Ms. Debbie Hart, CAE, APR serves as Chief Executive Officer and President at BioNJ Inc. (formerly The Biotechnology Council of New Jersey).  Ms. Hart worked alongside New Jersey’s leading biotechnology industry Chief Executive Officers to establish BioNJ in 1994.  During her career, she has served with several New Jersey State Government boards and committees and has been active with a number of academic institutions.

Debbie has served on the transition teams of two former New Jersey governors and was recently appointed by Gov. Chris Christie and Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno to the Council on Innovation.  She is a member of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority’s (EDA) Technology Advisory Board and is a member and former Chair of EDA’s Commercialization Center for Innovative Technology of New Jersey (CCIT) and was appointed by two Governors to the New Jersey Israel Commission for her work in economic development.  In addition, Ms. Hart served as a member of the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education Task Force on Higher Education Quality and Reputation and Competitiveness of the State.

A strong advocate for advancing education, she is a board member of the Rutgers University Blanche and Irwin Lerner Center for the Study of Pharmaceutical Management at Rutgers University Business School, the Science Advisory Board at Rider University and the Advisory Board of the College of Science and Mathematics at Montclair University and a former board member of the Rothman Institute of Entrepreneurship at Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Silberman College of Business.  Debbie has served on advisory boards for the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s (NJIT) Biomedical Engineering Program, Monmouth University’s School of Science, Technology and Engineering and the New Jersey Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA) Advisory Board.  She served on the advisory board that guided and supported the establishment of the nationally recognized Monmouth County Biotechnology High School.  In 2005, Debbie delivered the Commencement Address at Raritan Valley Community College’s graduation ceremonies.

Hart has been honored by the Women’s Fund of New Jersey as a Woman Advancing Science, and she and BioNJ have been recognized by NJIT with a New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame Award.  She was named in 2011 and 2012 to the NJBIZ Power 100and is a NJBIZ New Jersey’s Best 50 Women in Business honoree.

Ms. Hart holds a master’s degree from the S. I. Newhouse School at Syracuse University where she graduated cum laude and a bachelor’s degree from Trenton State College where she graduated magna cum laude.