Arrowhead Center at New Mexico State University has named Brooke Montgomery as the director of its Studio G program, which serves 18 campuses throughout New Mexico and a site at University of Texas at El Paso.
Studio G is a student business accelerator. Montgomery will also serve as the director of the American Indian Business Enterprise Center, a business accelerator for Native American-owned businesses in New Mexico.
Montgomery holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology with a minor in political science from the University of California, Irvine, and a master’s degree in education from NMSU with post-graduate work in multivariate research procedures and analyses; advanced measurement and statistics; and educational leadership and evaluation.
Montgomery’s first exposure to Studio G was as a client. She took a year off of teaching public school math to take classes in biology, genetics and biotechnology at NMSU. In 2014, a family member went into the hospital with pneumonia.
“He was put on a high flow therapy oxygen machine, which is a device often used to prevent placing a person on a ventilator,” Montgomery said. “I saw that the machine was causing condensation in the circuit, or oxygen tube and cannula, system and was causing water to flush up his nose at a high-pressure rate.”
With concerns about safety, Montgomery believed that by placing a filter within the system the excess water would be removed. With that idea, she went to Arrowhead Center’s Studio G program to get help. Studio G staff connected her with patent attorneys and grants that helped her with prior art searches for possible previous patents, CAD modeling, fabricating and patenting the medical device. Staff also provided guidance on how to start a business.
In 2020, Montgomery patented her second medical device. From the starting moment in the hospital through her training at Studio G, Montgomery became the founder and CEO of Pivotal Biotech, LLC.
In January 2019, Montgomery was hired as deputy director of Studio G, adding her expertise as an educator, startup entrepreneur and inventor. Now as director, Montgomery hopes to break down physical distances for the purpose of strengthening networking among Studio G’s student entrepreneurs statewide.
“What is often the case of other locations that have condensed entrepreneurial ecosystems, is entrepreneurs are more easily able to share their ideas and partner with other businesses,” she said. “Now that we have student entrepreneurs across that state and at UTEP, my focus is to foster the communications and networking between our student entrepreneurs and businesses.”
Montgomery is also focused on the enhancement of experiential co-curricular learning modules.
“Students gain a great deal from getting out of the classroom and into industries, by networking with professionals and talking to customers,” Montgomery said.
These learning platforms will foster those experiences, both at Studio G and within courses taught across Studio G site campuses. Studio G also has a wealth of advisers from the community.
“While Studio G has been recognized internationally for the strength of its existing network of advisers, we believe there is further opportunity to enhance this network by expanding industry expertise,” she said.
For more information about Studio G and Arrowhead Innovation Network, contact Montgomery at mbrooke@nmsu.edu or 575-646-1859. For more information, visit the Studio G website at https://arrowheadcenter.nmsu.edu/program/studio-g/, and the American Indian Business Enterprise website at https://arrowheadcenter.nmsu.edu/program/aibe/.