Release provided by Akron Global Business Accelerator
The National Business Incubation Association awarded Mike LeHere with the 2013 Member Emeritus Award today during NBIA’s International Conference on Business Incubation in Boston. This award recognizes an NBIA member for outstanding achievement in the business incubation industry.
LeHere retired as CEO of the Akron Global Business Accelerator in Akron, Ohio, in December 2012. He began his incubation career in 1983 and had been an NBIA member since the association’s inception in 1985.
The Akron Industrial Incubator (as the Akron Global Business Accelerator was originally known) opened in 1983 with LeHere at the helm. The program changed locations and names in 1996. Under LeHere’s leadership, the incubator has expanded and developed high-level programs for U.S. companies and nondomestic firms. NBIA presented the Akron Global Business Accelerator with the Incubator Innovation Award in 2008 for creating the Global Technology Commercialization Initiative to support new domestic start-ups and to attract nondomestic firms involved in advanced materials, advanced energy, biomedicine, information technology, and instrumentation/controls/electronics.
“NBIA and its members have been enriched by Mike LeHere’s dedication to the incubation industry,” says NBIA vice president and chief operating officer Tracy Kitts. “He has been a speaker at numerous NBIA conferences, a resource for NBIA publications and a true model of industry best practices for nearly three decades. We at NBIA applaud his outstanding career and his efforts to give back to the industry.”
Business incubation programs like the Akron Global Business Accelerator catalyze the process of starting and growing companies by providing entrepreneurs with the expertise, networks and tools they need to make their ventures successful. NBIA estimates that in 2011 alone, North American incubators assisted about 49,000 start-up companies that provided full-time employment for nearly 200,000 workers and generated annual revenue of almost $15 billion. Approximately 7,000 business incubators operate worldwide.
The National Business Incubation Association is the world's leading organization advancing business incubation and entrepreneurship. Each year, the NBIA Incubation Awards honor the business incubation programs, graduates and client companies that exemplify the best of the industry.