4 NJIT Highlanders Make NJBIZ's Power 100 List for 2024

Four NJIT Highlanders are featured in NJBIZ’s Power 100 list for 2024, including President Teik C. Lim.

The others are Luis De La Hoz, who serves on NJIT’s Hispanic Latinx Leadership Council, and two members of the Board of Directors of NJIT’s New Jersey Innovation Institute: Debbie Hart and Michele Siekerka.

In its entry for Lim, the business publication cited the high rank that NJIT achieved from The Wall Street Journal/College Pulse last year: No. 19 in the U.S. — the second highest ranking for a public university.

De La Hoz is a first vice president and regional director of community lending at Valley Bank and chairman of the State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey. Hart is president and CEO of BioNJ and chair of the N.J. Commission on Science, Innovation and Technology, while Siekerka is president and CEO of the N.J. Business & Industry Association.

NJII, a corporation of the university, turns great ideas into businesses via four divisions, including those that arise from the research and inventions of professors and students. The divisions are entrepreneurship, health care, defense and professional and corporate education.

The HLLC seeks to grow the Hispanic and Latino population at NJIT. Currently, about a quarter of its undergraduate student body is Hispanic or Latino, up from 20% in 2021.

NJBIZ Chief Editor Jeffrey Kanige said the Power 100 list honors “people who have gained public attention — and perhaps acclaim — for their professional accomplishments and public service,” adding that “they have contributed meaningfully to the advancement of the public interest through their work and/or community service.”