A Little More 

Anthony Baker’s biography reads a little bit like the story of Forrest Gump. Like Gump, Baker was picked on as boy. So, he learned to run fast. He ran on his high school’s cross-country team but didn’t do well in school. Like Gump, he joined the Army. He served for 22 years as a paratrooper, ranger and special forces operator. He retired from the Army as a single father to a daughter and, like Gump, went into the commercial fishing business. At the same time, he enrolled in the Community College of Rhode Island to study small business management. 

Baker’s business grew from one boat to three, and then into the wholesale seafood business. He also continued to pursue his education, eventually completing a doctoral degree in management at Walden University.  

Baker then got into teaching. Although he has taught at other institutions, he describes his first love as teaching entrepreneurship and small business management at AACC. The students "remind me of myself in many ways when I started college at 40 years old at the Community College of Rhode Island,” he said. 

Students who take a class with Baker find him to be open, honest and authentic. He brings both a knowledge of academic theory and his own business experience to his classes in the Entrepreneurial Studies Institute, where students learn the skills necessary to launch and grow their own businesses. He also works with students in the college’s Entrepreneur’s Club. 

When he’s not teaching, Baker can be found training and breeding field springer spaniels at Windmill Hill Kennels, which he started with his wife, Donna. 

“I have always had this foundational philosophy, which drives all of my passions,” he said. “I want to leave this world knowing I made a difference to someone and something in some way. Whether it was as a soldier, a father, a husband, a teacher or a trainer of bird dogs, I have done so because I believed I had a purpose to make a difference in whatever I did. So, I approach everything I do of substance with this mindset. Do your best and do it so someone else will benefit. Do it with this purpose in mind.” 

Works 

• "An Examination of Social Learning Outcomes in Three Entrepreneurial Chesapeake Bay Watermen Communities" (dissertation, Walden University, May 2011)

• “Community Service Projects as a Value Added for Business Education: How Students Can Put to Use What They Have Learned” (National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship, Winter 2009)

• “The Cultural Evolution of the Fishing Industry: The Effects of Fisheries Regulations on Community Based, Family Fishing Businesses” (Society for the Advancement of Management, September 2006)

• “A Comparative Analysis of Government Regulations, Fishing Effort, and Outside Influences on Lobster Landings for the State of Rhode Island from 1988 - 1998” (Johnson & Wales University MBA Program, March 2002)

•  “Military Operations Other Than War” (coauthor, textbook, Stackpole Books, January 2000)