December 18, 2020  –

Tony Allen became president of Delaware State University on Jan. 1, 2020, after three years as the university’s provost. Before that, he spent nearly 14 years as Bank of America’s head of corporate reputation; president of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League; special assistant and speechwriter for then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden for three years; and Delaware regional director of Public Allies for two years. More recently, Allen was named CEO of the Presidential Inaugural Committee for Biden’s inauguration.

Other recent news includes DSU’s receipt of a $20 million gift from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. According to Allen, the funding will go toward the University’s Global Institute for Equity, Inclusion and Civil Rights, its ongoing acquisition of Wesley college and the creation of an integrated College of Health and Behavioral Sciences and student scholarships via investment into the DSU endowment.

“I honestly believe in the impossible,” Allen says, “and what Delaware should be, and my ability to help us all get there.”

DPP: All your rankings by U.S. News improved for 2020, and DSU now ranks as the #3 public HBCU in America. But the big story is your “Social Mobility Index” score being in the top 1% for all U.S. schools. What does that mean to you?

TA: This is the one indicator that captures who we are and what a world-class HBCU does: we change the trajectory of our students’ lives. Delaware State – and our sister HBCU institutions – believe it’s critical that we make sure that the least financially advantaged students are matriculating and graduating on par with the broader student population. Half of our students are Pell-eligible, which is an income standard. Ninety-nine percent of them need financial aid, and some are homeless before they get to us. Traditionally, the extent to which universities are successful for these students has been something that got obscured in the details of the ratings. So when U.S. News put the social mobility indicator out there a few years ago, we knew that it would be important for us to check ourselves. I’m not surprised by the rating, but I am very pleased, not only by our achievement but about how many HBCUs made that top 100 list.

DPP: Is there a metric like increased number of inquiries or applications that will demonstrate the impact of this indicator?

TA: First-year retention is ultimately indicative of graduation success, and we started between about 58% and 61%, 10 years ago. Today we steadily retain our freshmen in the low to mid-70% range. To move that score, you really have to move that population that tends to struggle. And that means fighting to keep every single student you can, whether the issues are money, family or academics. Growth in this category is simply an indication that we are doing what we set out to do. 

DPP: What does success look like for DSU?

TA: My priorities this year, when I took office in January, centered around building the financial health for the institution. And that had a lot to do with making sure we are managing our resources efficiently and also bringing new and more resources into the University — which we’ve done. The pandemic just focused the issue more clearly by reducing the margin for error.

Enhancing the culture of the University is also a big priority. I think of culture primarily as both how we interact with each other and our stakeholders, but it also relates to the notion of being more thoughtful as it relates to customer service. Our employees are now realizing that if an issue comes from another division, they need to jump in and help resolve it. Nobody ever says, “There’s a problem with Admissions or with Student Life.” They say, “There’s a problem with Delaware State University.” And we all have to own that.

That goes hand in hand with making sure that we’re creating a healthy and safe environment for our students, every single day, under every possible condition. COVID emphasized that for me. Every night one of the last questions to go through my mind is, “Have we have done our level best today to safeguard our students? If I can honestly answer, “Yes,” I sleep well. Most nights I do sleep well.

Finally, I made a priority of raising the university profile. One of the ways we thought that was important was to speak into the moment around issues that matter. We have been at the forefront as it relates to the pandemic and the disparities therein, and the civil unrest in America stemming from the systemic mistreatment of people of color by law enforcement. 

That last one was crystallized for me when one young man — a student of almost limitless potential — said to me in a public forum about George Floyd’s death, “I am scared.” It is our collective responsibility, and Delaware State University’s special charge, to construct a world where talented young people do not have to be afraid of dying because of the color of their skin.

DPP: What’s been the biggest (non-COVID) surprise you’ve faced as president?

TA: It’s probably the great pride that the university community has in Delaware State University. I have said for years that Delaware State University is a hidden gem, and we have to change the “hidden” part of that. But I didn’t expect to feel the intensity so mightily as I have now. And it drives you to deliver. You don’t want to disappoint the students, staff, faculty and the alumni who every day are hoping that Delaware State University gets its just reward for what it’s been doing for 130 years.

DPP: You’ve always been known as a guy who believes that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” What are your thoughts on that nine months into your presidency?

TA: So we had a whole plan going into January 1 about the university and how we were going to position ourselves, and what our short-term wins would be, and what the long haul would look like. And that all changed overnight.

The first order of business was helping those students we know are from very vulnerable populations, whether they be homeless or in settings that we just wouldn’t want them returning to. So we made the decision to keep about 200 students on campus and make sure they had the resources they needed to be successful. That’s why we started our emergency relief fund and raised $1.5 million in eight weeks.

That was a very real moment where the faculty, staff and university stakeholders – particularly the alumni – stepped up. Our faculty transitioned 1,400 courses online in five days. 

What I think about that as we move forward is if that’s the heart of who we are, it’s not about changing our culture, it’s about evolving it until we can do that more often for more people.

DPP: Is there a group of stakeholders or a group of constituents in particular that you think you need to focus on to achieve your goals?

TA: Probably the business community. If you want a quality, diverse talent pipeline for your institution or company, Delaware State University should be the first phone call you make. But historically it just has not been. I spend a lot of time discussing the civil unrest happening in the country with business leaders and making that case — that if you really are serious about these kinds of issues, there needs to be a bigger, broader, deeper relationship with Delaware State University.

DPP: What do you think differentiates Delaware from other states in terms of being able to attract companies or help the ones that are already here to grow and to either retain or attract college graduates?

TA: I’m originally from Jacksonville, Florida, but I grew up in New Castle. I just think Delaware is a great place to grow up and raise a family. 

The second thing I’d say is the smallness of Delaware actually makes for easier partnerships and sort of a unity of focus when it matters most. Our entire congressional delegation is connected to the success of Delaware State University, and it’s rare that you find it’s just one without the others pushing along. I think that’s really important.

This is a place where you get to see your governor in the grocery store or pick up the phone and have a conversation with some of the highest folks in political office, and I think that matters. I think people and businesses want to come here because they see a really thoughtful talent pool that is loyal to the community they’re in and want to be successful.

DPP: What percentage of DSU students stay in Delaware after graduation?

TA: About 55% of our students are from Delaware. Those students, in large measure, stay local, and that’s good news for us. The number of out-of-state students who stay comes down to (1) what their experience was on campus and (2) the experience they were able to get off campus in the broader community.

I go back to somebody like Cerron Cade, who’s from D.C. but got engaged in the political scene while on campus at Delaware State. Over the last 10 or 15 years, he connected with lots of people and spent time with then-Congressman John Carney. He worked on a couple of campaigns and showed what he could do. Now he is Delaware’s Secretary of Labor and has been nominated to serve as director of the state Office of Management and Budget.

I think that if you have experiential opportunities while you’re a student on campus, you’re going to find that you can have broader access of the folks you might not be able to get in other places. That can help build your career.

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December 14, 2020 – 

According to Mayor David Genshaw, each of Seaford’s elected officials and employees share a common goal: the city’s economic development. This collective attention along with new collaborations with Sussex County are creating job opportunities in Southern Delaware.

“The culture in Seaford is really focused on how we grow business here,” the mayor said. “We’re getting everybody pulling in the same direction.”

Genshaw, who has been mayor since 2013, moved to Seaford as a child in the 1970s when DuPont was the city’s major employer and the city thrived as the “Nylon Capital of the World.” He’s been working with city council and personnel, such as economic development and community relations director Trisha Newcomer and city manager Charles D. Anderson, for the last eight years to improve the economic climate so that locating and growing in Seaford appeals to developers, businesses and workers alike. 

 “I’m old enough to remember when DuPont was here in its prime and what good-paying jobs means to a town, what it means to the school district, to shopping and retail, to churches,” Genshaw said. “All ships rise with the tide.”

And Seaford’s tide, which fell with the exit of DuPont, has been rising again. For example, Genshaw said, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A and McDonald’s all have new or newly revamped sites within the city. Though “not big job creators” individually, he said, the commitment these national powerhouses have made to Seaford speak to the city’s revitalization and progress in recent years.

“There’s just been millions and millions of dollars invested in Seaford,” he said. “Sussex Montessori School is a huge multimillion-dollar investment. The Residences at River Place, which is a gated apartment complex on the river, is a multimillion-dollar downtown development investment project that has just been incredible. We’ve got the Oyster House Park project going up on the river, which is a multimillion-dollar investment along our waterfront.”

Also in progress is the Western Sussex Sewer District that Seaford is working on with Sussex County. This project will connect Greenwood’s and Bridgeville’s sewers to Seaford’s, which will provide city utility services to farmland currently without them. As a result, property in those areas will be ripe for development.

“There’s some really great foundational things happening in Seaford that I believe are going to set us up for extended-year growth,” Genshaw said. “So this is an exciting time.”

Western Sussex Business Campus Launched in Seaford

Another foundational project launching in Seaford is Western Sussex Business Campus, which aims to bring dozens of new jobs to the city and surrounding areas. Seaford, Sussex County, the State of Delaware and a private developer are partnering on the proposed complex, which will bring commercial, industrial and manufacturing activity to more than 100 acres on the city’s northern edge. This property lies off Herring Run and Ross Station roads adjacent to the Ross Mansion historical site and near both Seaford Industrial Park and Ross Business Park.

The city and county are jointly funding infrastructure improvements to the property that will allow companies to locate there and bring increased property values and additional economic effects along with jobs. Seaford owns the land and has allotted $600,000 for its development, having received $350,000 in State Bond Bill funding in 2019 to begin engineering design and implementation of utilities and a commercial entrance. Sussex County has pledged up to $1.88 million toward the project.

The private developer, which Genshaw declined to name until final details are worked out, has signed a letter of intent to buy about half the acreage and construct a 50,000-square-foot commercial building – amounting to an overall investment on its part of $4 million to $5 million. The developer would then market the site to prospective tenants.

“Our vision for this park is really a mixed use of medium-sized companies and small companies with the opportunity to move to larger spaces within the park as their business grows,” Genshaw said. “A diverse group of businesses from distribution to manufacturing to everything in between would be our best opportunity for success and job growth.”

Having owned the property since the 1990s, Seaford previously tried to sell the land in its undeveloped state. More recently, the city listed it with a commercial real estate agent. Neither effort succeeded as demand for raw land had plummeted. Today, developers increasingly want shovel-ready sites so they can significantly reduce time between start of construction and open of business.

“They’re also looking for a government – whether that’s local or county or state – that isn’t going to make it hard on them and is going to work alongside them,” Genshaw noted. “We really want to create that kind of atmosphere when someone deals with us. We’re really thankful and grateful that they’re considering our town and our state, so we try to treat them that way.”

Collaboration Advances Economic Development Opportunities

The Western Sussex Business Campus project aligns with strategies in Sussex County’s 2018 Comprehensive Plan that call for exploration of public-private partnerships to develop new business ventures within the county. It also stands as a prime example of collaboration over competition in the effort to advance economic development opportunities in and around Seaford.

“For a long time, business came natural to Seaford because DuPont was here and things kind of just rolled into place,” Genshaw said. “Now, we need jobs, so every interaction we have has got to be focused on keeping businesses here and growing additional business.

“We’ve got a lot more to do, but some really positive things are going on and we have momentum on our side.”

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December 11, 2020 – 

Innovation is nothing new to Delaware. But the Delaware Data Innovation Lab is new — brand new — and in just its first few weeks, a team of 22 “labsters” are already hard at work in the recently renovated CSC Station in Wilmington helping community partners use data analytics, artificial intelligence and augmented reality to “see” data and uncover solutions that will help Delaware, and the rest of the world, address COVID-19 and other pressing problems.

The Delaware Data Innovation Lab, or DDIL, was created in September through a $2M CARES Act Innovation grant from New Castle County to CompassRed, a Delaware-based data analytics and artificial intelligence company. Through DDIL, CompassRed will partner with universities, government, corporations and health care organizations to fast-forward research ideas out of the lab and into the marketplace.

Patrick Callahan, co-founder of CompassRed and the Delaware Data Innovation Lab, said County leaders wanted to use the funding to foster innovation and attract talent to the region. They also envisioned using technology to grow something with a long-term impact.

“When something as shocking as coronavirus shakes the world, there are opportunities that we could never have had before,” said Callahan. “With the support of New Castle County, our team went to work figuring out how to take advantage of this moment and tackle the issues that come from COVID.”

A board member for Delaware Prosperity Partnership, Callahan describes DDIL as a “collaborative, not competitive” nonprofit organization that uses objective data to combat COVID-19 and prepare for other issues we’ll face as a community and planet. 

DDIL is already helping partners use data to pivot resources as they address such COVID-19 challenges as a significant drop in applications for federal financial aid by underserved, low-income students or helping the hospitality industry make customers feel safer using their services during a pandemic. The team is also using data to study home insecurity caused by the threat of housing evictions, and ways to predict future outbreaks, and plan for testing and vaccination sites based on wastewater testing.

“Crises create unique opportunities that can change the course of history,” said New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer. The Delaware Data Innovation Lab redirects thinking in both the private and public sectors for the long-term, said Meyer, and turns Delaware into a hub of data innovation and analytical thinking for the country and for the world.

“We’re going to put your work to use here in Delaware and learn from it to make better policy,” the County Executive told the DDIL labsters. “The way we’ll get out of COVID-19 is through innovation.”

Anne Clauss, who heads Strategy & Operations for DDIL, has already discovered that things happen faster here in Delaware than anywhere else in the world.

“There is no place like Delaware to test ideas,” said Clauss. “Delaware is where innovation gets real, and that’s why we’re here.”

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December 7, 2020 – 

Just hearing “AstraZeneca” summons visions of lab-coated scientists concocting various tinctures and chemicals in beakers. But the company – particularly its 570,000-square-foot facility in Newark – is also a manufacturing marvel. 

The facility, resting on 145 acres, first opened in 1971. Its primary function is end-to-end production. A large proportion of AstraZeneca’s products are manufactured, formulated, packed, warehoused, tested and distributed from this location, which boasts of its 1.4 billion patient interactions supporting 28 brands around the world. Upwards of 50 percent of the multinational pharmaceutical giant’s U.S. sales are distributed from the Newark facility. At present, the site is pumping out 550 million tablets per year. 

On top of operating a state-of-the-art plant, AstraZeneca has hired a diverse staff of 250 employees. Site leadership is 50 percent female with representation from six countries.

The plant is one of the most important sites in the company’s operation. AstraZeneca, with its global headquarters in Cambridge, England, produces products in major disease areas, including cancer,  cardiovascular, gastrointestinal,  infection, neuroscience,  respiratory, and inflammation. The company also has developed a vaccine for COVID-19.

Cutting Edge

Although the facility is almost half a century old, a concerted effort has been made to keep up with the times. The Newark site’s principal engineer, John Myers, said that in the last seven years, over $100 million has been invested in upgrading the plant.

“We’ve done a facility transformation geared at efficiency,” said Myers. “We consolidated our packaging halls, put in a central palletizer, added a new 35,000-square-foot formulation space and focused on serialization and aggregation so we can track an individual bottle to a carton to a case to a pallet. The palletizer is especially impressive – all the packaging lines send the finished product up an elevated spiral to another building where six big robot arms place them on pallets. Then 12 AGVs (automated guided vehicles) pick them up and either bring them to the docks or the warehouse.” 

Interestingly, the facility has had AGVs to ferry pallets around the plant since the 1980s. 

“They were really new technology back then, and I have heard that it kind of freaked people out,” Myers laughed. 

During the updates, these vehicles got a facelift, too. 

“They used to run along wires on the floor, but we recently changed the motors, and now they use triangulation and are guided by lasers,” said Myers. “Our work on automation has really brought the facility into best-in-class efficiency.”

Environmentally Conscious

Efficiency and production are one thing, but AstraZeneca wants to ensure their operation is a good steward of the environment as well. 

“Earlier this year, our CEO announced a really aggressive sustainability plan – we’re shooting to be carbon zero by 2025 and carbon negative across our entire supply chain by 2030,” said Myers. “It’s important for us to link sustainable manufacturing to the health of the environment because we’re in the healthcare business. If we can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, it fits well into our overall mission.”

To this end, Myers says AstraZeneca has been investing roughly $2 million per year in plant upgrades. The company also has installed a boiler heat recovery system and implemented purified water reuse and chilled water free cooling projects. 

“Over the past three years, we’ve brought in a lot of energy-efficient fixtures and we’ll have converted over to 100 percent LED lighting by the end of this year,” said Myers. “Soon we’re going to look into large solar power upgrades and a few more projects. Ultimately, we’re hoping to continue to decrease our greenhouse gas footprint, further reduce energy and water consumption and further reduce the waste we have going to the incinerator or landfill.”

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November 9, 2020 – 

As Delaware continues to distinguish itself as a fintech capital and an internationally respected hub for law firms that specialize in business law, banks and other service providers are creating innovative products in hopes of driving greater efficiency.

M&T Bank in August introduced Nota, which helps smaller law practices (up to five partners) and solo attorneys manage their trust accounts without having to hire additional back-office staffing to reconcile and manually balance their books against their client ledgers and their bank statement.  This service reduces the risk of commingling funds, over-drafting trust accounts, or failing to comply with state requirements.

“We’ve been offering a 15-minute demo to our smaller law-firm customers and getting feedback,” said Barney Hughes, regional manager for business banking in Delaware.  “The State of Delaware has a robust legal community, with a lot of very talented attorneys who may have been with larger firms and spun off. They don’t have the back office to manage these accounts. Nota can fill that gap and provide the same kind of customer experience, allowing the attorney to spend a lot more time practicing law and a lot less time on the intense record keeping required to manage trust accounts.” 

M&T Bank Initiative Focuses on Banking for Attorneys

Nota President Paul Garibian said Nota is the first success story from an M&T initiative to pioneer new ways of innovating business concepts with a customer-centric focus, initially targeting attorneys who work in family law, personal injury, real estate, and immigration.  

“We’re not focused on monetizing this product,” Garibian said “We want our law-firm clients to spend less time stressing about trust accounting compliance and give them peace of mind. Lawyers don’t want to be accountants; they want an easy-to-use tool, and we identified a unique, specific problem and built it on a platform that allows us to make more frequent updates.

As an example, feedback from Nota users is leading the startup to integrate it with QuickBooks (launching in October) and offer the ability to print checks beginning in November.

“We’ve taken a ‘test and learn’ approach that enables us to be agile and iterative and also ensure that our users get incremental value – much like compounding interest – through the frequent updates,” Garibian said.

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October 28, 2020 – 

Keeping a Lot of Balls – of Any Size in Range of Materials – in the Air and Elsewhere Differentiates Seaford’s Craig Technologies

Don Hollenbeck lives in a world where he has to keep a lot of balls in the air.

Tens of billions of them.

Hollenbeck is president of Craig Technologies in Seaford, which primarily manufactures precision ground plastic balls for bearings and valves. Hollenbeck says that his company’s ability to produce any size ball in any material within special tolerances is what differentiates it from three other U.S. competitors and many more in China, India, Indonesia and Thailand. These countries supply the world with high-volume commodity balls.

Basically, the company produces balls for industries – and the list is long – where there’s fluid or a bearing involved, including everyday appliances like automatic drip coffee makers and products that can be purchased in grocery stores using non-aerosol spray pumps that dispense cleaning solutions, fragrances and food products,  Hollenbeck says.

His father, Craig, is recognized as a pioneer in the business for moving production in the 1960s from metal balls to plastic, which were cheaper to produce and offered better chemical resistance. Hollenbeck describes Craig Technologies as “the mother ship” that has bought, sold and absorbed a number of companies over the last 50 years, including Salisbury, Maryland-based Manufacturing Support Industries (MSI) in 2017.

“We had found it difficult to bid on military projects,” says Hollenbeck. “One way to get into that business was to acquire MSI, which manufactures high-precision weaponry components for the military. That purchase opened the door for us to bid on parts that MSI would not be able to manufacture. We’ve brought some of that manufacturing into Seaford, where our machine shop is a sub-contractor for MSI-making gun components.”

Hollenbeck says the company never planned to “acquire these other companies, but there were opportunities that came along – suppliers with financial difficulties that we couldn’t afford to lose and partners and customers that were struggling. We basically decided that we wanted to build and maintain everything internally and focus on making smart business decisions.”

Sometimes those business decisions have included selling some or all of the operations to others. For example, it sold Flow Smart, a producer of high-purity polymer components that it bought in 2007 and moved to Delaware from New Jersey to Watson Marlow Fluid Technology in 2015.

Delaware Fuels Craig Technologies’ Growth

None of this would be possible without state, county and local support, Hollenbeck readily concedes, noting the growth exploded after the company made the decision in 1998 to leave its Pennsylvania facility. It purchased a 25,000-square-foot industrial facility in Seaford Industrial Park (providing employee housing for free for the first year after moving) and expanded its ball-grinding capacity and re-entered high-volume ball manufacturing for the aforementioned automotive and non-aerosol spray pump industries.

“Delaware has been an extremely business-friendly state for us,” Hollenbeck says. “The financial support we’ve received from the State of Delaware, Sussex County and the City of Seaford is why we’re the size company we are and why we’ve been able to buy companies, facilities and equipment.”

Hollenbeck says the company is expanding by upgrading with automation, adding a $500,000 Fanuc 5 axis Robodrill CNC milling machine with a 60-pallet magazine that gives it the ability to increase output with a machine that can run for days on end unattended. Hollenbeck quickly adds that the new machine acts as a third shift rather than replacing employees since it’s difficult to find the skilled labor he needs who want to work overnight.

The problem for the U.S. industry is that it taught China how to make balls, and that nation became dominant as buyers chose to go offshore for cost. This forced Craig Technologies to move to specialty ball manufacturing to preserve a business that generates more than $6 million in annual sales and employs 65 people in Delaware. Today, the focus at Craig Technologies is on “high-performance applications” where metal balls can be replaced with plastic.

“Each of our three competitors in the United States have been around for more than 50 years,” Hollenbeck says. “There are really no newcomers because the business is so capital intensive.”

So just how many balls does the company produce to customer specifications each year? After laughing and making a bit of calculation, Hollenbeck puts the number at about 25 billion.

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