5 at NJIT Make NJBIZ's 2021 List of the 100 Biggest Players in the State's Economy

New Jersey Institute of Technology President Joel S. Bloom and four members of a key university board made the NJBIZ 2021 Power 100 list of the biggest players in the state’s economy.

The board members — Debbie Hart, Jose Lozano, Dean Paranicas and Michele Siekerka — serve on the Board of Directors for New Jersey Innovation Institute, an NJIT corporation fostering economic development through six different divisions: biopharma, data and advanced technology, defense and homeland security, entrepreneurship, healthcare delivery, and professional and corporate education.

In its descriptions of Highlanders in the Power 100 — all of whom also were recognized by ROI-NJ in its 2021 lists of ROI Influencers — NJBIZ lauded their commitment to creating opportunities for students and businesses, particularly those in underrepresented and lower-income communities — a core principle at NJIT. Here’s a closer, slightly edited look at why the publication selected each honoree.

Joel S. Bloom
President of NJIT

“Bloom [leads] an institute that has tried to empower unrepresented, first-generation lower-income, typically minority New Jerseyans — especially in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. Bloom himself has been intimately involved in the STEM field for years. ‘Every company today is a technology company,’ Bloom said last year. ‘You want a job that pays well. STEM is difficult and takes a lot of hard work.’ For this reason, Bloom has made it his mission to bring tech knowhow to students and community members, particularly those in underrepresented and lower-income communities. [He] is also on the newly revived New Jersey Commission on Science, Innovation and Technology, which is reviewing grant applications to dole out $550,000 of direct financial assistance to life science and technology start-ups. Priority is also given to first-time applicants, women- and minority-owned businesses, and businesses based in one of the 715 neighborhoods that qualified as opportunity zones.”

Debbie Hart
President and CEO of BioNJ
Member of NJII’s Board of Directors

“Hart is the founding president and CEO of a 400-member trade association for research-based life sciences companies in New Jersey. Given the size of the industry it would be hard to overstate its  importance to the state’s economy. And with the outbreak of COVID-19, BioNJ’s members were thrust to the forefront of the effort to contain a vast public health emergency. By most accounts, including Hart’s — perhaps not surprisingly — the companies have acquitted themselves well. ‘The industry has really stepped up to address a disease that we didn’t even know existed just a couple of months ago,’ Hart told NJBIZ last summer. ‘They’ve done all they could to make a difference. And there’s more to come, but we’ve made lots of progress already.’”

Jose Lozano
President and CEO of Choose New Jersey
Member of NJII’s Board of Directors

“Choose NJ and Lozano remain key figures in promoting New Jersey to businesses around the world, through trade missions to India, Israel and Germany, international offices, or the $3 million marketing campaign to tout New Jersey as a place to do business. And in the post-pandemic economic recovery, the state has many perks that Choose NJ can promote. For one, it’s a cheaper and socially distanced alternative to the pricey and crowded New York City. The state is a hub of national commerce and international trade. And the state’s manufacturing sector is poised for expansion in the coming years.”

Dean Paranicas
President and CEO of the HealthCare Institute of New Jersey
Member of NJII’s Board of Directors 

“Paranicas oversees the trade association for the leading research-based biopharmaceutical and medical technology companies in New Jersey. HINJ works to ensure life sciences companies have a supportive innovation ecosystem to discover and develop new cures and treatments, patients have access to the medicines they need, and that New Jersey remains a global life sciences hub with all of the attendant economic and quality of life benefits. Along with BioNJ chief Debbie Hart, Paranicas leads an organization of companies critical to the nation’s pandemic response. ‘Both the biopharma companies and the medical technology companies, they’re on the ground, they’ve been at this hard,’ Paranicas told NJBIZ over the summer. ‘They’ve been at this from the beginning. They never close. They kept on working through, developing diagnostic tests and working on therapies and, of course, working on a vaccine.’”

Michele Siekerka
President and CEO of the New Jersey Business & Industry Association
Member of NJII’s Board of Directors

“As [head] of the 20,000-member New Jersey Business & Industry Association, Siekerka has her finger on the pulse of what business owners need to succeed here. Broadly speaking, the challenges for the state’s businesses are enormous. Even going into the pandemic, figures like Siekerka worried that high taxes and onerous regulations, the march toward a $15 an hour minimum wage and political tensions over the prior economic incentive programs have made businesses second-guess if they want to stay in New Jersey, or if they might want to leave the state. ‘Under Michele’s leadership, NJBIA has been on the frontlines of stopping, stalling or mitigating policies that serve as a detriment to small and large businesses,’ a source who works closely with Siekera told NJBIZ last year. Now as the pandemic forces many of them to operate at reduced capacity and intensive sanitization rules in place, and as it disrupts supply chains and depresses consumer demand, many are struggling to survive.”