West Michigan entrepreneurs and business owners will be honored during the Lakeshore Innovator of the Year award ceremony from 5-7 p.m. on July 25 at Grand Valley’s Muskegon Innovation Hub.
This year’s finalists comprise a cross section of industries from advanced technologies like AI to outdoor recreation and entertainment to nonprofit organizations and the culinary arts. For more information, visit the Muskegon Innovation Hub’s home page .
This year’s finalists are:
When asked about his company, Pribusin , Gerstweiler said that while his products may go unnoticed by the general public, they are vital to the functioning of complex wastewater management systems.
“We manufacture industrial control equipment,” Gerstweiler said. “It's probably not something that you'll ever see, but the product that they're used in is something that everybody uses every day.”
A recent innovation by Gerstweiler and his company could have wider applications beyond wastewater systems, he said. Pribusin has developed a cellular-based telemetry system that addresses an issue for his clients. Similar industry systems are cloud-based, but Pribusin’s system, Gerstweiler said, allows for a two-way control option.
“Especially after a storm, all of a sudden the power is out and phone lines can come down, and the plants lose control of their water towers or the pump stations,” he said. “Our innovation allows these companies and utilities to deploy more monitoring and controls more easily.”
Pribusin’s innovations extend beyond the technological. Gerstweiler is enthusiastic about encouraging and educating the next generation of engineers, welcoming high school students to intern with his company.
“One of the things that again I'm very passionate about is the robotics program and passing on knowledge to our younger generation,” he said. “I actually have one of the robotic students work with me on this project. He does a lot of the programming for me.
“I want to get them involved in that as much as possible and be able to carry that on because a lot of times that's not taught in schools.”
As founder and owner of Westwood AI , Dakoyta Greenman is on the cutting edge of a technology that’s rapidly progressing by the day. For his company, innovation incorporates a holistic approach, he said.
“We have a relatively small team at Westwood AI,” Greenman said. “Innovation is foundational, not just in the autonomy of the robots, but autonomy with the personnel. They have to have ownership, and that ownership is a risk-and-reward type of relationship. That foundation is how you capture that innovative spirit.”
Westwood AI provides a variety of services — vendor procurement, solution architecture, project/program management, big data consultation and AI consultation. His client base stretches across government, academic and private industry.
“We started with assisting the federal government and some of our military partners in understanding how technical applications work,” Greenman said. “We've progressed that into more of a localized, community-focused application, especially around autonomous drones and UAS systems.”
As the technology advances, Greenman sees the opportunity to mentor the next generation of data engineers and computer scientists as the primary sponsor for Grandville High School’s robotics team.
“Innovation is normally something that's mandated or projected or something that they have to capture in a bottle and say, ‘You know, you have to innovate or you have to try to put structure to it,’” Greenman said. “In my experience, the only successful innovation has been when it's truly embedded and foundational with the organizational culture.”
For caterer Corine Rose, innovation encompasses nearly every aspect of her business, Corine’s Cakes and Catering .
Her customizable menus accommodate diverse dietary needs and build inclusivity among her customer base. Rose promotes sustainability on two fronts with her zero-waste kitchen and her steadfast support of local food sources, providing a sustainable network for her business, her customers and her suppliers.
For Rose though, she personally sees her innovation beginning with her service to her community. She said she views her business as a welcoming spot for everyone.
At Thanksgiving, Corine’s made more than 600 meals for the community members in need. This summer, she said she’s planning another block party to celebrate her neighborhood and its residents.
“That’s just something to keep the whole community together because, you know, food keeps everybody together,” Rose said.
Rose’s recipes and culinary techniques she learned from her grandmother are at the heart of her business. A Muskgeon native, Rose said she has seen what her grandmother’s food has done for her neighbors and community.
“Everybody likes a home-cooked meal, it’s very meaningful,” Rose said. “I have customers that say if I didn't know you were making home-cooked food, I would have been here a long time ago, but I didn't know. Now that they know, I have them every day coming in to eat, they eat with me five or six days a week.”
Based in Muskegon Heights, Rose said that she’d like to see the same community-building that’s occurring in downtown Muskegon begin to ripple through her neighborhood with Corine’s Cakes and Catering as the epicenter.
“Without innovation, you can't keep everybody together, and you need them in your restaurant to make it successful, and it’s up to you to help bring it all together,” Rose said.
When your business revolves around winter sports in Michigan, it’s imperative to diversify your business during the off-season or during a mild winter. Jim Rudicil, executive director at the Muskegon Luge Adventure Sports Park , said he knows all too well how important innovation is to a venture like his.
“This is our 40th season coming up this winter, so we knew that for us to survive and to pave a way into the future that we really needed a year-round presence and year-round recreation,” Rudicil said.
The innovation didn’t stop with the park’s diversification of activities. It was equally important to provide accessibility to the site, Rudicil said.
“We’ve worked really hard since 2009 to bring accessibility to our facility,” Rudicil said. “That fostered a ton of innovation to work around all of those things when we think about zip lines, rock climbing walls and luge tracks.
“Nobody else has done this, at least in our region. We brought in a lot of innovators from around the country and pulled some really amazing things together out there.”
It’s hard to escape the park’s presence across West Michigan and the state. During the winter months, billboards pop up along highways across the region. Rudicil said the park’s strongest feature is its idyllic setting.
“We’re built into one of the most amazing state parks in the state of Michigan with 400 acres and two miles of Lake Michigan shoreline,” Rudicil said. “We're very lucky to have had the visionaries in 1984 that came forward and put this facility in with the support of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
“So when you couple all of those things together, the park became something very magical.”
Faced with the challenges of COVID-19, Kaja Thornton’s innovative way of thinking produced a community hub for Muskegon Heights.
As owner of Overcoming Barriers, an adult foster care community that promotes its residents’ independence, Thornton converted a former cafe in her neighborhood for office space. Then, the pandemic broke out, and forced her into an innovative solution to keep it afloat, she said.
“During COVID, everybody was working from home,” Thornton said. “So we had all of these beautiful booths and spaces and said, ‘Hey, come and work with us during the day.’ Now, it's the Us Cafe , a place for us in the middle of Muskegon Heights.”
The space is more than a coffee shop. Customers as well as local business and community leaders found a central location to congregate, network and exchange ideas.
“AgeWell Services, the Boys and Girls Club, the Community Foundation, Goodwill, the GVSU Innovation Hub, they started coming in and just brainstorming and coming up with ideas for our city,” Thornton said. “It just turned into a hub space and innovative program as a whole for our city.”
That’s just one venture for Thornton. During her time as a student at Savannah State University in Savannah, Georgia, she fell in love with the region’s lowcountry cuisine.
Her Cajun Cuisine was a terrific success too, now helping to fund Overcoming Barriers’ operations. Cajun Cuisine also offers a community food bank to help those struggling with food insecurity.
“It’s so rewarding,” Thornton said. “Getting nominated for Innovator of the Year award and people telling you, ‘This helped me here, or I was at your cafe and I met with a person and that connection helped me start my business, or help me help somebody in a community.’
“That's what it's all about, just being that beacon of light on the corner of Barney Avenue and Maffett Street to help Muskegon Heights and Muskegon as a whole.”
Sign up and receive the latest Grand Valley headlines delivered to your email inbox each morning.
