New Jersey Food Council President and CEO Linda Doherty on what a year of change and investment for an essential industry looks like.

In March, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill requiring New Jersey school districts to incorporate instruction on diversity and inclusion. Some business leaders wish he’d do the same thing for entrepreneurs. It’s not as though the state has ignored minority business owners, they say. It’s just that the process is so convoluted — at the federal level too — that many small business owners get discouraged.

The battle over the state's budget begins in Trenton.

This week’s digital issue of NJIBZ – featuring a look at what President Biden's infrastructure plan means for the Garden State, how NJ universities are diversifying their energy sources, how the New Jersey Salon and Spa Alliance is looking out for its members, we shine our spotlight on Accounting, and more!

The U.S. in general, and New Jersey in particular, face some significant challenges when it comes to concerns like crumbling infrastructure and educational racial equality. Experts and activists who have called for government solutions to these issues have been cheered by President Joe Biden’s moves since he’s been in the White House. But is the country prepared to foot the bill? These kinds of issues have a sizeable local impact.

There are 39,000 hair stylists in New Jersey. That’s a number bigger than the populations of many Hunterdon or Gloucester County towns, and more than half the size of Salem County. But these 39,000 people, many of them women and people of color, had no advocate, no administration, nobody to lobby for and speak up for them, until Christine Modica created the New Jersey Salon and Spa Alliance.

New Jersey – the most densely populated state in the nation with myriad roads, bridges, tunnels, trains and pipes along with clean energy aspirations – stands to reap much from the American Jobs Plan. But the program has been mired in partisan warfare since President Joe Biden unveiled the proposal.

During a recent NJBIZ virtual panel discussion on Positioning Your Company in a Post-COVID Environment, one takeaway was that companies should be prepared for significant, long-term workplace changes. That observation was reinforced in conversations with executives from one high-touch industry — accounting — who confirmed that their traditional business model appears to be undergoing a shakeup.

Stevens Institute of Technology will source 100% of its electricity directly from a local renewable energy source beginning this fall. But it's not alone, several colleges and universities in New Jersey - like Rider, Stockton and William Paterson Universities - rely on renewable energy for some portion of their campus power.

The enactment of medicinal marijuana laws and measures permitting the cultivation and sale of recreational marijuana have created new opportunities for owners of industrial and commercial real estate.

The settlement involves a former packager for a North Bergen company who alleges that she was denied her request for pregnancy-related accommodations.

The new bill offers assistance to establishments with up to 50 employees. “These are among the places that have been hardest hit by the pandemic,” Gov. Phil Murphy said. “Margins for our restaurants, if they’re positive at all, remain razor-thin.”