Maria T. Spencer, MBA, is a business consultant and Team Lead for Entrepreneurship at the Penn State Small Business Development Center where she specializes in technology commercialization, manufacturing innovation and export trade development.  She has worked with hundreds of businesses and entrepreneurs on business and capital development, industrial efficiency initiatives, new product and workforce development efforts.Spencer has authored and co-authored multiple publications including: Talent Management: A Step-by-Step Action-Oriented Guide Based on Best Practices, Optimizing Talent in the Federal Workforce, Best Practices in Federal Human Resource Management and Action Research for Sustainable Change for the Encyclopedia of Human Resource Management.    Currently, Spencer is a PhD candidate in the Human Resource and Organization Development track of Penn State’s Workforce Education and Development program where she studies change in successful organizations. Of particular interested is business model innovation and organization change.