Journalist Tyler Woods joins Downtown Brooklyn Partnership
After writing about Brooklyn’s business and technology scene for three years, Tyler Woods, former reporter for Technical.ly Brooklyn and a contributor to The Bridge, will be taking a more hands-on role in helping area entrepreneurs at the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, the nonprofit local-development corporation.
Woods began his new role this week as the partnership’s director of network, where his duties will include running the Make It in Brooklyn program, a series of pitch contests, meet-ups, and summits designed to support innovation in the borough. Woods said his goal will be to help expand the borough’s position as a technology hub, which has grown significantly in the past two decades.
Tyler Woods, the new director of network for the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership (Photo courtesy of Tyler Woods)
“We’re really trying to take that momentum and keep running with it,” Woods said. Besides supervising Make It in Brooklyn, which has provided entrepreneurs with more than $90,000 in funding and professional services, Woods said he’ll manage two other programs: the Living Lab and Talent Connect.
Living Lab is “an initiative where startups will be able to use downtown Brooklyn to beta test their products,” he said. Talent Connect will be a way for Brooklyn university and college students to connect with business leaders. Though it is still a developing initiative, Woods said there will be a job board for both students and employers to utilize.
Woods believes his years of reporting on the Brooklyn tech scene gives him a running start in his new job. “I think the experience will have served me really well,” Woods said. “I got to really know the Brooklyn tech world as a reporter, and I think this is exciting because I’ll get to use a lot of the relationships and knowledge that I gained as a reporter … to affect people in a different way that I hope will be beneficial.”
Woods is a 2012 University of Pennsylvania graduate and has worked as a freelance reporter for the Observer, City and State, and Modern Consensus. He also worked for the Brooklyn-based blockchain startup OpenLaw, where he was the operations and community manager, and as the director of operations at NYC Together.—By Rachyl Houterman
