Baltimore Power Moves: Mindgrub’s CTO leaves after almost 8 years

Several top Baltimore tech leaders made major transitions over the past month. Also notable: the region’s principal economic development organization released an ambitious plan for boosting local vitality throughout the next decade.

Read on for details about these and other power moves, from the harborfront to an esteemed but struggling university.

Mindgrub’s chief technology officer leaves

Jason Perry last week announced his departure from East Fort Avenue-based SaaS company Mindgrub, where he worked for the better part of a decade. His last day will be this Friday.

“During my time here, I’ve had the joy of expanding our engineering team’s footprint, building strategic partnerships with top brands, and leading the development of cutting-edge tech solutions in robotics, AR/VR, and AI,” Perry posted on LinkedIn. “Together, we’ve released mobile applications for some of the world’s largest brands and won countless awards for our innovative products.”

Perry racked up these accomplishments throughout a roughly eight-year tenure that he said involved wearing many hats, including AI czar, head of engineering and, most recently, CTO. His LinkedIn post and a corresponding edition of his weekly newsletter, “Thoughts on Tech & Things,” referenced his and Mindgrub’s collaborative “AI in A Minor” project with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, on whose board he serves.

With no concrete full-time job plans for now, Perry said he will be continuing the newsletter and consulting in the immediate future.

‘Our strategy is our story’

The quote above comes from the introduction to the Greater Baltimore Committee’s (GBC) 10-year plan for the region’s economic future, which the organization released on May 23 at its star-studded annual meeting.

“We hope you’ll see this document as an invitation to be all in on the Baltimore Region and help us build a GBC that not only maximizes the immediate windows of opportunity, but also provides proactive, ambitious, and sustained economic leadership over the next decade and beyond,” continues the introduction from GBC CEO Mark Anthony Thomas and board president Mohan Suntha, who also heads up the University of Maryland Medical System.

To that end, GBC worked with Austin-based consulting firm TIP Strategies and a variety of stakeholders to develop the agenda behind “All In | 2035: A Ten-Year Economic Opportunity Plan for the Baltimore Region.” The plan identifies strategies for three priorities: “industry and innovation, place and community, and talent and people.”

Some of the key recommendations include:

• Establishing stronger and more diverse links between the area’s STEM innovation ecosystem, universities and local entrepreneurs
• Building better infrastructure to support the export economy, especially given the effects the Key Bridge collapse had on the Port of Baltimore and surrounding industry in spaces like Sparrows Point
  • The GBC hit home on this focus by having its annual meeting at a Sparrows Point facility near where bridge wreckage was stored, which used to belong to Bethlehem Steel and is now owned by Tradepoint Atlantic.
• Employers doing a better job of retaining the large labor pool whose out-of-state moves contributed to net outward worker migration since 2010

Read the full report here

More local power moves

• Inner Harbor-based SaaS company Fearless named former Catalyte CEO Jacob Hsu and ex-Salesforce executive vice president Joe Paiva its executive chair and chief operating officer, respectively.
• Local cybersecurity giant ZeroFox followed its $350 million acquisition with an executive shakeup: Dave Muse left the CEO post at supply chain-focused company Elemica to take over ZeroFox’s top spot. He’s joined in this Elemica-to-ZeroFox parallel transition by chief financial officer Andrew McKenna, while former Forcepoint senior vice president of sales James McCarthy joins as chief revenue officer. The three men replaced ZeroFox founder James Foster, who will remain its executive chairman; Tim Bender; and Scott O’Rourke, respectively.
• University of Maryland, Baltimore spinout and UM BioPark resident NextStep Robotics appointed biotech and life sciences execs Erika Smith, Maggie Deng and Brenda Furlow to its board. It announced the appointments soon after winning the $20,000 grand prize at the Pitch Dingman Competition, an initiative of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, College Park’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.
• Former American Visionary Art Museum leader Jenenne Whitfield joined MCB Real Estate as the director of experience for its Harborplace development, according to the Baltimore Banner.
• After experiencing various institutional struggles that plague arts colleges around the country, the Maryland Institute College of Art made interim president Cecilia McCormick its permanent president, according to the Baltimore Sun.
• A pair of local industry and workforce booster groups each announced new partnerships with peers further afield: The Maryland Apprenticeship Connector teamed up with CTEWorkforce in Richmond, Virginia for a new high school-level apprenticeship program. In addition, the Frederick-based Maryland Tech Council inked a new memorandum of understanding with BIOQuébec to promote life sciences collaboration and exchange between the US state and Canadian province.

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This article mentions Fearless and UM BioPark, both Technical.ly clients. Those relationships had no impact on this report.