Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum; ideas are sparked by everyday experiences and environments.
This year’s Inno Under 25 group knows that fact well — they’ve taken inspiration from their companies and universities and are innovating from within those spaces. They’re finding ways to make their organizations better and using the resources available to propel ideas to the next level.
From creating new systems to experimenting with new technology or inventing new products, here are some of the members of the next generation of innovators in the Albany region.
Joey Lyon, Wolfjaw
Joey Lyon started his work at Wolfjaw Studios, a Troy-based video game company, as an intern. Now, as a director of engineering, he’s working to streamline the company’s rapid growth.
Lyon connected with Wolfjaw founder Mitchell Patterson after Patterson invested in a startup with which Lyon was working. Then, Lyon began interning at Wolfjaw while he attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
After graduation, Lyon worked at Bloomberg in New York City as part of a trading automation team. A few years in he was looking for a change and took a meeting with Patterson.
“He would just talk to me whenever he was in the city. And eventually he was like, ‘So what’s it going to take to get you to come back to Wolfjaw?’” Lyon said.
Lyon returned to Wolfjaw to be a team leader in 2022. Now, he’s a director of engineering and oversees three teams.
In the role, Lyon manages projects — both for Wolfjaw and the companies it contracts with — and the engineers working on them. He said a big part is helping develop his engineers’ careers.
Since he’s joined the company, Wolfjaw has doubled its number of employees. Lyon is now working to streamline engineering processes as the company continues its expansion.
“The company is growing very quickly, and it’s very easy, especially when you’re working with games, to slip into, ‘Deadlines are slipping, I’m stressed,’” he said. “The intention behind this process is to either get ahead of those deadlines slipping or know when it’s going to happen so you can anticipate it and react accordingly.”
Title: Director of engineering
Age: 25
Lives in: Saratoga Springs
Eliza Whitfield and Emily Smith, Jahnel Group
Eliza Whitfield and Emily Smith both joined Schenectady-based software company Jahnel Group with no background in tech.
Whitfield had studied business and environmental studies, and Smith economics and communications.
Both were recruited to Jahnel Group and joined out of an interest in the industry. Whitfield started immediately after completing her undergrad and Smith had previously interned at a social media startup that would later be acquired by dating app Bumble.
Smith works as a recruiter for Jahnel. Earlier this year, she noticed a consistent lack of women interviewing for positions through the company’s external recruiting service.
“I do probably 15 interviews a week. And I would say I interview about two women out of those 15. So for a few months, I’m noticing this lack of women in the industry or just lack of interviews I’m getting from women in industry,” she said.
As women new to the tech industry, they recognized an opportunity to connect Capital Region women in the industry to a support network. So they created the Women in Tech Collaborative.
“For Emily and I, it’s a little different because we’re not engineers, we’re not developers,” Whitfield said. “We’re still in the tech industry. We have the same umbrella that we’re under, which is what led us to start the group.”
The group now consists of over 90 members. It hosts events designed for women in the tech space to network and create relationships. Attendees have ranged from data scientists and engineers to hospital employees.
In Whitfield’s role as a business development representative, she does cold outreach to potential clients. She’s using technology like ChatGPT to help with that process.
“The tech industry, it’s so flexible, and tech is everywhere — any job basically is in tech of some sort. No one’s not using technology,” Whitfield said.
Whitfield and Smith will continue to plan events for the group based on feedback from members. To date, they’ve hosted two meetups, one focusing on imposter syndrome.
The next event is expected to be in March. The goal is to continue to grow the group but to keep it approachable in size.
“I think the future is just being that supportive group for the Capital Region and connecting women with each other. Whether we do end up recruiting people or maybe just learning from these women, the goal is to just be a group of friends in networking,” Smith said.
Title: Business development representative
Age: 22
Lives in: Clifton Park
Title: Technical recruiter
Age: 23
Lives in: Saratoga Springs
Jeff Osborne, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Jeff Osborne, a senior at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, started inventing a wind turbine during a class called Inventor’s Studio.
He’s since turned the idea into a prototype and an LLC — Polymathic Innovations — which he plans to pursue after graduation.
In the past few years, RPI has doubled down on its commitment to encouraging student innovation. The university created the Office of Strategic Alliances and Translation earlier this year, which will create an incubator, collaborate with the area’s most promising industries and help students spin businesses out of ideas developed at RPI.
Osborne’s an example of how innovation happens at RPI. His wind turbine can be placed in areas that current technology can’t reach — like urban wind canyons (air rushing between city buildings), on top of stadiums and on the sides of buildings.
The idea has been built out through a program at RPI called the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Co-creation Labs, which matches technological projects with business students to generate models and strategies for taking the idea to the next level. The wind turbine team has 15 members.
The project has also been able to bring on first- and second-year students and give them earlier access to startup-like opportunities.
“Getting this hands-on experience in applying the learning and doing this critical problem-solving this early in their undergrad, I think it’s going to be really good for them. It’s going to be a huge advantage,” Osborne said. “I feel like in a lot of students’ mind that’s not there — that they can build something, innovate something. I think that is also going to be important for sparking that next generation of students to continue doing this.”
Osborne has also gotten financial support from the university through the Open Innovation Scholars Program, which gives interested students the chance to work with startups founded by RPI students or alumni. RPI subsidizes that labor — Osborne said students are paid $6,000 over the course of the semester.
Osborne’s goal is to commercialize the turbine after graduation. The team is finishing the full-size prototype and has been having conversations with manufacturers. It’s a small wind application – the idea isn’t to power full buildings, but to take some of the energy load off of the grid.
“This isn’t improving efficiency. This isn’t some marginal increase. This would be adding new sustainable energy to the grid, to the infrastructure,” he said. “I think the other critical element is that it’ll be affordable and accessible to a lot of people who might have considered other forms of energy before."
Title: Founder, Polymathic Innovations
Age: 21
Lives in: Troy
Lauren Gay, Overit
Media and marketing agency Overit has been an early adopter of using artificial intelligence in its design process. Earlier this year, Overit founder and principal Dan Dinsmore said that AI is touching every part of the business.
Graphic designer Lauren Gay is pushing Overit’s AI efforts forward. She came to the agency after working as a bookmaker and wanted to do more digital design work. From the time she began the job, she’s been testing out applications of AI.
“It’s been very experimental. But I think that’s something that has been very helpful, especially with this company — a lot of what we do, it’s very experimental,” Gay said.
Clients Gay works with includes hospitals, pest control companies, housing programs and more.
For designers, AI programs are being used at Overit as a jumping-off point. Gay has been learning to use Midjourney, image generation software that takes prompts and creates art.
“Sometimes when you’re designing things, you can kind of draw a blank on what you want the project to look like in the end. And putting these ideas out there into this platform gives you a bunch of different examples of what you might want your project to look like,” she said.
It’s a process that Gay and her team members have found is in demand: Some clients directly ask for AI to be used in the creative process.
Gay said being a “child of the internet” has helped her learn these skills quickly. Midjourney requires the use of Discord, a communication/social media platform that’s often used by internet gamers.
“I’m a lot more adaptive to certain programs that rely a lot on both ideas that are generated on the internet, the culture of the internet, being able to grab on to things quickly and experiment and just kind of run with them is something that makes me a lot quicker in my design process,” she said.
Title: Graphic designer
Age: 25
Lives in: Albany
