Ideas x Innovation Network in southeastern PA has two new leaders

The Exton-headquartered Chester County Economic Development Council (CCEDC) just welcomed two execs to head its Ideas x Innovation Network (i2n), which supports early-stage life sciences and tech companies in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Matt Cabrey is the new director of i2n, and Gino Bradica is the new director of technology and entrepreneurship. (CCEDC’s former VP of innovation, Patrick Hayakawa, moved on to a role as VP of sales for Sycamore International earlier this summer.)

Originally CCEDC was only looking for one person to fill a director position, Cabrey told Technical.ly, but the council ended up splitting the role into two and approaching Bradica and Cabrey about working together.

“[CCEDC] saw our strengths. They saw how they complement each other,” Cabrey said. “We immediately saw that there is a complementary set of skills here and experiences and connections. So it’s really a nice blend of skill sets, that we’ll be able to marry in order to elevate i2n.”

Matt Cabrey. (Photo courtesy of the Chester County Economic Development Council)

Cabrey’s career has been in the communications, community development and business development spaces. He was previously the executive director of the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia’s business attraction arm, Select Greater Philadelphia. He’d been familiar with i2n since it first launched, thanks to his previous collaborative work with the CCEDC.

“i2n has established a really strong foundation that is helping entrepreneurs and innovators and startups, and together with Gino, I’m looking forward to raising that bar even further and growing the impact and the reach of it,” he said.

Cabrey’s role is focused on day-to-day operations, management and programming, along with marketing, awareness and relationship building and fundraising.

Bradica, for his part, has been in the medical device field for over 20 years in a variety of roles including R&D, business development and strategic marketing. Most recently, Bradica worked in the startup world developing his own technology.

Bradica had some familiarity with i2n and CCEDC, he said, but that exposure increased over the last year since he started familiarizing himself with the startup community in the region.

In his new role, the director of technology and entrepreneurship will be helping startups to understand what their needs are and how they’d like to grow so he can connect them with resources to achieve those goals — “hopefully, maybe even identify some things that they may not know that they need quite yet,” he said. “But help develop that roadmap.”

Gino Bradica. (Photo courtesy of the Chester County Economic Development Council)

Bradica himself has been in some of the challenging situations entrepreneurs find themselves in while developing a company, such as raising money and developing a product, he told Technical.ly. He wants to use that firsthand knowledge to help companies through i2n.

i2n has already established itself as a resource for early-stage life sciences and tech companies, according to Cabrey. The group brings together all the services an entrepreneur might need as they’re trying to grow, including funding, workplace consulting, networking and mentoring. He and Bradica now want to take the org to the next level by reaching a wider audience.

“What I mean by that is extending our reach to a larger audience of not only entrepreneurs and innovators and startups, but also that ecosystem of universities, corporations, nonprofits, venture capitalists, other successful entrepreneurs who have done well, have had an exit, and they want to get involved in helping other entrepreneurs to do a similar kind of journey,” Cabrey said.

Most of all, these new leaders want to see members of the life sciences and technology community in southeastern Pennsylvania recognize i2n as a resource, if they didn’t already know about it. Cabrye, too, wants companies outside of the region to see these counties as a destination to come and be able to grow.