Executive Director Appointed at RIT’s High-Technology Incubator

Rochester Institute of Technology announces the appointment of Jerome T. Mahone as executive director of Venture Creations, RIT’s high-technology incubator.

Mahone comes to RIT with a wealth of experience in university based new-business incubators, playing a major role in the development of startup companies that created new jobs and exceed a combined $100 million in sales.

In 1983, Mahone became the first fulltime director of Rensselaer Technology Park at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the first business incubator to be located on a university campus. His five years of leadership at Rensselaer led to significant national publicity for the incubator program, and that resulted in an explosion of university based new-business incubators across the country.

“Jerome Mahone is a pioneer in his field,” says Donald Boyd, RIT vice president for research. “He has a strong national reputation in terms of creating and establishing business incubators in higher education.”

Later assignments at Rensselaer included managing director of the Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship in the Lally School of Management and Technology. He also served as the program development director of the Rensselaer Technological Entrepreneurship Council (RenTEC).

Most recently, Mahone held the position of executive director of the National Environmental Technology Incubator at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio. He has also served as assistant dean and director of the Entrepreneurship Center at George Mason University in Washington, D.C., focusing on the creation of both domestic and international businesses. He was also vice president of Trust International, a U.S. Export Import Bank-certified trading company.

Mahone earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Howard University. He has also taught college courses in entrepreneurship and business plan development, and he is currently working on a book that covers his past 25 years in supporting entrepreneurs.