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Clark announces retirement from SmartZone

Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette Marilyn Clark, SmartZone CEO, and Devin Leonarduzzi, marketing assistant, look over a project the organization is working on.

HOUGHTON — MTEC SmartZone Chief Executive Officer Marilyn Clark will be retiring at the end of the year, she announced, and said she is looking forward to it.

“You know what? I love this job,” she said. “This is hard to give up.” Clark has been the CEO for seven years.

She is the third CEO since the SmartZone was started in 2002, beginning with Allen West. He left in 2005, and Carlton Crothers replaced him and left in 2011, which was when Clark took the position, she said.

West, she said, set up the financial and legal structure, and initiated the SmartStart power house, and helped negotiate the Juttila Center. Crothers negotiated with General Electric for the power house, and he also helped get the main SmartZone building refurbished.

“So, he was the building guy, “Clark said, “and I’m the programming person.”

After her retirement, she said she would like to take a year off and try not to say yes to too many things, but she will does not plan to stay inactive for long.

“I’ve got a lot of energy. If they had one of those university sabbaticals, I’d probably take one,” she said. “But, I will find something to be able to contribute. I think I’ve left this in a good place.”

She has overseen much expansion of the SmartZone, which is a business accelerator, in the seven years she has been at the helm. The organization works with many agencies, including Michigan Technological University, to help expand high-tech companies.

“When I came, the people in the Juttila Center had been there an average of five years, and there weren’t any new people coming in. So, one of the things that we’ve done is we’ve put our SmartStart program in place, and we started that in the summer of 2012. We had five participants.”

Under Clark’s leadership, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) recently approved a 15-year funding extension for the SmartZone.

Today, the SmartZone runs three sessions of SmartStart per year, and Clark has helped create more than 700 jobs in the Copper Country since she began as CEO in 2011.

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