After nine years as federal co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission, Jesse L. White Jr. is applying his economic development expertise to new endeavors. White is now a visiting professor in the School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is establishing an economic development assistance program for North Carolina communities. He’s also senior consultant with Market Street Services, an economic development consulting firm in Atlanta, where he will work mainly on community strategic planning. “I will carry forward my passion for entrepreneurship, small business development and capacity building at the community level,” he says. That passion was a hallmark of his ARC chairmanship, which also included garnering congressional reauthorization and record-level funding for the agency. The ARC’s new federal co-chair is Anne B. Pope, former commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance.

After more than three years as policy director at the National Commission on Entrepreneurship, Erik Pages decided to put his money where his mouth was: He started his own business. Pages launched his consulting company, EntreWorks, in February. He is helping communities implement economic development strategies and doing research, writing and advocating for entrepreneurship. Pages, NBIA’s legislative correspondent, says there is a demand for people to help design economic development strategies around entrepreneurship. “I really do believe this message of entrepreneurship, and I really do want to spread the gospel and work with communities that buy into this message. It ought to be a part of any community’s goals,” he says.

Nola Miyasaki has gone from hot to cold. She left the warmth of Honolulu, Hawaii, where she was executive director of High Technology Development Corp., for the excitement of a new job in a colder climate. In January, Miyasaki began as executive director of the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship at Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y. Although the weather is quite different, her new job comes with another change: working in the academic world. Miyasaki previously focused on technology development, both at High Technology Development and as special assistant for technology to the governor of Hawaii. Her new responsibilities include organizing an internship program, planning a women’s entrepreneurship conference, and community outreach. Miyasaki sees a lot of potential in the field she has chosen. “I think that university-driven economic development will be a key for growth in regional economies,” she says.

NBIA bids a reluctant goodbye to Human Resource/Contract Manager Gina Geremia, who has taken a position as office manager of the Phoenix Outdoor Education Center in Sutton, Vt. Geremia served NBIA in a variety of capacities during the past five years, beginning as assistant to President and CEO Dinah Adkins. “We’ll miss Gina, but we can’t help but celebrate with her,” Adkins says. “She brought tremendous joy of life to the office, as well as being devoted to her work.” The move to Vermont is a return home for Geremia, who looks forward to being closer to family. “I’m excited about this wonderful opportunity,” she says. “I only hope I learn as much from my new peers as I have from everyone at NBIA.”

The Marina [Calif.] Small Business Incubator has a new director: Susan Barich. The former director of communications for the Silicon Valley World Internet Center in Palo, Alto, Calif., brings extensive experience assisting businesses to the mixed-use incubation program. Barich has worked with emerging and small companies through organizations such as Mission College in Santa Clara, Calif., and The Enterprise Network/NASA Technology Incubator in San Jose. She also is a longtime board member with the Environmental Business Cluster in San Jose. This new position gives her the opportunity to “get back into economic development, which I enjoy tremendously,” Barich says. She came to the position via Business Cluster Development, a consulting firm in Menlo Park, Calif., that the City of Marina hired to manage the incubator.

In September, NBIA member Ellen Hemmerly began a year-long term as president of the Association of University Research Parks (AURP) in Reston, Va. Hemmerly is executive director of the UMBC Research Park Corp. in Baltimore and has been involved with AURP since 1995. She believes business incubators and research parks are a natural fit: “From an economic development perspective, colocating incubators and research parks [allows for the provision of] space and other services to a continuum of companies – from very early-stage to mature companies.” Only partially through her term, Hemmerly has already made her mark as AURP president. Under her leadership, the association has boosted its core membership (university research park practitioners) from 60 percent to 70 percent, adopted a set of association best practices and completed an industry survey, among other accomplishments.

After spending nine years working with entrepreneurs and even owning her own incubated firm, Mildred Walters is now the executive director at the Nashville Business Incubation Center (NBIC). In 1995, Walters helped establish the Women’s Institute for Successful Entrepreneurship at Tennessee State University (TSU). Prior to her work there, Walters owned an advertising company in the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Incubation Center. These experiences, along with working with the NBIC at TSU, taught Walters the value that a quality incubator can bring to a community. “I’m looking forward to letting people know the economic impact business incubation has had on Nashville,” she says. Walters replaces the retiring Jennie Lemons, who had been with the Nashville incubator since its inception in 1986 and became director in 1989. With Lemons at the helm, the NBIC went through a $1.4 million expansion in 1995 and increased capacity from 10 to 22 clients.