Originally published on May 15, 2017 on TechWire by Matt Williams
As was hinted at earlier this month, Louis Stewart started Monday as the city of Sacramento’s chief innovation officer. He comes aboard just two months after officials in Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s administration told Techwire that they would be restructuring the city’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Created last year under former Mayor Kevin Johnson’s administration, the innovation office is responsible for running the city’s Innovation and Growth Fund, among other initiatives. In collaboration with the mayor’s tech council, the office vetted roughly 140 applications for $1 million in grant funding in 2016, choosing 15 companies with ventures intended to boost the local tech economy.
Stewart previously was the deputy director for innovation and entrepreneurship in the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) for the past seven years. In his role at GO-Biz, Stewart traveled the state to evangelize the iHubs program in California’s tech economy as a whole. He often spoke with government leaders, industry and academia about what can be done to move the needle on innovation, particularly in communities outside of Silicon Valley.
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