CPW provide service to communities and organizations throughout Oregon.

Parker is also a principal of the University of Oregon’s Economic Development Center—a partnership with the US Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration which provides technical assistance and capacity building related to economic and business development to economically distressed Oregon communities. The Center focuses on sustainable economic development in the areas of food and agriculture systems, renewable energy, and green infrastructure. The Center won a national award in 2010 for its market analysis of local food systems in Lane County Oregon and in 2014 for its inventory and assessment of historic theaters in Oregon.