Activation Capital: Transforming the region into an innovation hub
The speaker:
Chandra Briggman has been president and CEO of Activation Capital since 2020.
She has guided the organization through a strategic pivot while sharpening the organization’s strategy, securing over $111 million in growth capital last year alone to set the stage for what will become the future of innovation in the region.
Prior to joining Activation Capital, Briggman was the director of Venture Café Foundation in Cambridge, Mass., where she was responsible for the strategy and operations of the global network’s flagship Venture Café Cambridge innovation hub.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in humanities from Columbia International University, a master’s in marketing from Johns Hopkins University, and an MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Activation Capital is an organization that has been accelerating innovation in technology, biotechnology and entrepreneur businesses in the Richmond region for three decades.
Now the organization has bold plans to create a thriving ecosystem anchored by an Innovation Center in the VA Bio+Tech Park in downtown Richmond that will be a magnet for innovators and deep tech companies.
Once completed, the 105,000-square-foot Innovation Center will boost entrepreneurial growth, strengthen the region’s end-to-end pharmaceutical manufacturing cluster, and act as a platform for upskilling community members with STEM programming.
The Innovation Center will be part of the 34-acre Bio+Tech Park that Activation Capital oversees. The park, a commercial life sciences hub in downtown Richmond near the VCU Medical Center, is home to more than 70 companies, research institutes, and state/federal laboratories.
In addition to the new building, Activation Capital is busy on other fronts. A coalition led by Activation Capital received $52.9 million in federal grant funding in 2022 to scale up an advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing and R&D cluster through the Build Back Better Regional Challenge.
Activation Capital received $15 million in funding from the Commonwealth of Virginia to accelerate the development of Central Virginia’s life sciences sector and a series of signature initiatives, including the exploration of key starting material manufacturing in the Commonwealth. It also received $1.5 million funding in the federal budget to support life sciences commercialization and business formation, and a $450,000 GO Virginia Region 4 grant to design a regional entrepreneurship strategy.