Rochester innovator named TED Fellow

Gary Jacobs, one of my fellow TEDxRochester organizers, really sums up what TEDxRochester is all about: it’s about what Rochester IS. For the last few years, talk has centered around what Rochester was or didn’t have. We WERE a world leader for imaging. We don’t have a fast ferry. We don’t have a casino. We don’t have a downtown cultural center.

No, we don’t have any of those things, but what we do have is great innovators, passion and drive. With a host of leading colleges and universities, we have a steady stream of young people learning how to reshape the future. As the older, larger Rochester institutions shed employees and bulk, new, smaller and more innovative startups begin to emerge to fill the void.

One such innovator is Tenrehte, a recent startup that “designs and delivers Wi-Fi enabled, fully integrated product platforms that provide a market leading combination of high-performance, low power consumption, and superior applications flexibility”.

But, this article isn’t about the company. It’s about their CEO, Jennifer Indovina. A recent Rochester Institute of Technology grad, Jennifer has been named as one of the 1000 2010 TED Fellows. The TED Fellows program serves to bring together young people who have begun to make an impact on the world and help them amplify that impact. Jennifer will participate in the TED 2010 conference and network with the other conference members.

We’d like to offer our sincerest congratulations to Jennifer and wish her the best of luck (not to mention the most of fun) at TED 2010! Thank you for making Rochester proud!

On a personal note, I would like to point out that this is just what Rochester needs: we need to figure out a way to retain all of the brilliant talent that’s being shaped every year at our schools. Too many students come here, learn what they need to succeed and then they take that success elsewhere. There is a lot of potential this city and area isn’t exploiting. Before any other projects, that should be our first goal: figure out how to keep the innovators local, and then let them help us solve the other problems.