Technical.ly launched RealLIST Connectors four years ago, right when the world felt the most disconnected. It’s now an annual roundup of people working to build their local tech, entrepreneurship and innovation communities through the power of connection, whether linking others to networks, jobs or resources.
Delaware’s RealLIST Connectors are forward-looking innovators with an eye on inclusion, ecosystem building and making things better for future generations. Each year, we add a new group to the cohort. Check out our original 75-person list from 2020, and the 2021, 2022 and 2023 addendums.
This year’s contribution includes nominations from the community, as well as newsroom picks based on reporting over the last couple of years by this Delaware-based reporter.
So, here it is — the 2024 edition, a peek into our source book at some of the most future-facing, highly impactful connectors you should know, presented in alphabetical order.
P.S. We’re always looking for people to spotlight on our ReaLISTs. If you or someone you know deserves to be here, you can submit a nomination all year round.
Nathalie Antonov
Nathalie Antonov
Antonov is a part of several impactful community entities. As creative director for Maverick Class, she’s instrumental in the production of local idea festivals TEDxWilmington, TEDxDover and TEDxGoldeyBeacom.
She’s also the creative projects and events manager for Gable Music Ventures, the company behind the growing Ladybug brand, bringing women-fronted music fests to Wilmington and beyond. And on the side, she’s head creative designer and board member for the Wilmington Whiskey Club.
Jermonica Boardley
Jermonica Boardley
As president and CEO of Bear-based SIVAD, Boardley helps leverage technology to fight the opioid crisis with the company’s HarmGuard FX product, which is being piloted across Delaware in a program she initiated. She’s a leader in DEI, including six years as ambassador for DuPont in that role.
Boardley’s commitment is not just to Delaware, but to the global community, and SIVAD was awarded with the Small Company International Innovator award at last year’s World Trade Center Delaware Gala.
Chevonne Boyd
Chevonne Boyd
Boyd is the founder of The Hive on Lookerman, a 2024 EDGE Grant recipient that provides space, resources and support for small businesses in Dover. The event space is regularly used to bring the small business community together for pop-up shops, expos and workshops, which Boyd often promotes on social media.
Tynetta Brown
Tynetta Brown
A longtime community leader, including with REACH Riverside and United Way of Delaware, Brown now strategically connects people for collaborations that make maximum impact as CEO of Philanthropy Delaware. She is vice chair of the Council of Advísors for Christiana Care, board member of Kids Chance of Delaware, a strategic advisor to I Am My Sister’s Keeper and a member of the American Cancer Society’s Delaware Leadership Council.
Brown is also the owner of Thumbprint Strategies, a strategic marketing firm for community environments.
Kristen Castell
Kristen Castell
Center for Accelerating Financial Equity (CAFE)
The mission of Newark-based CAFE, where Castell is managing director, is to power fintech innovation to advance financial wellness for underserved communities.
Castell may live in New York City, but she chose UDel’s STAR Campus as the place to develop and launch the new CAFE Fintech Accelerator, showcasing Delaware as a fintech hub to startups from around the country.
Dimion Denson
Dimion Denson
An alum of the Launcher entrepreneurial program run by West End Neighborhood House, Denson is the founder of Breakthrough Inertia. The Wilmington-based organization works with at-risk youth to help them thrive via technology, art, STEM education and drone piloting, and operates a community center that focuses on those activities instead of traditional sports.
Last fall, Denson co-organized the “Art of AI 2.0” event at the Delaware Contemporary, an interactive exhibition of AI art that featured discussions about AI with members of the community.
Thaïs Greca
Thaïs Greca
After making it to the finals of Reinventing Delaware with a proposal for exposing kids to emerging technologies, Greca, who also works in product development at Vanguard, turned her idea into a nonprofit called Emerging Teens.
The org focuses on keeping youth safe online and around technologies their parents and teachers might not fully understand. Earlier this year, it hosted the first Safe Screens Summit at DETV studios, which kicked off a series of free tech webinars for youth at Wilmington University.
Jason Heller
Jason Heller
BrandywineBOTS was born in Heller’s driveway during the height of the pandemic. It’s now the Delmarva region’s largest K-12 program in VEX robotics — the global educational framework and competition — and still entirely run by volunteers.
In December, the club opened the BrandywineBOTS Innovation Hub in partnership with Bellevue Community Center, which prioritizes access to robotics at low or no cost for families. Heller also works as a city manager for workspace solutions company IWG.
Zachary Humenik and Tyler Holloway
Tyler Holloway and Zachary Humenik
Sparrow Run Community Music Studio
Musicians and documentarians Humenik and Holloway founded the Travels Songs Foundation over a decade ago, traveling the world and eventually opening a music school in Peru. When the pandemic halted travel, they turned to Holloway’s hometown of Bear.
Using a model similar to the Peruvian school, they opened the Sparrow Run Community Music Studio, offering free classes in music production, podcasting and video to youth living in the low-income Sparrow Run community.
CaDeidra Jarmon, LSW
CaDeidra Jarmon
Jarmon is a professional community builder and social media strategist who organizes empowering online communities. She played a part in launching Wilmington Alliance’s Art-O-Mat project, turning a West Center City vacant laundromat/liquor store into a community wellness center, and leads the Jumpstart Your Leadership program at Serviam Girls Academy for underserved youth.
Vishakha Jha
Vishakha Jha
As director of education for the Tech Council, Jha is in the workforce development trenches, working hard to make the Delaware tech pipeline efficient, effective and diverse. She is a hands-on organizer and a strong presence on the organization’s team.
Jha was instrumental in leading 12 young tech-career bound adults through the American Dream Academy, helping them successfully graduate from the six-month scholarship program in March.
Deborah Moorad
Deborah Moorad
As CEO of gene editing startup and ChristianaCare spinoff CorriXR. Moorad brings a dynamic energy to Delaware’s precision medicine field, and an excitement about the technology that makes a complex in-development cancer treatment and the impact it could have on Delaware accessible. Moorad is also an ultra runner, inspiring others with her 50- and 100-mile runs.
Lindsay Rice
Lindsay Rice
As WilmU’s senior director of academic partnerships, Rice connects students with the right careers through programs like Guided Pathways for Success. She helped spearhead a recent collaboration with Code Differently that allows participants of its 20-week tech education program to earn up to 18 credits toward WilmU undergraduate degrees in concentrations like computer science, cybersecurity and data analysis — and application fees are waived, too.
Irene Rombel
Irene Rombel
Rombel, cofounder of the gene therapy AI software startup BioCurie, helps develop the treatments of the future — and helps make such medical technology seem less mysterious by speaking engagements like a recent guest appearance on the Founding Philly podcast.
As a woman in the male-dominated field of precision medicine, she’s an advocate for women in STEM, and acts as a mentor to students at Delaware Technical and Community College.
Jane Singer
Jane Singer
There are fewer makerspaces than there used to be in Delaware, but the one at the Route 9 Library in New Castle continues to thrive and grow — and Singer contributes to its continued success. The embroidery entrepreneur, whose intervention program Needle Wielders was a finalist in the 2023 Swim with Sharks pitch competition, runs popular meetups for creatives at Route 9’s makerspace.
Anthony Stanziale
Anthony Stanziale
As director of re-entry employment services at Wilmington community nonprofit West End Neighborhood House, Stanziale works to connect justice-impacted people with careers they can thrive on, whether in tech, trade or something else. His work includes informing business and political leaders about the challenges involved, and why connecting hard-to-place workers with second-chance employers is important.
David Stradley
David Stradley
A longtime actor and executive director of the Wilmington Shakespeare Festival, Stradley made the move to media this year, as the community engagement specialist with the new nonprofit investigative journalism organization Spotlight Delaware. There, he leans on his experience to interact with the community and talk about news coverage and issues that impact them.
Rosie Tooley
Rosie Tooley
Tooley, a retired Philadelphia school teacher, continues her passion to help people develop meaningful skills. Two years ago, she became executive director of Lazarus Education Services, a Wilmington nonprofit that offers financial and business training to veterans and returning citizens.
Along with 2022 RealLIST Connector Deanna Bledsoe, she launched CodeMosaic, an 8-week coding and STEM class that gives 8- to 11-year-olds skills and a voice in their community.
Autumn Tuxward
Autumn Tuxward
After 18 years as a paramedic lieutenant for New Castle County, Tuxward has spent the last nine months at Code Differently as its director of people culture and operations. Code Differently works to diversify the tech workforce pipeline, with many students learning about the free programming by word of mouth in historically low income neighborhoods, as well as through Tuxward’s speaking engagements.
Kenyon Wilson
Kenyon Wilson
Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League Young Professionals
As cofounder of creative marketing agency Influencers Lab Media, Wilson is one of the minds behind Spending Black Matters and its nationally significant Facebook group.
He’s also president of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League Young Professionals and works for the City of Wilmington as an HR specialist. He played a notable part on bringing this year’s edition of the national #bEastCon Summit to Wilmington, which introduced the city to young professionals from all over the Eastern US.
Technical.ly’s RealLIST Connectors 2024 in Delaware is underwritten by University of Delaware Horn Entrepreneurship. The list was independently reported and not reviewed by University of Delaware Horn Entrepreneurship before publication.
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