Bee-Leng Chua often thinks of herself as an entrepreneurial evangelist, preaching the importance and benefits of following the path of sound business practices.

As the executive director of Hawai'i Pacific University's newly opened Entrepreneurship Center, Chua is working tirelessly to spread the word that the center is open for business. Housed in the university's College of Business Administration, the center's mission is to promote entrepreneurial ventures by students and the community through education, outreach and applied research.

Having created a similar entrepreneurship center from scratch at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Chua, 55, believes she knows what it takes to build a successful program. She came up with the idea in 1998 after taking a group of students to a business plan competition in Texas.

"They became so motivated and energized to want to do a good job and they learned so much from that whole experience," Chua said. "I said if I can transform this team of students who just went there as if it was a duty to the university and came back all fired up, I said I have to bring this to The Chinese University."

Chua also saw a need to develop the program because she said Hong Kong was losing its entrepreneurs. Young people preferred to work for the big corporations, rather than start their own, she said.

"Even though Hong Kong has a very rich entrepreneurial heritage, it's a victim of its own success," she said. "There isn't a generation of new entrepreneurs coming in to fill the space of small businesses that close down."

But getting the center started in Hong Kong was a major endeavor. Chua said the program was self-financing and she had to raise funds for salaries, research and other programs, as well as the day-to-day operations.

"I think the university appreciated us because that was the only way we could be sustainable. I would say that that was an entrepreneurial venture," she said.

One of Chua's colleagues in Hong Kong was Chuck Steilen, who helped develop the MBA programs at The Chinese University. So when Steilen took over as dean of HPU's College of Business Administration this year and wanted to launch his own center to expand the school's entrepreneurial studies program, he turned to Chua.

Steilen said Chua has a solid reputation in Asia and has made business connections throughout the world.

"She brings a multitude of talent," he said. "She's a good teacher, she can start the entrepreneurship center from scratch and certainly she knows Hawai'i."

The HPU center opened on Oct. 23, and Chua has been busy setting up the program and making contacts with the local business community. She's gone to business meetings, seminars and other events to get the community interested in the center.

The response so far has been very positive.

"You cannot teach entrepreneurship in a vacuum," she said. "You have to get the students out there and you have to bring the community to the university."

The native of Singapore has an ambitious agenda. Within a year, Chua hopes to have begun these programs: