Johnson & Johnson and AWIS New Jersey partner to promote female STEM entrepreneurs.

Sep 27, 2018
For Immediate Release

Johnson and Johnson and AWIS New Jersey have partnered to offer “Johnson and Johnson Immersion Program” to the 2018 New Jersey Women in STEM Entrepreneurship Challenge participants. The immersion program will offer a unique opportunity to the female founders to access an entrepreneurship training module created by Johnson & Johnson leadership.

The Johnson and Johnson team spearheading this initiative includes Anna Prilutsky, Vice President, Global Baby R&D; Catherine Salerno, Vice President of R&D, Global In-Market Product Support; John Bell, Vice President of External Innovation J&J Consumer R&D, Sandrine Alvarado, Senior Director Global Baby R&D and Mona Nair, Vice President of North America R&D and Deployment for Consumer.

“We are very excited to work with Johnson and Johnson as this partnership will add great value to our program, providing an industrial training perspective to the participants”, said Kamana Misra PhD, President AWIS New Jersey. The partnership was facilitated by our Entrepreneurship Advisory Board member Vidya Kishore, Head of HR, US Demand Generation at Johnson & Johnson. Misra added “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.”

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.