NBIA Installs New Board Members

Oct. 1 marked the beginning of a new fiscal year for NBIA. Among the first orders of business: installation of new members of the board of directors, elected by NBIA members last spring to three-year terms. The honors were done during the board’s meeting Oct. 23 before the 15th Fall Training Institute in San Diego.

"We are excited to have such a diverse group of new board members who will bring wide-ranging experiences to the deliberations of NBIA's board of directors," says NBIA President and CEO Dinah Adkins.

And the new members are:

Angela Glover, director, Chattanooga/Hamilton County Business Development Center, Chattanooga, Tenn. Glover is on a roll: Last year, she was named the Tennessee Small Business Administration's Women in Business Advocate of the Year and became director of the award-winning Business Development Center, where she has worked since 1994. "I love this industry and I wanted to play more of a part in seeing it grow and step out of the box a little bit," she says. She hopes to help the board increase outreach to international incubators.

Evan Jones, director, @Wales Digital Media Initiatives, Cardiff, Wales. An incubation evangelist, Jones led the development of Wales' national incubation strategy through the Welsh Development Agency and ensured that Welsh incubators observe best practices. Since 2000, he has directed @Wales, the UK's first digital media business incubator. Previously, he ran a British incubator focused on cellular telephony technologies. Jones believes the customized assistance that incubators provide is key to the industry’s success. "There’s no one ‘reason’ that fits all incubators and companies, which, ironically, is probably the reason it works."

Keelin O’Leary, manager, Genesis Centre, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. O'Leary started the Genesis Centre eight years ago; since then, the incubator has graduated 14 companies and created 180 jobs and its clients have raised more than $4 million in private equity. Having attended nine NBIA conferences, O'Leary hopes to extend the personal contact she finds there — even for those who, like her, are fairly isolated. "I'd like to figure out ways to find colleagues to network with when we go home even if we live in places without a lot of incubators," she says.

Jim Sanders, director, Honeywell International New Ventures, Columbia, Md. Sanders has been involved in incubation in many capacities, including as director of the Maryland Technology Development Corp.’s incubation program; an incubator consultant for the World Bank; and board member of the NEOTECH Incubator in Columbia, Md. He even knows entrepreneurship, having headed three software start-ups. "Incubators have the potential to be a highly effective method to make a difference" in the number and quality of start-up companies, Sanders says.

Joel Wiggins, president and CEO, Enterprise Center of Johnson County, Lenexa, Kan. Wiggins joined the Enterprise Center in June after more than eight years — including five and a half as director — at the Austin Technology Incubator, a program of the IC2 Institute at The University of Texas at Austin. He also has helped establish two incubators in Poland and conducted incubation training in Asia, Latin America and Europe. "I would like to ensure that [NBIA] has the necessary resources to continue our leadership in a world that looks to us as the leading light on business incubation," Wiggins says.

Click here to see the full list of NBIA’s Board of Directors.