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Cossler steps down, Ewing steps up
By Kalea Hall
YOUNGSTOWN
The Youngstown Business Incubator band isn’t breaking up, but the lead singer is changing.
Barb Ewing, chief operations officer at YBI, will become chief executive officer come May 1.
Jim Cossler, YBI CEO since 1998, will focus his efforts toward helping startup companies grow.
Ewing and Cossler consider themselves a band. They’ve worked together for years. In fact, Cossler gave Ewing her first job at the Better Business Bureau.
“The Jim Cossler/Barb Ewing garage band has been on tour for 30 years,” Cossler said.
Cossler hired Ewing when she was right out of Kent State University.
“I remember interviewing her and she just knocked it out of the park,” Cossler said.
Cossler and Ewing went on to work together at the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber. The two parted ways for a short time when Ewing went to work for U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, but then she came to the YBI in 2011.
YBI started in 1994 out of a former furniture shop on West Federal Street that was donated by The Vindicator. Today, the incubator has five buildings on its growing downtown Youngstown campus. The newest building, where The Vindicator used to produce its paper, will soon house additive manufacturing companies. The 85-year-old building was sold to YBI for $700,000 to pay for renovating and consolidating current Vindicator offices. The incubator works with 30 local companies and 70 others throughout Northeast Ohio.
“Jim believed when others did not,” Ewing said. “He has done that over and over again and shown us that we can be better and do better and accomplish great things.”
Ewing has several areas of focus for the future at YBI including the Valley Growth Ventures investment fund, a partnership with Tech Belt Energy Innovation Center in Warren and the Mahoning Valley Economic Development Corp.
“Having an investment fund is really a differentiator for us,” Ewing said.
The incubator also has opportunity with its part in the Northeast Ohio Additive Manufacturing Cluster Study. The purpose of the study is to build upon the resource of America Makes – the first additive-manufacturing hub in the U.S. – and provide a vision to integrate the additive manufacturing supply chain in the area.
The fifth building to the incubator’s campus will soon be complete with staff starting to move in May.
“I do think people believe in us now,” Cossler said. “I also believe that our very best is yet to come. She [Ewing] will take YBI to heights never imagined and I am just going to sit back and be her biggest fan.”