Todd Fisher used to oversee federal grant programs New Jersey applied for.
Not one of the state’s applications was selected.
Before joining Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s office, Fisher spent four years in the federal government running grant programs, including the Build Back Better Regional Challenge and the Good Jobs Challenge.
“New Jersey applied for all of them and did not get any of those awards, from at least the office that I was running,” he said Thursday at the 10th Annual Middlesex County Business Summit.
Fisher, now senior director for strategic initiatives and economic opportunity in the governor’s office, said the reason was clear from the applications.
“We saw a dozen applications from New Jersey, but it was clear that they weren’t coordinated,” he said. “They weren’t collaborating in a way that would bring the ecosystem together and really show the best of what New Jersey has to offer in one really effective application.”
It’s one reason the state that gave the world the light bulb, the transistor and a treatment for tuberculosis ranks 47th in the country in research funding for its academic institutions.
“That doesn’t make sense, given what we have,” Fisher said. “We’re punching way below our weight.”
Fisher said the state is now taking a different approach: one application per opportunity, and everyone gets behind it.
Speaking on a panel with EDA CEO Evan Weiss and Choose New Jersey CEO Amy Herbold, Fisher said New Jersey just submitted one application to the National Science Foundation and is about to submit another.
“In both of those instances, we said the state is only going to put in one application,” he said. “So, either you’re on board on this one, or you’re out. We’re not going to write multiple letters.”
In the coming application, he said, “we literally got all eight research institutions across New Jersey. They’re all in the same one. We’re all aligned, and we’re going to put our best foot forward.”
The state also plans to lean harder on its federal office in Washington. Fisher noted that the governor, a former congresswoman, knows her way around Capitol Hill.
There is a bigger play, he said.
Fisher said the administration wants to take the state’s standout assets, like the research universities, the strategic innovation centers and the new HELIX complex in New Brunswick — and connect them, so New Jersey can draw more research dollars, commercialize more discoveries and keep more of its startups as they grow.
Weiss said he knows what is at stake. For about a decade, he said, he was shown versions of HELIX in California, Boston, the Research Triangle, Philadelphia and New York.
“It felt terrible to see that other states had an asset like that,” Weiss said.
Now, he said, New Jersey has the best one in the country.
Fisher’s view is that the next step isn’t building more. It’s working together.
“What we have is almost impossible to recreate,” he said. “What it’s going to take is just marketing it better, pulling ourselves together, being more coordinated and collaborative.”
