Portland Metro Region Innovation Hub names new director

Following the departure of the previous director, our friends at the Portland Metro Region Innovation Hub — the Portland chapter of a statewide network of hubs for innovation activity — were on the search for a new director to lead the organization. I talked a whole bunch of folks who were interested in the role and a number of them applied. But when the dust cleared, it’s been revealed that Kelly Lyons has selected to lead the organization.

And her timing couldn’t be better. Given that Portland State University, the fiscal sponsor of the Hub, has just secured a $6 million grant to help with innovation and commercialization.

According to PSU Assistant Vice President of Innovation, Joe Janda:

Kelly’s career has a clear through line. She has repeatedly built functions and programs that didn’t yet exist, and brought coherence to complex, multi-stakeholder efforts. As Development Director at Blanchet House of Hospitality, she built a development program from the ground up and grew revenue 25% year-over-year for five consecutive years. At Umpqua Bank, she unified community reinvestment, philanthropy, ESG, and DEI strategies into a coordinated enterprise-wide effort and launched catalytic ESG programming across the bank portfolio. At Core Education, she built the organization’s first enterprise-wide impact management & measurement function across a portfolio of 70+ contracted entities, and she has since advised healthcare systems, nonprofits, and financial institutions on governance and ecosystem development through her consulting practice, ClimbSmart Strategies.

Kelly describes her work as:

My work sits at the intersection of strategy, execution, and impact. I partner with executives and boards to design operating models, governance structures and performance systems that strengthen accountability, improve decision making, and support long term, responsible growth. Rooted in purpose driven and stakeholder centered work, I help leaders connect business performance with real outcomes for people, communities, and the enterprise. I am quite effective in high stakes, ambiguous environments where clarity, alignment, and strong systems turn good ideas into lasting change.

But she’s also a founder, having started a company called Entrellis designed to map “the full family system and gives her the structure to move through it; the right conversations, at the right time, with the clarity that lets families and the professionals around them actually do their best work.”

I’m sure quite a few folks will be writing about this. And I’d expect there to be a statement from the Hub at some point. But I had a break between meetings so I wanted to get the news out there.

More soon.