At NJTC Awards, Ballen is Honored and Recipients Talk about Commitment to New Jersey
The New Jersey Technology Council honored its member companies and feted the 18 years of leadership by retired CEO Maxine Ballen at the organization’s Awards Celebration on Nov. 20 in Iselin.
The organization also began its transformation under the new president and CEO, James Barrood.
“Tonight we start transforming the NJTC to the NJTC 2.0. NJTC 2.0 is about throwing our doors and windows wide open, searching out innovators in places we never looked before and finding powerful new ways” to help the New Jersey tech community, Barrood told the approximately 500 attendees at the gala event.
“We will take some risks and make a few mistakes along the way, but we will do what it takes to help you succeed,” he said.
As an example of how the organization will change, Barrood announced a video challenge aimed at high school and college students, who will be asked to create a two-minute video about New Jersey’s history of innovation and about its future of innovation, to be supported by member donations.
“This year New Jersey is celebrating its 350th anniversary. What better time to tell our innovation story, to pass it on to a new generation,” he said.
Simon Nynens, chairman, president and CEO of Wayside Technology (Shrewsbury), emceed the event, and had a lot to say about New Jersey’s attitude and reputation around the world — in a good way. “If you want to attend a gathering of the largest technology council in the country, you can do that, here in New Jersey.”
Princeton-based NIKSUN was the first to receive an award — for Outstanding Technology Development, presented by Joel Bloom, president of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The company is involved in real-time, forensics-based cyber security and network performance monitoring.
In his remarks, Parag Pruthi, founder, chairman and CEO, said that he had had many opportunities to take his cyber security company to Silicon Valley, but “I resisted, because I know there is so much talent here and there is such an opportunity here … You can have a long-term vision for a company, and we have been able to sustain ours.”
Scott Megill, president and CEO of Coriell Life Sciences (Camden), which had recently spun off from the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, accepted the Rising Star award on behalf of his company. He said that he couldn’t emphasize enough what a wonderful place New Jersey had been for bringing his company to life.
“We are in an amazing time right now in technology and health care. The first human genome was sequenced a little more than ten years ago at [a cost of] $3 billion. Now we can do it for about $1,000. It’s absolutely astounding the progress technology has made, but what is missing … is how we make use of all that data. And that’s exactly what we have focused our efforts on,” said Megill.
Competing for the Innovative Technology Company award were iContracts (Raritan), Kirusa (New Providence) and PayCommerce (Matawan), all tech companies in the growth stage. The winner, PayCommerce, provides a global payment network and a cloud payment hub. Abdul Naushad, cofounder and CEO, accepted the award.
The Impact Company of the Year award, sponsored by Juniper Networks, honored New Jersey market leaders. The three nominees were AvePoint (Jersey City), an enterprise-class big data management company; Marketsmith (Parsippany), a woman-owned multichannel marketing company that uses data analytics for marketing purposes; and Yorktel (Eatontown) , a global provider of video-managed services for large enterprises. The winner was Marketsmith, and Monica Smith, the founder and chair, accepted the award.
Accepting the Legend of Technology Award, Stuart Peltz, founder and CEO of PTC Therapeutics (South Plainfield), said that PTC was an example of a company that has thrived in New Jersey. He told the audience that he found a great group of people here, people who thought of his company as “a cause,” rather than just as a company. His employees have dedicated their working lives to the firm, endeavoring to get drugs to patients who suffer from orphan diseases.
TRAC Intermodal (Princeton), the winner of the Private Company of the Year award, isn’t known as a technology company, but when Vice President and CIO Rick Carney accepted the award, he noted that technology fuels the company and has contributed to its rapid growth. TRAC Intermodal is an intermodal-equipment provider and chassis-pool manager that serves domestic and international shippers.
The company has doubled its workforce over the past couple of years, thereby creating more jobs in New Jersey. “In our headquarters location, in Princeton, we are completely out of space, and in the summer we looked at a lot of locations in New Jersey and in other states,” said Carney. “I’m happy to say we are locating our headquarters in Princeton, in New Jersey. We are staying in New Jersey.”
The winner of the Public Company of the Year award was Verisk Analytics (Jersey City), a company that’s experiencing sustained growth, including an appreciation of its stock value. Verisk offers risk-assessment services and decision analytics for professionals in property or casualty insurance, financial services, health care and other fields.
Patrick McLaughlin, senior vice president, corporate social responsibility, accepted the award, noting that Verisk employs 1,300 people in Jersey City and a total of 6,500 people worldwide.
The Master Technology Company of the Year award went to ETS (Princeton), which is better known as the company that administers and scores the SAT, as well as many other tests.
Accepting the award, Vice President and CIO Daniel Wakeman said, “Believe it or not, ETS is not known as a technology company, yet technology is at the heart of everything we do. We are an information company and we are growing. You can thank New Jersey for that. We’ve been in New Jersey for almost 70 years. It’s great for us to be recognized as a technology company because we are often thought of as a stodgy old assessment company … We are advancing the technology to understand what people know.”
He said that ETS is using simulation and gaming technology to create tests that more accurately gauge what people know. “What we are looking towards in the future is to make the assessment almost invisible, part of the learning process.”
The evening culminated with the presentation of the John H. Martinson Technology Supporter Award, which was given to Ballen. Martinson, the founder of Edison Partners (Lawrenceville), a VC firm, had been the first recipient of this award.
It was announced at the event that the award would be renamed the “Ballen-Martinson Technology Supporter Award,” in honor of Ballen’s service to the organization and her positive influence on the technology companies in the state.
Ballen said that, as she looked back on the last 18 years, she still felt the “entrepreneurial rush of starting something from nothing and nurturing it through.” She pointed out that the organization helped to form both the NJTC Venture Fund and the Jumpstart New Jersey Angel Network.
She recalled that it was Martinson who had asked her to take on the task of founding the NJTC, and she noted that “there were some tough days in 1996. New Jersey wasn’t ready for a trade association supporting technology.”
She thanked her early supporters, her long-time staff, and the organization’s chairs, who had worked with her through the years, and urged them to support Barrood as he takes the organization forward.
The other winners were:
Trailblazer award: Cancer Genetics
Consumer Product award: Miele USA
Beacon of Light award: CytoSorbents
Legislative Champion Award: Senator Cory Booker
Knowledge is Power Award: Thomas Edison State College
