For Kiki Mills Johnston, her new role leading MassChallenge's Boston program is a homecoming several years in the making.
MassChallenge announced on Wednesday that Mills Johnston would become the startup accelerator's managing director for Boston, where 128 startups go through a four-month program every year, culminating with an awards ceremony that gives away over $1 million in equity-free cash. She takes over the role of Scott Bailey, who has become the accelerator's executive director for North America, a newly created role.
Mills Johnston was most recently chief innovation officer at Austin-based Mission Capital and, before that, CEO at San Francisco-based Full Circle Fund. But to the Boston startup community, she was known as the leader of MITX (also known as the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange), a role she held for more than 10 years.
In a phone interview, Mills Johnston told me she had moved away from Boston for personal reasons after leaving MITX in 2010. After working in San Francisco and Austin for several years, she said she and her husband decided to move back to Boston to raise their son. While reaching out to her contacts here, it turned out MassChallenge was looking for someone to take Bailey's role.
"I couldn't imagine landing back into the center of this ecosystem with MassChallenge."
"I couldn't imagine landing back into the center of this ecosystem with MassChallenge," she said. "It’s really a dream for me."
Mills Johnston said she had been an early evangelist of MassChallenge when co-founders John Harthone and Akhil Nigam started the program in 2009. With Mills Johnston having left Boston while MassChallenge was still in its early years, she said coming back to the accelerator had a "Rip Van Winkle effect" because of how much the program has expanded.
In addition to overseeing MassChallenge's Boston program, which opens applications for its 2017 cohort today, Mills Johnston will also support PULSE@MassChallenge, the new digital health accelerator; MADE@MassChallenge, the accelerator's research and development lab; and the Newton Innovation Center.
As MassChallenge Boston's new leader, Mills Johnston said she has four goals: to continue creating meaningful impact for entrepreneurs, to accelerate MassChallenge's economic and social impact in the region, to continue fostering collaboration between startups and corporations and to improve opportunities for underserved and under-resourced entrepreneurs.
For MassChallenge, maintaining support from large organizations will also be an important role for Mills Johnston. Some of the accelerator's current supporters include GE, John Hancock, Fidelity Investments, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Autodesk, Honda and American Airlines, to just name a few.
“We’re excited to welcome Kiki back to Boston, where she had been actively involved in our city’s growing innovation community,” Bailey said in a statement. “Entrepreneurs are the key to driving economic growth, job creation, and impact around the world, and I’m confident we’ll see the continued growth of MassChallenge Boston under Kiki’s leadership.”
