Neela Mollgaard is a senior leader at Minnesota’s state agency of Employment and Economic Development. She joined the agency in late 2019 to create and deploy Launch Minnesota, a statewide initiative to grow the states innovation ecosystem. During her leadership, the program successfully deployed over 6 million dollars to startups and created a network to connect and coordinate the startup ecosystem across the state.

She was recently appointed as the Executive Director of the new Office of Small Business Development, supporting startups, small businesses, and organizations across the state that support them. Her career has involved bringing people together to create change. She has been a leader and facilitator of organization and community innovation. She has experience working in corporate, government and nonprofit sectors.