MassChallenge-City Of Newton Partnership
Dear Resident,
Last week, I was thrilled to announce a partnership with MassChallenge to establish a new Innovation Center in the former Newton Corner Library in Newton Corner. MassChallenge is a nonprofit accelerator program for startup companies. With strong biotech, tech, and business communities, our city is already itself a center of innovation. With this new partnership, we are looking forward to seeing Newton’s strength in these sectors increase and to providing access to the new economy for all of Newton’s residents.
To do this, MassChallenge will design programming for entrepreneurs as well as the community at large and will collaborate with Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC). MassChallenge has also agreed to host interns from our summer high school internship program and to conduct workshops for both students and other community groups on business practices, some in conjunction with the Newton Free Library.
Both MassChallenge and CIC are locally and internationally recognized with proven track records in the innovation space and will contribute to our local economy as well as offer resources and programming available to our students, entrepreneurs, and anyone else interested in taking advantage of these opportunities to connect and learn. Not only this, but the innovation center’s arrival in Newton Corner will bring new business to surrounding retail, restaurants, and other businesses.
This is an important development: the innovation sector is one of the major engines for sustainable jobs–and access to this economy and the new jobs it has generated and will generate is essential to offering opportunity to all in the 21st Century. MassChallenge alumni alone have generated almost half a billion dollars in revenue and have added 5,105 new jobs to the economy over the course of the program’s six years of operation.
We look forward to working with and having MassChallenge and CIC as strong community partners. If you any questions, feedback, or ideas, please contact Dori Zaleznik at dzaleznik@newtonma.gov. You can also find more information on MassChallenge here and CIC here.
Sincerely,
