Innov8te Smart Cities Incubator Announces Senior Hire
INCUBATOR NAMES INDUSTRY INNOVATION LEADER CYNTHIA HEYN AS MANAGING DIRECTOR
DALLAS, TX – September 11, 2019 – Today, the Innov8te Smart Cities Incubator, which was launched in February 2019 to support entrepreneurs and early-stage companies in sectors supporting urban and civic transformation, announced the appointment of Cynthia Heyn as Managing Director. In this role, Ms. Heyn is responsible for the overall execution and operations of the incubator, strategy, operations and partner relations, including the network of teams locally and across the country.
Ms. Heyn’s extensive experience in product innovation and as a smart cities consultant with a broad background in executive management in the Telecommunications and Information Technology, including Ericsson and Nokia Siemens, has made her an acknowledged industry expert. Her career includes experience in the corporate, consulting and not-for-profit sectors. She enjoyed a number of years living in working in Germany and Sweden, with international experience managing markets around the globe. In 2016 she founded SMARTnTX, a boutique consultancy focusing on smart city initiatives in the North Texas area. She possesses a passion for new leading-edge technology and practical implementation of existing technology to provide intelligent solutions to solve every day as well as highly complex problems.
Ms. Heyn is an active leader in a number of technical industry forums and organizations, including being responsible for the nomination of over 100 people for tech industry awards, many of whom are women in technology. She currently serves as President of the Alumni Association and Alumni Board of Austin College.
“I am honored to serve Innov8te as Managing Director, and to drive the organization’s mission to support the growth and commercialization of smart cities in North Texas and beyond,” Ms. Heyn said. “The civic-focused companies of our founding cohort demonstrate tremendous energy and momentum for our smart cities vision in North Texas. I look forward to harnessing this enthusiasm and working with partners throughout the ecosystem to make this vision a reality.”
Trey Bowles, Chairman of the Dallas Entrepreneur Center, stated “We are thrilled to have Cynthia as our Managing Director of the Innov8te Smart Cities Incubator. Her passion for new technology, building and scaling companies and creating sustainable cities around the globe, make her a natural choice for this role. We are excited to see Dallas become a leader in supporting the growth of civic and urban transformation-focused businesses and showcasing the innovative spirit of our region.”
The members of Innov8te’s founding cohort are:
· CityFront: CityFront’s Smart Cities Integration Platform™ is the most advanced integration platform in local government today, creating a unified view of the city’s data via ONE mobile app experience. CFI's competitive advantage is based on proprietary ZERO CODE development environment that enables technicians to get done in weeks what used to take months or years.
· Evolve Energy:Evolve Energy is the energy company of the future - Evolve saves consumers on their energy costs through AI and IOT. For a monthly subscription, Evolve delivers electricity at the wholesale prices, while it’s AI platform enables customers to amplify their savings, for a total savings up to 50% off electricity
· Planet Alpha Corp: Planet Alpha Corporation (PαC) is a greenhouse gas (GHG) measurement infrastructure, pricing and products company integrating multiple Earth, economic, and social transactions to reduce emissions of GHGs. PαC creates new forest carbon storage products by commercializing and deploying patented technologies and services developed by Planetary Emissions Management Inc. (PEM).
· RedHouse: A talented team of educators, developers, designers and innovators, RedHouse was founded to develop the new medium for education. RedHouse believes that Virtual Education will engage students at a higher level and will advance students by advancing their learning through a “theory of successful intelligence” models.
· Stroll: Stroll provides patented, “smart-city” marketing and analytics technology that empowers cities, tourism boards and merchants to drive and track regional economic development and commerce in near real-time.
· The Virtual Wild: An Innovation Studio, marketing agency, engineering firm and a creative design group all in one. The Virtual Wild is home to experts in everything from engineering to creative strategy — blurring the boundaries between marketing, art, and technology.
About the Innov8te Smart Cities Incubator
In February 2019, the Innov8te Smart Cities Incubator was announced to support entrepreneurs and early-stage companies in sectors supporting urban and civic transformationBy taking a regional approach, the incubator’s mission is to support and highlight the burgeoning DFW ecosystem of companies focused on building products and technologies in sub-sectors including data analytics and visualization, Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, blockchain, augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR), and beyond. The application of these technologies seeks to improve eight areas of civic innovation: citizen engagement/services; equity and inclusion; infrastructure; governance; mobility; public health; public safety; and sustainability.
This incubator’s presence in the Dallas Innovation District and Smart Cities Living Lab continues to drive a focus on smart city technology research and development for the region. “Startup City Hall” will be housed within Innov8te to provide senior leaders at the city a dedicated office amongst the companies and ideas building from within the incubator to discuss ideas and solutions to address challenges facing the city.Founding public, private and academic collaborators of Innov8te include AT&T, Cisco, Microsoft, Foley Gardere, the University of Texas at Dallas(UT Dallas) The DEC Networkand the Dallas Innovation Alliance. Throughout the year, details on additional partnerships and programs will be announced. Please follow progress at @Innov8te1, @theDECtx, #SmartCitiesIncubator and @DallasSmartCity.