"Shark Tank" star Lori Greiner presents YSU Thomas Colloquium Oct. 26

Lori Grenier, a star investor on ABC’s Emmy Award-winning Shark Tank, presents the Youngstown State University Paul J. & Marguerite J. Thomas Colloquium 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 26, in Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown.

Admission to the lecture is free, but tickets are required. Tickets are available at the Stambaugh Auditorium box office or online at www.stambaughauditorium.com.

In addition to her role on Shark Tank, Greiner is the host of Clever & Unique Creations by Lori Greiner on QVC-TV.

Greiner began with an idea for a plastic earring organizer and went on to patent the product and grow it into For Your Ease Only Inc., a multimillion-dollar international company where she serves as president. Since launching the company in 1996, Greiner has created more than 500 products, and holds 120 U.S. and international patents, regarded as one of the most prolific inventors of retail products.

On Shark Tank, Greiner appears each week to help start, grow or save businesses and turn dreams into realities. She continues to prove her ability to recognize if a product is a “hero or a zero”, as several of her Shark Tank investments are the highest success stories on the show to date.

The author of the national bestselling Invent It, Sell It, Bank It!, Grenier draws from her success as an inventor to reveal her strategies for turning an idea into a million-dollar reality. She has been profiled in a range of leading outlets, including Financial Times, Forbes, and on CNBC and Bloomberg.

YSU, through from an endowment established by Paul J. and Marguerite K. Thomas, began the annual “Colloquium on Free Enterprise” in 1981. Reflecting the Thomases’ involvement in the business community and their interest in the community-at-large, the Colloquium fosters ideas that are conducive to the growth of the free enterprise system. It promotes free enterprise as a viable force in the U.S. economy. The aims of the Colloquium are: to provide a series of outstanding lectures or workshops by recognized leaders in business, economics, and finance for both the public and the academic community, to provide a library for use by business people, students, and citizens of the community, to serve as a clearing house for the exchange of ideas to foster common goals of industry, business, and finance in the free enterprise system, and to stimulate the thinking and long-range planning of business, government, and individuals on ways to foster the growth of free enterprise.