Message at Yale Innovation Summit: State’s ‘ecosystem for entrepreneurship is healthy’
HBJ PHOTO | DAVID KRECHEVSKY
Commissioner Dan O'Keefe of the state Department of Economic and Community Development, left, leads a panel on innovation at the 2025 Yale Innovation Summit at the Yale School of Management on Wednesday. With O'Keefe are, from left, Albert Green, president & CEO of Quantum CT; Jodie Gillon, president & CEO of BioCT, and Vlad Coric, CEO of Biohaven.
Clovia McIntosh has attended the annual Yale Innovation Summit for several years.
A graduate of the University of Bridgeport with a bachelor’s degree in business management and an MBA, McIntosh is the founder and CEO of IRL Innovations, developer of the Tubee, a bathtub designed specifically for the safety of children under age 5.
She was back Wednesday at the Yale School of Management for the start of the 2025 summit after winning the Best in Showcase award in the Tech Pitch category for the Tubee during last year’s event. The award is presented by Connecticut Innovations, the state’s venture capital investment arm.
The 2025 summit, hosted by Yale Ventures, began Wednesday morning and continues Thursday, with about 2,500 people expected to attend. It includes various pitch competitions in a number of categories, including the arts, technology and biotech.
McIntosh said her decade-long effort to develop and sell the Tubee — she recently took delivery of the first inventory of the tubs, which are sold on Amazon and on the tubeetub.com website — would not have been possible without all of the help she received from a state business incubator and other nonprofit organizations along the way.
“We’ve worked with Realist LAB,” a nonprofit startup accelerator based in Stamford, McIntosh said. “We’ve worked with the WBDC (Women’s Business Development Council), the Black Business Alliance. The ecosystem here for entrepreneurship is so healthy.”
That was also the message presented during a morning panel discussion with business innovators moderated by Dan O’Keefe, the state’s chief innovation officer and commissioner of the state Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD).
Joining him on the panel were Vlad Coric, CEO of New Haven-based biopharmaceutical firm Biohaven; Jodie Gillon, president and CEO of BioCT, the state’s life sciences trade organization, and Albert M. Green, president and CEO of QuantumCT, a collaboration between Yale and the University of Connecticut.
“In terms of support, I think we're very fortunate in the state of Connecticut,” Gillon said. “We have access to people.”
She noted that John Bordeau, president and CEO of AdvanceCT, a private nonprofit economic development organization that collaborates with DECD, was in the room.
Bordeaux, she said, refers to Connecticut as “the ‘one phone call state.’ So I could text the commissioner and he’ll text back at 11 p.m., and I haven't seen that anywhere else. I think it's that village mentality of access and support that I've never seen in any other state.”
Coric said any startup faces the challenge of gaining access to capital, but Connecticut has ways to help.
“Thankfully, here in Connecticut, there are a number of funds, and obviously Connecticut innovations serving as the initial seed funding for those types of ventures,” he said. “It wasn't an easy situation, but entrepreneurs overcome challenges. They find paths forward, and that's what we did.”
Gillon said another challenge comes from regulation, both at the state and federal level.
“So right now we're still in an active legislative session,” she said. “We need to get that R&D tax credit from 65% to 90%; we need to eliminate the capital tax, and not in 2028 but ideally now or no later than 2026.”
She said the changes, all of which are still being debated in the state legislative session that ends June 4, are needed because companies in the state may no longer be just considering a move to Massachusetts or New York.
“Now it's about Texas, North Carolina, where the fiscal laws are providing an incentive,” Gillon said. “When companies’ lifelines are being cut because of federal headwinds, they're making fiscal decisions.”
O’Keefe acknowledged those “headwinds,” stating that Connecticut “cannot replace all of the federal funding,” which totals $14 billion, he said.
“The good news is we're in a great place. We've got a rainy day fund of $4 billion to get us through an economic recession,” he said. “But we weren't expecting a federal funds recession.”
Green, who recently started as CEO of QuantumCT after relocating from northeast Ohio, made a point of noting Connecticut’s educated workforce as an advantage for attracting and retaining businesses. He said not only are Yale and UConn, two R1 research universities, world-class institutions, but the “rest of the state college system and the community college system” are also valuable.
“Quantum is one of these game-changing revolutions, I would say. And to do that, you need an educated workforce,” he said. “You need a workforce that is going to be open to new ideas and new ways of doing things.”
Christine Broadbridge, a professor of physics and executive director of research and innovation at Southern Connecticut State University, said before the panel that collaboration among the state’s colleges and universities is growing and an important part of innovation.
“It's really thinking of how we can use research and innovation to impact students, impact the future workforce, and impact those individuals that are already in the workforce,” Broadbridge said. “We are working very closely, understanding where our missions are complementary, and I think it's so amazing and exciting to see it coming together right now.”
In addition to the panel, DECD is sponsoring an innovation pavilion during the summit that will host “office hours” for entrepreneurs with state officials from a number of departments.
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