No. 6: Debbie Hart

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Hart is the founding president and CEO of BioNJ, a network of 400 research-based life science and pharmaceutical companies working to expand what Gov. Phil Murphy has called New Jersey’s “innovation economy.” In the long run, that could mean more effective and cheaper health care technology, whether procedures or medications, or treatments or cures, in a state often called the “medicine chest of the world.”

The effort will resonate nationally, as public officials and the health care industry scramble for ways to test, treat and even cure COVID-19.

Hart established BioNJ in 1994, and sits on a variety of boards of directors across the state, including the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and the nonprofit Choose New Jersey.

She was tapped as chair for the New Jersey Biotechnology Task Force and as a member of the New Jersey Commission on Science, Innovation and Technology, all which Murphy argues could help New Jersey “reclaim” its title as the “state of innovation.”