Jon Winkel
Executive Director, Stamford Partnership
Age: 39
Industry experience: 8 years
Jon Winkel founded Stamford Innovation Week in 2018 to raise the city’s profile as a destination for tech companies and startups, and took on a broader role in the city’s economic development strategy with his 2019 appointment as executive director of the Stamford Partnership. The nonprofit coordinates public-private partnerships to encourage job growth, promoting Stamford as a destination for employee talent and companies, and improving the city’s tech infrastructure and transportation. A former managing partner of marketing firm SquareWheel Group, Winkel is a member of the Stamford Economic Development Commission and chairman of the Urban Redevelopment Commission.
Q: What was the catalyst for your move to the leadership role at the partnership in 2019?
A: I was serving as chairperson of the Stamford Economic Development Commission for a number of years, and I was founder of Stamford Innovation Week and a business owner and resident of Stamford. All of those things merged together as why I would be a good person for the gig and the board approached me. I was originally from Meriden but have lived in Stamford for 11 or 12 years and I love it here. I was working in Norwalk at the time and living in Milford, and wanted to settle somewhere. My then-girlfriend (and now-wife) and I were looking for a forever place and Stamford was a place I liked. I had access to career opportunities from New York to New Haven, and more broadly from Boston to Washington, D.C. with the Acela. It didn’t hurt that it was a cool place and it’s gotten a lot cooler since then.
Q: With Philip Morris’ announcement this week of its plans to relocate its headquarters to southwest Connecticut, will there likely be local incentives?
A: I don’t know if they’re considering Stamford, but I’ll say Connecticut has one of the most educated and best workforces in the world, so that played a part in it. Connecticut has not gotten a Fortune 400 headquarters in quite a long time. I’ll let the mayors and legislators speak first on [potential incentives].
Q: What’s been the response to the opening of University of Connecticut’s new data science incubator at 9 West Broad St. in February?
A: It’s been excellent. I understand they are on track to completely fill and subscribe their first cohort for July. It opened on time in the pandemic. As a community, we’re incredibly excited about this to have an incubator based in Stamford. We hope these companies look at Connecticut and Stamford as a place to settle. UConn recruits from all over the world. The companies can go anywhere in the world when they finish, so we want to show them a good experience and keep them here.
Q: How can Stamford benefit from transportation upgrades?
A: On the Metro-North, it’s improving reliability and speed and on [Interstate] 95 and the Merritt Parkway, it’s congestion. The way you get there is infrastructure investment and if the train is reliable, more people will take it and that will address congestion. From my biased opinion, the Stamford train station would be a great use of funds for investment by the state or federal government. It’s Connecticut’s welcome mat. It’s the busiest station on Metro North outside of Grand Central, so we’d love to see something big and transformative take place there: not just the station, but something that would be mixed-use is hopefully on people’s minds. It could and should go bigger. It’s significantly below the skyline that surrounds it.
Q: What was the original idea behind Stamford Innovation Week?
A: I was at the time working with a marketing firm, SquareWheel Group, and we were hosting a lot of meet-ups around Fairfield County. I’d meet these incredible people: software developers, venture capital folks, startup talent, and they’d all be meeting for the first time. We thought it was a nice achievement that we were helping connect people. After a couple of years, we thought people should be reconnecting, so we said the biggest solution is let’s have one big tent where everybody in the entrepreneurial and innovation and tech communities can come together. Now Stamford Partnership is the host and we have probably 20 different sponsoring companies. This year’s will be the week of Sept. 20 and we’re going to go with a socially distanced model, so single event capacity will be around 300. Normally, we would aim for a couple of events around 1,000 and this year we’ll have a few smaller events around 300 people to accommodate everybody’s safety and comfort levels.
Winkel’s Five Favorite Connecticut-style Restaurants
- Colony Grill, Stamford
- Frank Pepe’s, New Haven
- K LaMay’s, Meriden
- Frankie’s, Waterbury
- J. Timothy’s Tavern, Plainville
