Meet our team

Jennifer Hankins serves as managing director of Tulsa Innovation Labs (TIL), a tech-led economic development organization responsible for catalyzing the Tulsa region’s leadership in advanced industries. TIL was pioneered by the George Kaiser Family Foundation and believes that by building a world-class tech hub in America’s heartland, opportunity is unlocked for all.

Jennifer joined the founding TIL team in January 2020 and brings more than 10 years of direct economic development experience to the team. Working to convene myriad stakeholders across multiple industries, she is responsible for setting TIL’s strategic direction, organizational mission, and most importantly, is responsible for leading a dynamic and high-performing team and the broad portfolio of work currently underway. Most recently, Jennifer successfully led a regional coalition to secure a $38.2 million investment from EDA’s Build Back Better Regional Challenge for the Tulsa Regional Advanced Mobility (TRAM) Cluster and also an EDA Tech Hubs Designation for the Tulsa Hub for Equitable and Trustworthy Autonomy (THETA).  

She is a native of Kansas City, Missouri and holds a Bachelor of Political Science degree from Oklahoma State University.

Prior to joining Tulsa Innovation Labs, Jennifer served in the economic development division of the Tulsa Regional Chamber as vice president of Entrepreneurship and Small Business where she was responsible for working with area partners to help grow the regional entrepreneurial-ecosystem and also managing the Chamber’s business incubator for high-growth startups. Jennifer also served as manager of business retention and expansion on the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce’s Economic Development team. Prior to her time in Oklahoma, Jennifer worked in the Kansas City region for the Wyandotte Economic Development Council as investor relations coordinator and for Catholic Charities of Kansas City-St. Joseph as development manager.  

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John has more than 30 years of experience as an organization builder and entrepreneur.  Before joining Tulsa Innovation Labs, he helped create and served as the managing entrepreneur of NEXT Studios, one of America’s first Benefit (B) Corporation innovation studios.  He was founder and CEO of ClearObject, the fastest-growing technology company in Indiana for five years in a row, which successfully exited to private equity in 2019.  Prior to that, John served as CEO of Chicago-based startup CloudOne, and at IBM he led technical sales for their software development tools product line.

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A graduate of Lawrence North High School in Indianapolis, John studied business management and computer science before receiving degrees in software development and computer information technology from Purdue University at West Lafayette, where he was also the student body vice president and treasurer.  John was named Purdue’s Distinguished Technology Alumnus in 2007 and Lawrence North’s Distinguished Alumnus in 2017.

MaryBeth is an agent of change. With more than 25 years of experience as a strategy and operations executive, MaryBeth has been integral to business initiatives that have resulted in significant revenue increases and operational efficiencies in both for-profit and non-profit environments. She has led multimillion dollar portfolios, utilizing her business expertise to launch new business startups in global environments, allowing her an amazing opportunity to travel the world. Before joining Tulsa Innovation Labs, MaryBeth worked as director of special projects for inTulsa, a non-profit dedicated to creating access to careers for Tulsans. MaryBeth holds a master’s degree of business administration from The University of Tulsa.