Small business is the revenue-generating, jobs-producing backbone of regional socioeconomics – and nobody knows this better than Martha Stansbury. As director of the Small Business Development Center at Stony Brook, Martha has many oars in the water – overseeing instructional programs, preparing annual and special-project budgets, addressing the immediate and long-term needs of entrepreneurs, meeting constantly with State University administrators, Long Island lawmakers and other influential sta...
Jun 23, 2025•40 min•Season 6Ep. 6
As co-founder and CEO of Long Beach-based Trellus Networks, Adam Haber is giving Long Island mom-and-pop retailers a fighting chance against Amazon and other e-commerce giants: a last-mile logistics partner offering home delivery to customers across the Island. It’s the latest endeavor for a master innovator whose long résumé includes stints as a commodities trader, a political candidate, a restaurateur, a government efficiency professional and a seasoned angel investor – and the one that promis...
Jun 03, 2025•33 min•Season 6Ep. 4
Nobody understands Long Island socioeconomics better than Kyle Strober. Long Island has many organizations and many leaders monitoring and shaping the regional quality of life – but none more influential than the Association for a Better Long Island and its busy executive director. Kyle joined the association in 2017 after several years as a legislative aide, first for a Nassau County legislator and then as Long Island regional director for U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer – positions that uniquely qu...
Mar 03, 2025•45 min•Season 6Ep. 4
If you read newspapers, magazines or books, you’ve likely read something written by Ambrose Clancy. Ambrose has been an author and professional journalist for half a century, gracing major newspapers like The Village Voice, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, popular magazines like GQ and The Nation, and several beloved community periodicals on Long Island, including a long run as editor of The Shelter Island Reporter. His third book – “My Life In Pieces: Writers, Rogues, The Road and...
Feb 13, 2025•38 min•Season 5Ep. 50
Few American jurists have assembled a career as influential or accomplished as the Honorable A. Gail Prudenti, the former Chief Administrative Judge of the Courts of New York State. From her studies at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and her first job as a law clerk in the Suffolk County Surrogate’s Court to her days as a Suffolk prosecutor, her 20-plus years on the bench and her post-judgeship partnership at East Setauket-based family-law specialist Burner Prudenti Law, Gail has seen and...
Feb 04, 2025•35 min•Season 5Ep. 49
Bethpage Federal Credit Union didn't rise to become a top-20 national credit union -- or increase its asset holdings from $1 billion to more than $13 billion -- by accident. It took a team of forward-thinking leaders and dedicated employees, working together to bulk up an institution that launched more than 80 years ago as a small neighborhood depository exclusively servicing Grumman employees. Chief among them: Linda Armyn, who became Bethpage's president and CEO in August 2023. By then, she'd ...
Dec 27, 2024•42 min
The introduction of the school’s first PhD programs, the creation of a world-class biomedical-research facility, a major rebranding and a successful emergency pivot through the teeth of the COVID pandemic – and these are just some of the amazing accomplishments on the scorecard of New York Institute of Technology President Henry Foley. After a seven-year presidential term, Dr. Foley – “Hank,” to friends and colleagues – has announced his retirement from the Old Westbury-based institute, effectiv...
Dec 15, 2024•41 min•Season 5Ep. 46
Smart branding and successful marketing usually go hand-in-hand … but what makes a brand “smart?” And in the cutthroat business of professional promotions, what defines “successful?” These and other critical questions that can make or break a business marketing campaign are answered in this very special episode of Spark: The Innovate Long Island Podcast – a classic switcheroo that sees Spark host Gregory Zeller sitting in the guest’s chair, as the interviewee on a recent episode of The Brandtell...
Dec 10, 2024•34 min•Ep. 46
Long Island is blessed with many great attorneys, but not all are as studious, flamboyant or successful as John Ray of Miller Place – part Perry Mason, part Marlon Brando, always impressive. With a ripped-from-the-headlines caseload and a long list of high-profile acting gigs, John has made a name for himself in and out of the courtroom over the last four-decades plus – and on the lacrosse field, too, where he continues to compete against players a quarter his age. In today’s episode, the colorf...
Apr 19, 2024•50 min•Season 5Ep. 1
Laura Curran has seen the world – but chose Nassau County as her home. Born in Canada and raised everywhere, the once-and-future journalist was the first woman to serve as Nassau County executive, after early jobs reporting for New York City’s biggest tabloids and before her later career in podcasting and talk radio. As county exec, the Democrat – not always an ally of Albany’s liberal majority – took innovative approaches to Nassau’s raging property taxes, rising drug problems and rampant crony...
Oct 10, 2023•52 min•Season 4Ep. 8
Black business is big business – and if you’re not “buying Black,” as the saying goes, you’re shortchanging your local community and the larger economy. That’s the message of the BlaQue Resource Network and its founder, entrepreneur extraordinaire Aleeia Abraham , who’s on a mission to elevate and support her fellow Black business owners. Through popular events, shared promotions and other progressive positivity, the Queens College graduate has already rallied 25,000 networkers to this noble soc...
Sep 18, 2023•33 min•Season 4Ep. 7
David Battinelli is a hyper-productive engine of medical modernization, with a 28-page résumé – degrees, jobs, honorifics and more – to prove it. As Northwell Health physician-in-chief and dean of the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, David plays leading roles in the shaping of Long Island’s biotech-centric identity – and the realization of the region’s best socioeconomic hopes. In today’s episode, the diverse doctor joins Spark host Gregory Zeller to share his m...
Aug 25, 2023•30 min•Season 4Ep. 6
Laura Harding had some mighty big shoes to fill, succeeding Elaine Gross as president of Syosset-based equal-rights watchdog ERASE Racism. But over her first 10 months on the job, fill them she has, running headlong into this new opportunity and leading the 22-year-old anti-discrimination organization through fresh inclusive-housing and education-funding initiatives. In today’s episode, the attorney, social worker, seasoned social-justice advocate and "adopted Long Islander" joins Spark host Gre...
Jul 21, 2023•47 min
Lauren Sheprow is a gifted communicator – so gifted, in fact, that she’s reanimated a long-dead lesson of American political science, brutally murdered by hate, ignorance and bullshit: Communication is always key. After decades of highest-level strategic communications (professional tennis tournaments, major regional hospitals, a SUNY flagship university and more), Lauren is the new mayor of the Village of Port Jefferson – an upset victory the political neophyte (and former professional racquetb...
Jul 10, 2023•35 min•Season 4Ep. 4
As director of real estate for Lesso Mall Development Long Island, Dominic Coluccio’s primary responsibilities include vetting potential tenants and negotiating sensitive lease agreements for Samanea New York, a post-pandemic retail/dining/entertainment experience rising from the ashes of a defunct Westbury shopping mall. With Chinese parents, an exotic assortment of ethnic foods and a second-generation Italian American pulling the strings, Samanea New York has an undeniable international flair ...
Jun 23, 2023•36 min•Season 4Ep. 3
Johnny Rosado, known best by stage name DJ Johnny Juice, is an award-winning and Emmy-nominated musician – a composer, producer, turntablist, engineer and legendary “b-boy” who’s collaborated with some of the biggest names in the hip-hop genre. But that’s only part of his amazing resumé. Packing engineering and computer-science degrees from the University of California San Diego, the U.S. Navy veteran is a “techie for techs” at a national security company and an instructor at a Uniondale nonprof...
Jun 08, 2023•40 min•Season 4Ep. 2
Marc Alessi may be the most diversified jewel of Long Island’s innovation crown. He’s a lawyer, ex-lawmaker, executive, entrepreneur, ace networker and – perhaps most importantly – a true visionary, with a clear notion of Long Island’s best socioeconomic destiny and a roadmap to get there. As executive director of the Business Incubator Association of New York State (BIANYS), he’s giving the future a running start. As director of the Tesla Science Center in Shoreham, he’s giving Long Island’s pa...
May 30, 2023•41 min•Season 4Ep. 1
Walter Stockton was born, raised and educated in Pennsylvania – but Long Island is his home and, thanks to his efforts, home to thousands of developmentally disabled Islanders who might otherwise wind up in an institutional horror house, or worse. The founder of the Independent Group Home Living Program – and now the Kinexion Network, an umbrella management-service organization for a half-dozen major league Long Island nonprofits – has led a decades-long charge to improve professional services a...
Jan 31, 2023•36 min
Robert Zimmerman has been a household name on Long Island and beyond for decades, for all the right reasons – brilliant innovation across the professional-communications spectrum, fantastic business success, unblinking political commentary at the highest levels, compassionate crusades for numerous humanitarian causes. Now he’s Victim No. 1 of a political crime that redefines sad, seedy and scary – not merely an insult to the people of Western Long Island, but another serious threat to our nation...
Jan 16, 2023•40 min•Season 3Ep. 35
Ernie Canadeo is a dynamo of digital advertising, a champion of regional entertainment and quite possibly the most interesting man in Long Island innovation. The founder and CEO of Melville-based integrated advertising agency The EGC Group and chairman of the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame has built a successful career around big names, big ideas and a lifelong love of great music. Mostly, he’s done it by having fun – an important lesson for entrepreneurs and business owners of...
Dec 17, 2022•26 min
“Downtowns” and “Main Street USA” are 100-year-old concepts that can be easily lost in the modern shuffle. But while the personalities of downtown districts and main street markets have changed, their importance hasn’t. These lessons are paramount to Eric Alexander, the longtime director of Vision Long Island and founder of the Long Island Main Street Alliance. Through 25 years of planning and lobbying efforts, the innovative influencer has boosted more than 150 Long Island infrastructure projec...
Nov 25, 2022•34 min•Season 3Ep. 33
The genius researcher, oft-published innovator and “father of bioelectronic medicine” spearheads a field of study that promises to permanently rewrite the medical textbooks: electric nerve stimulation. Offering drug-free alternatives for the treatment of inflammation throughout the body – and the diseases and other conditions causing it – bioelectronic medicine attracts top minds and huge investments around the world. And nowhere is that more evident than the Manhasset-based Feinstein Institutes...
Oct 31, 2022•33 min•Season 3Ep. 32
Like many creative geniuses, Christian Gonzalez borrowed liberally from established works when he created “The Macabre Sessions” – in this case, from the best of the horror and science-fiction genres. But if the young digital artist mined Stephen King’s worst nightmares for inspiration, the end result – an original audio story set on Long Island, told over 13 super-creepy episodes with a full voice cast, sound effects, original music, growling monsters and interdimensional stakes – was all about...
Oct 17, 2022•28 min
After 21 years as president of ERASE Racism, founder Elaine Gross has handed the baton – and a two-decade legacy of litigious success and social progress – to a worthy successor. The Long Island-raised Boston University graduate has made a career of racial justice in housing, education and other key areas, taking a graceful approach to an ongoing street fight that continuously exposes the ugly underbelly of systemic racism – and fosters progressive solutions in conjunction with lawmakers and edu...
Sep 19, 2022•38 min
Andrew Parton was a banker before he landed at the Cradle of Aviation Museum, but no ordinary banker – the St. John’s University MBA had already carved a decades-long career in major-league marketing for some of the nation’s leading financial institutions. That experience – and his childhood love of air and space, fueled equally by “Star Trek” and real-life NASA missions – made him the perfect person to spread the word about the Cradle of Aviation, a shining salute to the region’s glorious aeros...
Aug 22, 2022•33 min•Season 3Ep. 29
Long Island is blessed with a multitude of world-class colleges and universities and an impressive roster of all-world scholars to run them – and right at the top is Dr. John Nader, President of Farmingdale State College. A veteran of the SUNY system and former mayor of the City of Oneonta, John – who doubles as co-chairman of the critically influential Long Island Regional Economic Development Council – has led Farmingdale State through six years of remarkable growth, expanding the college’s st...
Aug 08, 2022•38 min
Raised by strong women with long careers in professional healthcare, Dawn Smallwood seemed destined to become a doctor. She even went to college to study biology. But fate had other ideas. In January, the veteran law-enforcement officer – after decades in the service of the FBI, the NCIS and CUNY Public Safety – became chief of the Stony Brook University Police Department, the first woman to fill the role. As SBU’s top cop, she commands a 190-member department that serves and protects 26,000 stu...
Jul 26, 2022•43 min•Season 1Ep. 27
With some estimates counting more than 218,000 food-insecure Long Islanders, including 80,000 children, the Herculean efforts of Chief Executive Officer Paule Pachter and his team at Long Island Cares-The Harry Chapin Food Bank cannot be overstated. The former deputy commissioner of the Nassau County Department of Mental Health, who earned a master’s degree in social work from Adelphi University, heads a massive rescue mission that annually manages millions of dollars in private and corporate do...
Jun 23, 2022•41 min
Robert Catell is a living legend of the regional energy sector and an iconic influencer, across Long Island and beyond. Starting as a junior engineer for Brooklyn Union Gas way back in 1958, Robert rose quickly through the ranks, prioritizing modernization and energy efficiency at every step. A savvy and respected leader, he was a key player in a multibillion-dollar merger that forever reshaped regional energy distribution – and since his “retirement” has only gotten busier, leading clean-gen cr...
Jun 16, 2022•32 min•Season 1Ep. 25
John Wallace needs no introduction to fans of the Syracuse Orange or the New York Knicks – but you might not know how deeply the Rochester native’s roots run throughout New York State. Since hanging up his professional sneakers, the one-time NCAA scoring machine has embarked on numerous professional and personal efforts designed to empower youth and promote social justice. A master communicator with a hard-earned degree in sociology, John has also carved out an impressive broadcasting career, wh...
Apr 13, 2022•34 min
