Micah Kotch serves as Director of NY Prize and Strategic Adviser for Innovation at the New York State Energy and Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) where he is responsible for the design and execution of NY Prize, helping to catalyze the innovation and entrepreneurship necessary to transform the State’s electric power infrastructure. NY Prize is a first-in-the-nation $40 million competition to engage communities in advancing plans for local power infrastructure to reduce costs, promote clean energy, reliability and resiliency.
Previously, Micah served as Director of Innovation.and Entrepreneurship at the NYU School of Engineering, where he worked with the New York City Economic Development Corporation to open New York City’s first sponsored tech incubator on Varick Street in Hudson Square in 2009 and launched the DUMBO Incubator in 2010. In 2012, Worth Magazine named the incubators under his leadership among its “Top 10 Idea Labs.” Now a designated ‘StartupNY’ tax-free zone, the incubators have created more than 1000 jobs and had an economic impact approaching $500,000,000 since inception.
He is the Founding Director of the New York City Accelerator for a Clean and Resilient Economy (NYC ACRE), which is a critical axis for innovators to connect and develop new technologies essential to meet both city and state energy and environmental goals, as well as the demands of climate change adaptation and mitigation. During his time at NYU he also served as the Director of the ‘Powerbridge NY’ proof of concept center, helping commercialize University research using the NSF i-Corp ‘Lean Launchpad’ methodology. Micah served as green initiatives coordinator for Pratt Institute, helping grow the Pratt Design Incubator for Sustainable Innovation at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and establishing the Center for Sustainable Design Studies and Research, funded by grants from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the U.S. Department of Education.
An internationally sought-out speaker on innovation and economic development, his work assisting startup tech ventures has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Scientific American, and NPR Marketplace. He was named by GE Ecomagination as one of their Top 11 Sustainability Innovators of 2011. A Chinese major at Colgate University, Micah graduated with distinction and wrote his first business plan while working in Ningbo, China. He has developed new business for wireless telecom carriers and device manufacturers, brokering licensing deals with large media companies and game publishers.
He is a certified instructor in the National Science Foundation’s i-Corps program, an appointed member of the NYC City Council’s Municipal Entrepreneurial Testing System Advisory Committee and an Advisory Board member of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI Inc.). Micah is a native son of Brooklyn, where he lives with his family.
