San Leandro Names East Bay’s First Municipal Chief Innovation Officer

Jan. 30, 2013 - PRLog -- The City of San Leandro announced today that Deborah Acosta has been hired as the City’s first Chief Innovation Officer. Acosta will drive technology based economic development for the City and manage the City’s role in Lit San Leandro (http://litsanleandro.com/), a public/private partnership with Dr. Patrick Kennedy, CEO and Founder of OSIsoft, an international enterprise software company based in San Leandro. The Lit San Leandro project provides an existing and growing state-of-the-art digital backbone loop of fiber optics that allows service providers to deliver an ultra-high-speed, Internet communications network.

Dr. Patrick Kennedy, CEO of OSISoft, noted, “I founded OSIsoft in San Leandro 32 years ago.  My growing investment in San Leandro, both then and through the present, is because San Leandro has proved to be a friendly and supportive business environment. This City has the infrastructure to become a premier Bay Area technology city and Deborah has the capacity to ‘connect the dots’ among stakeholders, Lit San Leandro, development projects and Bay Area technology businesses; and to work with us to establish San Leandro as a great place for innovative technology entrepreneurs and companies to thrive.”

“San Leandro business and City leadership clearly gets it – creation of Lit San Leandro as a public/private partnership is an incredibly innovative solution to the challenges of urban redevelopment,” Acosta stated.  “I am thrilled to be joining a team that combines the best of East Bay resources and leadership for the opportunity to grow an innovative, technology-focused business community and create sustainable jobs.”

“Ms. Acosta’s joining our City marks a significant step forward in transforming San Leandro into a center for innovation in the Bay Area,” stated Mayor Stephen Cassidy. “With access to two international airports, BART, two highways, the Port of Oakland, Silicon Valley, the highly-skilled Bay Area workforce, and a business-friendly approach by City staff, San Leandro is an ideal location for both established tech businesses and startups to be more productive and successful.”

“Deborah’s unique skills provide an outstanding opportunity to fulfill the goals of Lit San Leandro: attraction of new companies that need access to ultra fast Internet speed and help grow existing businesses,” added San Leandro City Manager Chris Zapata.

As the City’s Chief Innovation Officer, Acosta will build collaboration between business, government, community and education stakeholders; create effective business attraction, retention and expansion policies and programs for the innovative technologies; manage the City’s partnership with the private sector to use, enhance, and market Lit San Leandro; use technology and open government tools to increase civic engagement; and drive technology-based economic development in the City of San Leandro.

Acosta comes to San Leandro as a graduate of U.C. Berkeley, with 12 years as a banking professional in San Francisco, 12 years as a City of Oakland Economic Development Coordinator focused in International Trade and the Innovative Technology sectors, and 1.5 years as an entrepreneur and business development consultant. Pandora, Skytide, Sungevity, Lucid, Obscura Digital, Digital Realty, SKS Investments, Swig Co., San Francisco Regional Center are among the many companies with whom Acosta has worked. She continues to expand her involvement in the East Bay’s growing tech sector as Co-Chair and co-founder of 2.Oakland, a group of Oakland technology companies working to cultivate a healthy tech eco-system in the East Bay.

About Dynamic San Leandro

A diverse community of nearly 85,000 residents, San Leandro’s business and public leaders are positioning the community to meet the technology, business service and real estate needs of existing and future technology-based companies. Lit San Leandro (www.LitSanLeandro.com) will be the backbone of the super-fast information and technology infrastructure required to connect other sustainable development projects and transition San Leandro from an industrial City to a Smart City (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_city) and center of innovation in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Learn more about by watching the San Leandro "Get Connected!" video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SnQI7cQ0UY.



Other significant projects underway that demonstrate San Leandro’s commitment to sustainable development include:

San Leandro Kaiser Permanente Medical Center (http://www.sanleandro.org/depts/cd/projects/kaiser_permanente_medical_center.asp):  Now under construction on a 63 acre just west of the 880 freeway, Phase 1 of the Medical Center includes over 700,000 square feet of new hospital and hospital support development and up to 2,100 parking spaces. The new Kaiser Permanente San Leandro Medical Center will be a “green” facility, designed to use less energy and water. Additionally, about 97 percent of all material on the site was recycled.

San Leandro Crossings: (http://www.sanleandro.org/depts/cd/projects/crossings.asp) A multi-phased, mixed use, Transit Oriented Development project adjacent to the Downtown San Leandro BART station that will enable the City to leverage over $130 million in public and private investment in and around the downtown and San Leandro BART Station, 2) create needed new workforce rental housing to meet State and federal affordable housing requirements, and 3) create over one thousand permanent high tech jobs from OSIsoft’s tech campus expansion and hundreds of temporary construction jobs.

Shoreline Development (http://www.sanleandro.org/depts/cd/shoreline/default.asp): A Master Planned Development of 50 out of 950 acres of publically owned shoreline will include a 250,000 s.f. tech office campus, hotel and conference center, restaurants, public promenade, live-work, townhouse and single-family residences, and an aquatic recreation area.  The project will complete the Environmental Impact Review in 2014, with proposed groundbreaking in 2016.

Village Marketplace Retail Center (http://www.sanleandro.org/depts/cd/projects/village_marketplace.asp): Development of a high-quality, Mediterranean-style neighborhood retail center of roughly 28,000 square feet in San Leandro’s Downtown, complementing the already robust adjacent retail businesses.