Spark: The InnovateLI Podcast

With its trendsetting tradeshows, forward-looking committees, 1,300-plus member companies and 11-square-mile industrial park – packed daily with more than 55,000 employees – the HIA-LI (formerly the Hauppauge Industrial Association of Long Island) ranks among Long Island’s most powerful economic engines. As its face, voice and guiding hand, President and CEO Terri Alessi-Micelli occupies a promine...

Deep in the Galactically Underrated File sits Adelphi University, a 125-year-old private institution that is routinely overlooked on an Island heavy with world-class universities and laboratories – though not by U.S. News & World Report, which ranks Adelphi a top college for veterans, nursing students, career guidance, social mobility and other key categories that define the nation’s best scho...

The Long Island Association has a new leader – but the LIA is hardly new to Matthew Cohen, the freshly minted president and CEO who’s already logged a decade with Long Island’s largest business and networking organization, primarily as its government relations director. Matt takes over at a touch-and-go time for the 95-year-old association, with the nation emerging from the COVID pandemic and soci...

Exciting socioeconomic winds are blowing across the nation, and nowhere do those forward-looking gales blow harder than Long Island, where offshore wind-generated electricity is foremost on the minds of private corporations, local governments, top universities and national laboratories, all jockeying for position in the clean-gen power play of the next century. Among those surfing the winds: Evers...

The Angels had Charlie, that time-traveling dude in Quantum Leap had a Dean Stockwell hologram, Spider-Man has his best buddy Ned and here on Spark: The Innovate Long Island Podcast, we are absurdly lucky to have Arthur Germain as our “man in the chair.” An innovator, entrepreneur and a bona fide genius, Arthur is cut from the classic ink-stained writer/editor mold, with a modern-day finish. He la...

constant voice for economic and environmental balance. Mitchell Pally has been the cornerstone institute’s chief executive since 2010, adding another important and influential role to a curriculum vitae that’s absolutely packed with them. A former New York State senator, Mitch held numerous positions in the State Legislature throughout the latter 20th century, helping to draft a first-in-the-natio...

Ann-Marie Scheidt is a one-woman economic engine, one of the most vital cogs in Long Island’s entire socioeconomic apparatus. A relentless innovator and supporter of innovators, she is personally responsible for more than $25 million in federal and state funds flowing into regional economic-development proposals she herself authored or co-authored. And that barely scratches the surface for this Ya...

Debra Markowitz is a study in innovation – personally, technologically, even economically, as in, the Nassau County economy, which now benefits from $169 million in annual economic activity from local film and TV production, a number that grew steadily (and dramatically, wink) during Debra’s 33 years as Nassau County Film Commissioner. Now home to multiple Hollywood-grade production studios, Nassa...

Regular Innovate Long Island readers know this name – Rosalie Drago has long energized regional workforce and socioeconomic initiatives, previously as Long Island director of the nonprofit Workforce Development Institute and now as the Suffolk County commissioner of labor, licensing and consumer affairs.   As the head of a busy and influential 160-person Labor Department in the nation’s 26th...

As COVID-19 circumnavigated the globe, scientists representing many disciplines rose to meet it. Among them: James Hayward and the incredible minds at Stony Brook-based Applied DNA Sciences, where long experience and a unique technology set the pace. A molecular biologist by trade, Hayward brings decades of biotech and consumer-product experience to his roles as chairman, president and CEO. Applie...

If you’ve ever seen a protest or press conference advocating for Long Island environmental justice, you’ve seen Adrienne Esposito, at the microphone, way out in front of the politicians and philanthropists, dispensing wisdom and cracking wise. Now in her 17th year as executive director of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment, Adrienne is a lobbying and public-education force across Long Islan...

For all intents and purposes, America’s COVID-19 pandemic started in New York. That put Nassau County-based Northwell Health, the state’s largest healthcare system and the nation’s 14th largest, on the front lines from Day One. Leading that fight is CEO Michael Dowling, who turned Northwell into New York State’s largest private employer – and steered Northwell through the crisis – leveraging lesso...

Anyone who’s done Long Island business over the last quarter century knows Marlene McDonnell – the former events director for Long Island Business News, the two-decade member of the Long Island Business Development Council (including a long stint as LIBDC administrator and Executive Board member) and the president of Innovate Long Island. Marlene, of course, took over when Innovate LI founder John...