San Diego’s Connect Begins Search for New Innovation Leader

San Diego landmark, Coronado Bridge, San Diego Bay

Connect, the San Diego nonprofit supporting local innovation and entrepreneurship, has hired an executive search firm to help the organization recruit a new leader following the death of Connect CEO Duane Roth.

Roth, who led Connect for nearly nine years, suffered a traumatic head injury in a July 21 bicycling accident in the mountains east of San Diego. He was hospitalized at the UC San Diego Medical Center in Hillcrest, but never recovered from his injuries. He died Aug. 3. He was 63.

In a statement Friday, Connect said it has hired Carrie Stone, a San Diego executive recruiter and consultant, to help recruit an experienced and visionary CEO and to help chart Connect’s next phase of growth and community contribution.

Stone actually has been on the job for the past six weeks or so, according to Tyler Orion, a Connect board member who has been serving as Connect’s interim CEO. Stone has spent much of that time developing a list of specifications that define the job, “by meeting with the search committee and a lot of the stakeholders who are involved with Connect,” Orion said.

At the same time, Orion voiced sentiments that were recently expressed by Duane Roth’s brother Ted, an investment banker and Connect board member. “We’re really not looking for someone to replace Duane,” she said. “We’re looking for the next leader of Connect.”

Connect’s CEO oversees a staff of 19 and is responsible for carrying out the nonprofit’s mission and financial objectives. The CEO is responsible for leading Connect’s strategic planning process, and developing

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.