October 31st, 2018
For Immediate Release
Johnson and Johnson recently hosted “Johnson and Johnson Innovation Immersion Workshop” for the 2018 AWIS New Jersey Women in STEM Entrepreneurship Challenge participants. The entrepreneurship training module created by Johnson & Johnson leadership provided a unique opportunity to the female founders to get an inside preview of a big company approach to innovation and business development.
The Johnson and Johnson team spearheading this initiative includes Catherine Salerno, Vice President of R&D, Global In-Market Product Support; John Bell, Vice President of External Innovation J&J Consumer R&D and Mona Nair, Vice President of North America R&D and Deployment for Consumer.
Anna Prilutsky, Vice President, Global Baby R&D; Janette Edelstein, Director, External Innovation at Johnson & Johnson; Tara Zedayko, Senior Marketing Manager, External Innovation Strategic Marketing; Thong Nguyen, Principal Scientist, Beauty Franchise R&D, Johnson & Johnson, leading the growth of consumer markets at Johnson & Johnson nationally and internationally, additionally shared their expertise and feedback with the female founders.
Katherine Merton, Head, JLABS NYC-Boston-Philadelphia at Johnson & Johnson presented an overview of the JLABS innovation and investment strategy, stressing their outlook of supporting women and other minority owned disruptive innovators.
The partnership was facilitated by our Entrepreneurship Advisory Board member Vidya Kishore, Head of HR, US Demand Generation at Johnson & Johnson. “We are very excited to work with Johnson and Johnson as this partnership adds great value to our ecosystem by providing an industrial training perspective to the participants”, said Kamana Misra PhD, President AWIS New Jersey. “Our Advisory Board has a strategic composition where each member has significantly added value to the program. It is an example of what great team work can achieve”, she added.
The New Jersey Women in STEM Entrepreneurship Challenge is designed to encourage women who have embraced or plan to lead STEM entrepreneurial ventures. For the first cohort, in addition to cash awards, all eligible participants had an opportunity to participate in the NJIT NSF I-Corps NJ Center for Innovation summer accelerator. Participants were also eligible to receive mini grants up to $2,000 supported by a grant from National Science Foundation. The summer accelerator participation was facilitated by Judith Sheft, Associate Vice President Technology & Enterprise Development, New Jersey Innovation Institute @ NJIT and an Advisory Board Member for the entrepreneurship outreach.
About AWIS:
AWIS is a leading national advocate for women in STEM with a mission to advance gender equity by inspiring bold leadership and research to drive organizational systemic changes. Established in 1995, the New Jersey chapter, AWIS-NJ empowers and promotes women scientists through programs that facilitate career development, education, networking, leadership and entrepreneurial opportunities.
2019 Entrepreneurship Challenge will be accepting application shortly.
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