Leadership shakeup at Collective

By David Ortiz

Contributing Writer

A leadership shakeup has occurred at the Tech Collective, with the board working to redefine the group’s mission and raise its profile, following the departure of longtime executive director Katherine O’Dea to work in environmental advocacy.

O’Dea resigned effective Sept. 1, but had stayed on part time to aid the Tech Collective with the leadership transition, said board chairman Tim Hebert. She left for good on Nov. 1, however, to become executive director of Inform Inc., an environmental research and advocacy organization based in New York City.

A telephone call to O’Dea was not immediately returned.

Kathie Shields, the Tech Collective’s former manager of membership services and development, was recently promoted to operations manager and will serve as acting executive director, Hebert said.

O’Dea’s departure comes amid an orchestrated change in direction that began in July, when Hebert, who is CEO of the Atrion Networking Corp., became chairman of the Tech Collective board and Hasbro CIO Doug Schwinn became the board’s treasurer.

The two Rhode Island executives assumed leadership of the board with a mandate to infuse new energy and direction into the association, Hebert said.

“The Tech Collective is probably one of the best-kept secrets in the state,” he said. “Some people may have heard the name, but they don’t really know what we do – and we’re looking to change that.”

The association, which emerged as a result of a strategic expansion and restructuring of the Rhode Island Technology Council, has in recent years focused on hosting tech-industry networking events and administering state and federal work force training grants to Rhode Island companies, Hebert said.

In the next year, the Tech Collective will seek to expand its focus in a few key areas, Hebert said.

It will begin offering its members educational programming, perhaps in partnership with institutions such as Bryant University and Roger Williams University, he said.

“We want to be a knowledge center for the businesses in the state, so if you want to learn about new security practices, the Tech Collective is the place you come to learn about that. If you want to learn about leadership in the IT world, the Tech Collective offers programs,” Hebert said.

The Tech Collective also will seek to expand into work force development at every level of Rhode Island’s educational system, from kindergarten through college, he said.

And the association wants to assume a stronger advocacy role for Rhode Island’s burgeoning informational technology and biotechnology sectors, Hebert said.

The Tech Collective board and staff are currently developing a plan to determine what form that advocacy will take. The association probably will seek to partner with the R.I.

Economic Development Corporation, the Business Innovation Factory, the U.S. Department of Labor and other state and federal agencies, to support their efforts, Hebert said.

As an example, he said, the Tech Collective could support BIF’s annual conference, by hosting follow-up discussion groups and collaboration sessions throughout the year.

“The EDC and BIF are really the spark or the catalyst for innovation in the state, and I look to the Tech Collective to kind of become the fuel that keeps those things going,” he said. Saul Kaplan, executive director of the EDC, said that the Tech Collective is an important community-building organization, and that any efforts to extend its reach could benefit Rhode Island’s economy.

“We’ll support them as they come out of the planning phase any way we can, and we look forward to collaborating with them,” Kaplan said.

The Tech Collective board is now defining the new executive director position, and will probably begin a search to fill the job in January, Hebert said. The board will probably seek to fill the position locally before expanding the search beyond the state, he said.