Erin Bender

Executive Director of The Point
President's Office

Erin Bender is founding Executive Director of The Point at Otterbein University – a new collaboration, education and innovation center made possible by public officials at all levels of government, local business and community leaders, public schools, and creative faculty and students at Otterbein. It’s offers student-centered collaboration and cross-disciplinary, high-impact learning that bridges learning with doing, students with professionals, in one shared space at 60 Collegeview Road, west of Otterbein’s main campus. It is a conduit between abstract learning and concrete practice, blurring the lines between time spent in school and time building a career. As a result, it prepares students for success in a new economy.

Bender came to Otterbein after working at OSU were she held various positions within the Office of Technology Commercialization. The office facilitates the transfer of university research to licensees for development of new products and services that benefit the public good, foster economic growth and generate revenue. Her past roles with the office include associate director, senior licensing officer and licensing associate. Prior to joining OSU, Bender was an associate at Kremblas, Foster, Phillips & Pollick, a boutique intellectual property law firm that serves small enterprises, large corporations, individual inventors, universities and research institutions. She also worked as a legal assistant at the Chemical Abstracts Service, a division of the American Chemical Society.

In 2006, her family established C.A.B.B. Farms, LLC, a 65-acre family farm in Lexington, Ohio, that specializes in natural grass-fed and finished Angus cattle and hay production