As our team at Cintrifuse continues work on building Cincinnati into one of the top innovation and startup hubs in the Midwest, talent and capability remain top priorities as we take our organization to the next level. Today, we’re excited to announce the arrival of two new members to the Cintrifuse team — Alisa Smith, Director of Innovation Services, and John Stieger, Director of Startup Connections. John joined the Cintrifuse team on July 29, and Alisa will be officially onboard August 19.
Alisa will step into the Director of Innovation Services role. She brings 20 years of extensive innovation experience leading complex, multi-million-dollar consumer product launches at Kao and P&G. She has deep understanding and expertise in strategic planning, consumer understanding and insight, consumer-centered design, product development and innovation, Japanese process methods, and project management.
Alisa is also passionate about helping women entrepreneurs. She’s the host of The Beehive, a podcast she launched nearly five years ago to “bring clarity to the product launch process for aspiring women entrepreneurs” She’s done more than 60 interviews. She understands the ups and downs of innovation and she listens to her guests, intently. She will bring exciting new offerings to our corporate partners, our startup partners, and our team.
John will be leading Cintrifuse work with startups. He has deep experience vetting technology, services, apps, and digital capability. He was a leader of service operations (call, email, social, chatbot, Salesforce integration) for both Gillette and P&G. He brings operational discipline in all these areas. He’s also vetted countless vendors and startups, always with a “Can This Scale?” mindset that we know is so important to VCs considering startup investments.
He has multi-functional experience across marketing, sales, customer service, business services, analytics and research, and creative brand building. Since then, helped successfully exit a tech solutions company here in Ohio, and has spent the last year working at a Silicon Valley-based AI company. In short, John’s experience, expertise and passion will be invaluable to every startup walking through the Union Hall doors.
Our entire team is very enthusiastic about the growth across our team and about the caliber of people we’re bringing onboard. Our ability to achieve our mission and vision depends entirely on our capability, both in terms of experience and expertise as well as passion and energy.
Thanks to all of our supporters as we continue to strengthen Cintrifuse together.
-Pete Blackshaw
