Almost three years after opening a new Cambridge Innovation Center location in Providence, the organization has named Stacey Messier as the innovation campus' new general manager.
Messier joined the company earlier this year when the Providence location was experiencing a near 90% increase in new space inquiries at 225 Dyer Street, according to CIC. Messier, a resident of Exeter, was previously commuting almost four hours a day into Cambridge to work at edX prior to the pandemic and said she had always dreamed of finding something local in Rhode Island, but didn’t think it would be possible. She has been leading design teams since 2007 and led the edX design team starting in 2019 before moving into future-of-work programming, partnering with HR and legal on launching employee resource programs.
"This was the work that truly got me up in the morning, and I needed to find something that gave me the same entrepreneurial freedom I found while running my own marketing agency, but that allowed me the space to focus on improving those three pillars of innovation, operations, and employee experience," Messier said of joining CIC. "I had been on a journey to pivot out of design and into something that aligned with my ‘side hustles’ of innovation, employee enablement and operations."
According to CIC, Messier is one of several female leaders it has hired and promoted in the past six months as part of its ongoing effort to increase diversity and inclusion at all levels of the company. This week, Messier spoke with Rhode Island Inno about the innovative and eclectic mix of businesses at CIC, collaborating with local organizations across Rhode Island and what she sees for the future of CIC Providence.
Can you talk a little bit about CIC in Providence and what kind of clients are working out of there now? What's the atmosphere like? What sets it apart from other coworking spaces?
We have over 170 client companies at CIC in Providence and they span more than 30 industries. Just a sampling of those industries are life sciences, education, marketing, software, fintech, and blue economy — including offshore wind.
The atmosphere at CIC in Providence is energetic and focused. It’s connected, and yet gives each client the space to shine. It’s professional, but still a place where you can bring your authentic self to work. Surrounded by handpainted murals that range from stalactites to geometric shapes, it’s a nontraditional workspace in that it has the color and vibe of an artful studio, but it offers the services and amenities of a high-end corporate space. Outside of these attributes, what truly sets us apart is the ecosystem in and around CIC in Providence. We pride ourselves on the creative collisions that happen inside the halls and meeting rooms every day and we, as CIC staff, do our best to cultivate connections between our clients as well as to the resources Rhode Island has to offer. Just this week we held a meet and greet session with a U.S. Department of Commerce specialist from the American embassy in Ottawa to chat with our offshore wind clients about the opportunities in Canada. Thanks to our strong partnership with Commerce RI, we regularly invite clients to engage with international representatives to inspire the future of what our city and state can offer on a global scale.
What are you most proud of in your first five months of working at CIC in Providence?
There has been so much incredible work happening inside our walls these last few months that it’s hard to choose my proudest moments, but here are a few of my favorites. The first was a conversation we hosted between the Providence Police Department and the local BIPOC community in July. Facilitated by Pilar McCloud and Kobi Dennis, this was an incredible discussion where roughly 60 people came out to share their stories — the good and the bad — with local officers and to start having a dialogue about how we get to a place of change when it comes to community policing. We’re holding a follow-up session in September to unpack the themes heard in that first session. We also partnered with RI Pride and held the first annual Pride Career Fair in June as a way to kick off the weekend celebrations in Providence. We’re looking forward to scaling this year after year and getting more local organizations involved.
What would you like to do in the next year at CIC in Providence? What kind of plans are in the works?
I’m in the process of reactivating some of our closest partnerships, and by close I mean in proximity as well as in relationship. Some of these partnerships are within CIC in Providence, with clients we regularly collaborate with, like RIHUB, others are just down the street, like the Aloft Hotel. We’re all re-emerging from the pandemic, and I’m thrilled to create not just great relationships, but to co-create offerings that positively benefit the larger innovation ecosystem here in Providence.
What do you see for the region overall in terms of business development in the near term?
Providence has a few unique avenues that are steadily growing. Our leadership in offshore wind is unparalleled, and I’m excited to see how we engage other companies and industries under the blue economy umbrella. Second, we continue to see the expansion of life sciences. One of our largest clusters at CIC in Providence and across the state is within this sector, which includes biotech, neuroscience, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals. Finally, I continue to be immensely inspired and impressed with the level of innovation happening here in the education sector. Organizations like Equity Institute and its TA to BA program and Skills for Rhode Island's Future and its skills academy offerings, and many others, clearly demonstrate that the intersection of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging and teaching is where we must not only reimagine education, but how we must redefine it to embrace and serve everyone.
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An earlier version of this article misstated the years Messier led the edX design team.
