About Us

Suzanne Ishee, NJIT Hub for Creative Placemaking Director- Lead Instructor, Curriculum

Suzanne Ishee serves as Adjunct Instructor for Creative Placemaking, Professional Development/Martin Tuchman School of Management, and for the College of Science and Liberal Arts.  Suzanne is an Emmy and Drama Desk Award winning producer, actor and playwright veteran of the entertainment industry. In 2009, she expanded her arts career into the Creative Placemaking field through supporting the formation of Arts Build Communities at Rutgers University as Advisory Board Chairperson.  In 2011, she co-founded the Center for Creative Placemaking (CCP) where she continued to advance the field of practice through promotion, thought leadership, and training. She designed and developed Creative Placemaking content for numerous sector-specific workshops including those for professionals who practice Real Estate, Downtown Management, Conservation, Pubic Art, Professional Artists, and numerous others. She developed the curriculum for the existing Certificate in Creative Placemaking at NJIT and shares leadership of instruction with Dr. Colette Santasieri.  She provides expertise and engagement in numerous CP-related efforts in the region including as Co-Chair of the Livable Task Force for NJ Transportation Planning Authority/Together North Jersey, as original member of the Western Highlands Scenic Byway Management Board and the Morris Canal Greenway Redevelopment Working Group. She serves on the stewardship council of the 3-state/9-county Scenic, Wild Delaware River Geotourism Initiative, and since its inception remains an active member of Sustainable Jersey’s Arts and Creative Culture Task Force through evaluation of NJ municipality’s annual submissions.  Suzanne serves as event manager for the NJIT's Profeta Real Estate Technology, Design and Innovation Center and most recently has been providing leadership for NJIT's curriculum development and engagement with New Jersey's burgeoning Film/TV industry.

Dr. Colette Santasieri, Hub Co-Principal Investigator -Technical Assistance and Co-Lead Instructor, Curriculum 

Dr. Santasieri is Executive Director of the Center for Community Systems within the Hillier College of Architecture and Design, and the Executive Director of the NJ Brownfields Assistance Center @NJIT and the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s (NJIT) Technical Assistance to Brownfields Communities Program.  She possesses over 35 years of land use, environmental, and infrastructure planning, and community development experience. She has extensive experience and expertise in the planning and design of sustainable and resilient communities, properties, and civil infrastructure systems; community visioning for redevelopment; brownfields redevelopment; transit-oriented development; identifying and analyzing a project’s impacts on socio-economic, natural, and man-made settings as well as on environmental justice communities; and providing technical assistance and educational forums to elected officials, government staff, nonprofits, and the public. She is the co-instructor of the NJIT Creative Placemaking Professional Certificate course. 

Dr. Michael Ehrlich, Co-Director, New Jersey Innovation Acceleration Center and Hub Principal Investigator-Research

Ehrlich had an international business career before joining NJIT in 2007. He spent his last Wall Street years at Bear Stearns as Senior Managing Director of the Emerging Markets Fixed Income Business. Upon leaving Wall Street, Ehrlich became an entrepreneur and started FineStar Imaging LLC, a small technology company that specialized in document production and management. Ehrlich, who belongs to the NY Angels, focuses his research on the commercialization of technology. Ehrlich established and is the advisor to the Entrepreneur's Society, a student club at NJIT. With support from Capital One Bank, he established the New Business Model Competition (NBMC), an early-stage business model competition in its 11th year, for Newark and North Jersey-based students (undergraduate and graduate) as well as North Jersey community-based businesses and entrepreneurs. Winners of the NBMC (eight winners last year) receive a fellowship that pays them to work on their new business ideas and to attend the NJIT – MTSM Lean Startup Accelerator program to launch their new businesses. Ehrlich works extensively with NJIT faculty/student teams to help them transform their research into commercial innovations. He was an early participant in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program and since 2015 he has been the principal investigator directing the NSF I-Corps Site at NJIT where he funds 30-40 faculty-student teams each year ($2-3K/team). With Judith Sheft, Ehrlich co-lead the HealthIT connections program, funded by JPMorgan Chase Small Business Forward Initiative, which helps the overall regional HealthIT cluster and provides support for growth-stage companies to accelerate their growth rate and create good quality jobs for the region. Ehrlich has published research in the Journal of Business Venturing, Babson conference proceedings, and other top journals.

Judith Sheft, Hub Co-Founder

Judith A. Sheft is Executive Director of the NJ Commission on Science, Technology and Innovation.  She is former Associate Vice President Strategic Relationships and External Affairs at New Jersey Innovation Institute at NJIT.  In her prior position, she was Co-Director of the NJ Innovation Acceleration Center and involved with regional economic and cluster development having responsibilities for the HealthIT Connections entrepreneurial cluster development program, the NJIT I-Corps Site and the Procurement Technical Assistance Center.