When Jack St. Pierre talks about driving entrepreneurship in Greater Hazleton, a blue-collar region historically aligned with big industry, he speaks from considerable experience. A serial entrepreneur himself, St. Pierre navigated the business assistance landscape when it was in its infancy more than 20 years ago to successfully build multiple companies.
Soon after he retired in 1999, he joined the board of directors for Greater Hazleton CanBE, a new business incubator that formed in 2004. A year later, when the incubator’s first director resigned, St. Pierre was asked to fill in. Five years later, he’s still there and using the lessons he learned as an entrepreneur to help develop start-up businesses.
“We’re fortunate having Jack leading us. That’s a competitive advantage not all incubators have,” says Bernadette DeBias, executive director of economic development for Greater Hazleton CanDO, a regional economic development organization of which CanBE is a subsidiary.
St. Pierre has helped drastically reconfigure CanBE’s space in the Valmont Industrial Park to meet demand for more offices and fewer light manufacturing spaces. More than half of the incubator’s 16 spaces are occupied. Most notably, CanBE’s Start Your Own Business seminar series has been expanded into other pockets of Northeast Pa., like East Stroudsburg to the east and Carbondale to the north.
CanBE has seen its share of successful graduates, includingAeroSolutions, which manages inspection and upgrades of cell towersnationwide and grew from one to 10 employees in three years beforemoving into its own space downtown, and is currently occupied bystart-ups including a yoga studio and a digital video production firm.
Furthering its geographic reach, CanBE has partnered with the Greater Susquehanna Keystone Innovation Zone in Bloomsburg for a regional business plan competition scheduled for early next year that will be open to all-comers.
“If we can keep the topic in front of people, we’ll get results and so will other programs,” says St. Pierre. “All of us have to struggle to get some good companies to consider starting ventures here.”
Source: Bernadette DeBias, Greater Hazleton CanDO; Jack St. Pierre, Greater Hazleton CanBE
Writer: Joe Petrucci