James Held is the Manager of the Research and Analyses Program of the Center for International Business Acceleration. He joined CIBA after retiring from Empire State Development Corporation where he was the Research Director for this lead economic development agency for New York State. He specialized in regional economic analysis and industry cluster research and has also done work in program evaluation and policy development in the technology, transportation and workforce fields. Jim’s research on industry clusters has been published in Economic Development Quarterly and other journals. He is a past Board Chair of the Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER). He earned his Ph.D. in Managerial Economics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.