Melinda Richter Heads Environmental Business Cluster
February 6, 2009
SAN JOSE — James Robbins is leaving as the executive director of the Environmental Business Cluster, retiring after creating 50 such incubators in his career. That kind of footprint leaves big shoes to fill.
Effective immediately, Melinda Richter will take over his position. Richter is also the executive director of the San Jose BioCenter — an incubator focused on providing facilities, specialized equipment, laboratory and business support services to life science startups. She will now head up both incubators. Richter was selected from a field of more than 70 applicants.
“Jim started the EBC 15 years ago, before it was the sexy, cool technology everyone wanted to get into,” Richter said. “There’s a long legacy and history with these types of companies, and we want to honor and build upon that and bring it to the forefront a little more.”
Richter is bringing in her team from Prescience International to run the business cluster. Prescience, where Richter is also CEO, starts and manages research centers and incubators. The San Francisco company also created and manages the University of California at Berkeley’s BioExec Program and the California Center for Healthcare and BioMedical Technology Research Foundation, now called InnovateMD.
San Jose State University Research Foundation chief operating officer Mary Sidney helped hire Richter and Prescience for the job. She said Robbins has really set the standard for incubation, but believes Prescience, which already has solid relationships with its clients, will continue to build on what Robbins started.
“I’m excited. I think we’re going to get federal attention in a way we haven’t in the past,” Sidney said. “We’re certainly going to be pursuing those avenues, and the opportunities are huge.”
Richter has goals for events and speakers she’d like to bring to the business cluster, including finance heads from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy along with a series on financing for cleantech entrepreneurs.
“We’re trying to bridge the entrepreneurs with the funders who have the money so that they can make smart decisions,” Richter said. “That will be a big focus of our year for 2009.”
Robbins has served as executive director since EBC’s inception. Under his leadership, the clean energy and environmentally focused incubator has graduated more than 75 companies and helped more than 120 businesses commercialize and market their products. The downtown San Jose site serves 30 companies and has a waiting list of five potential clients.
San Jose Redevelopment Agency Deputy Executive Director Abi Maghamfar said the succession made sense because there’s already so much crossover between the two incubators and the related industries they serve. The agency contracts with nonprofit San Jose State University Research Foundation to run the incubator program under an approximately $100,000- to $200,000-a-year contract, Maghamfar said.
“Jim has been a fixture at the EBC since we opened in it 1994, and he’s done a wonderful job,” said Maghamfar, highlighting how the EBC was named 2008’s incubator of the year by the National Business Incubation Association. “If it wasn’t because of Jim, the EBC wouldn’t be where it is today. It wouldn’t have the recognition it has nationally and even worldwide.”
The EBC was the first of its kind in the nation. The center has commercialization contracts with the California Energy Commission and the U.S. Department of Energy. This is the fourth year of that contract, Robbins said. The commission funds $120 million a year for clean, renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies to be commercialized.
“We really have refined how to help people commercialize and take environmental technology to the market,” Robbins said.
Robbins, 62, is “semi retiring,” with plans to do a little more fishing out of his Montana cabin and take a break from the day-to-day operations of running the business cluster.
However, he’s still planning to mentor and coach many of the center’s young companies and will continue his consulting work as a partner with Business Cluster Development, a company which creates business incubation and technology commercialization programs for universities, corporations and communities.