With the start of the 2025 General Assembly session, the CBIA BizCast team sat down with CBIA vice president of public policy Chris Davis to discuss the session and CBIA’s ReimagineCT policy solutions.
Supported by a bipartisan group of 73 lawmakers and a growing coalition of businesses, the policy solutions are designed to drive economic growth, address the high costs of living and running a business, expand career pathways, and foster innovation.
"If legislators were able to really sit back and think about, 'Is this making Connecticut more affordable, and is it making easier to employ people here in Connecticut,' I think you'll see a lot of good legislation get passed," Davis said.
CBIA developed the solutions in collaboration with residents and business leaders from across the state.
“What’s really impressed me is the level of engagement that our business community has, especially around public policy issues,” Davis said. 
“These are items that they have said to us, ‘If we can implement these changes, we can really start moving the needle here in Connecticut to grow our economy and improve our workforce.’”
Davis said the ReimagineCT policy solutions are a way to build coalitions around critical issues to the business community.
“It's a way for us to really have those conversations across party lines about these real solutions that will really grow our economy and our workforce," Davis said.
"Because at the end of the day, that's not a partisan issue.
“Trying to get your constituents more access to jobs and trying to help those businesses within their communities, is something that transcends party.”
While Davis and the CBIA’s policy team will be advocating for these solutions at the State Capitol, he said CBIA members and the business community also play an important role. 
“One of the key things that we do on our public policy team is getting out and meeting with members,” he said. 
“We oftentimes will bring a legislator with us and have them have the opportunity to see firsthand exactly how that business operates here in Connecticut. 
“Hearing directly from your own constituent business can play such a huge role in your decision making process as a legislator.”
Related Links:
ReimagineCT: https://www.cbia.com/news/media-center/reimaginect-cbia-2025-policy-solutions-2
https://www.cbia.com/resources/issues-policies/reimaginect-general-assembly-pledges
CBIA Website: https://www.cbia.com/ 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cbia/

'Moving the Needle' to Reimagine Connecticut

The Lee Company president and CEO Marietta Lee never saw herself leading the business her grandfather started 77 years ago. 

Today, the Westbrook-based manufacturer employs 1,200 people making miniature hydraulic components for the aerospace, medical, and automotive industries. 

“We are a family business,” Lee told the CBIA BizCast. 

“We’ve always treated our employees as our family and we’ve benefited from a lot of loyalty from our employees over the years.”

But Lee, who was elected CBIA board chair in December 2024, started her career journey not just outside the family business, but far from the manufacturing floor. 

“It really wasn’t my dream to work there at all,” she said. “I went off to school and became a lawyer.”

“I worked in TV news for a long time, that was what I wanted to do.”

After several years working as an investigative journalist and having children, Lee moved back to Connecticut to be closer to family. 

“My dad came to me and said, ‘Have you ever thought about working at the company?’” she explained. 

After a lot of “soul searching” she decided to join the family business.

Lee worked her way up, including earning a master’s degree in engineering management. 

“I worked in a lot of different facets of the company on my way to where I am now, which has been really invaluable,” she said. 

Lee became CEO of the company in 2023, but she points to the COVID-19 pandemic as a turning point in her career. 

Lee said she not only worried about her workers’ safety, but about getting groceries for her family as so many stores were impacted.

“Somebody said, ‘How are you doing?’ And I just lost it,” she said. 

“I was like, ‘I am not good. I go home, I cry.’ I just totally let down my guard. 

“And the woman looked at me, and she was like ‘me too.’ And we had the best conversation.”

Lee she’d previously emulated the styles of those that came before her, which she perceived as stoic and strong. 

“It sort of dawned on me that I need to be authentic. I need to be me.” she said.

“I don’t have to be somebody else’s leader or lead the way somebody else does. I can be myself. It was refreshing.”

Lee said that by being authentic and vulnerable, she works to empower the people that work for her. 

“I think people respond to it. And I make better decisions as a result,” she said.

Lee acknowledged that being a woman in manufacturing isn’t easy. 

“I am usually the only woman at the table, and that’s kind of a lonely place,” she said.

She said that when she joined The Lee Company, there were a lot of women, including young mothers.

But there were not a lot of women in middle and upper management—something that has changed during her tenure. 

Lee also started “The Ladies of Lee,” an informal group that gets together every few months to talk about issues unique to being a woman in the workforce. 

“It’s always going to be tough, but to know that you have a little bit of a support system at work, I think is really great,” she said. 

Lee’s term as board chair comes at an historic time for CBIA and a pivotal moment for the state’s economy. 

“For the first time ever, we have more women than men on the board, which is really great,” she said.

Lee said the diversity of the board of directors is critical, not just when it comes to gender, but also the size of the companies and the different industries represented. 

“Connecticut, I think, is in a really good place right now, and we have a great opportunity to make Connecticut even better for our business community,” she said. 

“I think it’s very important that we work hard to make Connecticut an affordable state for both potential employees and for businesses.”

Related Links:
The Lee Company
Website: https://www.theleeco.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-lee-company/
Marietta Lee on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marietta-lee-17729410a/

CBIA
Website: https://www.cbia.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cbia/

Leading with Authenticity

Since the day it launched as Rebel Interactive in 2013, Rebellion Group has strived to do things differently. 

“I saw an opportunity to build an agency that was focused around disruption,” Rebellion Group CEO and owner Bryn Tindall told the CBIA BizCast. 

Tindall and senior vice president of client services Sam Barrett joined the BizCast to highlight the company’s evolution and the growth of its Shaping CT’s Future event series. 

The agency works with businesses for services including marketing, advertising, brand awareness, video production, customer engagement, and website development. 

“If you’re going to do great things in life, then you have to believe you have it in you to do it,” Tindall said. 

“And we were associating the word rebel with that inner essence, that inner belief that you could do amazing things.”

The rebel spirit extends not only to the name of the company and the workforce—team members are known as rebels—but also to the physical space.

The company themed every room in their Cheshire office after a well known rebel from history or pop culture. 

“It’s an environment that is fun to work in. You feel good when you’re in a good place,” said Barrett, who joined the company in 2023 just before they rebranded as Rebellion Group. 

Tindall said that rebrand was the next evolution of the company.

“There’s a maturation that occurred,” he said. “So the version of today is a much more grown up version of what started 13 years ago.”

“I feel like our aesthetic, the way we talk about ourselves, there’s that sense of depth and nuance,” Barrett added. 

“I think that lends itself to us being in conversations that potentially we weren’t in years ago.”

Some of those conversations are happening in the form of Rebellion’s Shaping CT’s Future. 

The event series brings together stakeholders and thought leaders to dive into different important topics in the state.

“We were in a perfect position to start to do something different and meaningful, to affect people’s lives, to benefit them,” Tindall said. 

“We have these organizations pitching in, coming in, willing to lend their thoughts, their time, their expertise, and I think it starts to become a coalition,” Barrett added.

In its first year, the series grew from about 90 people to bring in hundreds of people to Rebellion’s event space. 

“I don’t think that we produce conferences,” Barrett said. “I like to say that we produce experiences.”

“And so we want people to network. We want them to have a drink. We want to have intelligent conversation.”

Tindall and Barrett said they are focusing on building on the momentum from their events to develop broader solutions.

“There has to be next. We have to be able to have a path forward from here,” Tindall said.

The second year of Shaping CT’s Future begins with a deep dive into the future of AI and cybersecurity.

“We’re going to start generating themes, conduct in-depth analysis, and ultimately, recommendations, and that is a tangible product from the event,” Barret said. 

Rebellion is partnering with GreatBlue Research to capture data from the event. 

They also partnered with Fox 61 to live stream the event and so a broader audience can take part. 

“If we can get people in the room that can help inform what’s going on with important topics that are influencing business decisions, then our clients can be more successful,” Barrett added.

“Ultimately, if Connecticut’s more successful then so are we.”

Related Links:
Rebellion Group
Website: https://rebelliongroup.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rebelliongroup/
Bryn Tindall on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryntindall/
Sam Barrett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrettsamuel/

CBIA
Website: https://www.cbia.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cbia/

Shaping Connecticut’s Future

Dr. Albert Green has spent his career at the intersection of technology and economic development. 

“I often refer to myself as bilingual, because I kind of speak both languages fluently,” he told the CBIA BizCast. 

QuantumCT just announced Green as its new CEO.

The Connecticut public-private partnership is working to drive the adoption of quantum computing technologies and position Connecticut as a hub for research, technology development, and jobs.

The University of Connecticut and Yale University-led partnership is competing for up to $160 million in funding as part of a National Science Foundation competition.

“When I first learned about QuantumCT and what Connecticut was doing in this space, it just fit exactly what I'd done my entire career,” Green said.

That career includes a PhD in physics from Stanford, more than 20 patents, and leading several technology companies.

Green said it’s an exciting time to be part of the quantum ecosystem in part because of the building excitement surrounding the technology.

“If you look at popular culture, you see all these movies like Quantumania and stuff,” he said. “Leveraging that excitement is kind of cool.”

He compared the technology to what we’re seeing with the growth of artificial intelligence. 

““I'm a firm believer that quantum technologies and quantum computing is where AI was 10 years ago,” Green said. 

“The regions that really drove that have to turn away people. And the idea is for us to do the same thing with quantum technologies.”

With QuantumCT, Green said Connecticut is perfectly positioned to build an ecosystem that will make the region the Silicon Valley of the quantum economy. 

“It's higher ed, it's workforce, and it's our business community,” said Green.

“What we're trying to do is to create essentially a mechanism that allows these organizations to effectively collaborate in this area that we see is coming, and that's really the core mission of QuantumCT.”

Green said it was that workforce, higher education system, and culture of collaboration that attracted him to the role. 

“I've been a part of many different ecosystems,” he said. 

“The ability for those three elements to work together, I saw here in Connecticut—mainly the ability of the large R1 research institutions to work with the state government, and also the workforce to really bring these new innovations to the marketplace—was exciting.”

With QuantumCT, Green said he hopes to capitalize on that collaboration and engage with the business community to put a framework in place that will grow Connecticut’s quantum economy. 

He said some of Connecticut’s biggest industries like defense, advanced manufacturing, and finance give the state a leg up because they’ve been early adopters of new technology.

“Regions that tend to thrive, there is an ecosystem around large anchor corporations,” Green said.
 
“What's really, really important is that the large institutions, the large anchor organizations and companies, view and recognize the importance of those smaller new [companies]. 

“They recognize that importance by being early adopters, by being helpful and in partnering with them for government grants, engaging with them.”

Green said that while there’s a lot of work to do, he’s excited about what QuantumCT means for the future of Connecticut’s economy and workforce.

“Ultimately,” he said, “we win when the seven year old says, ‘Oh, wow, I want to work in something associated with quantum,’ when that's no longer a mystery.”

“The idea here is that QuantumCT really is about building that ecosystem that accomplishes that goal.”

Related Links:
QuantumCT
Website: https://quantumct.org/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/quantumct/
Dr. Albert Green LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albert-m-green/

CBIA
Website: https://www.cbia.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cbia/

Driving Economic Innovation

A podcast for the business-minded in Connecticut. Interviews consist of business and community leaders who are shaping the future of Connecticut’s economy. The CBIA BizCast provides new content every other week, introduces members of the business community, and tells stories about how businesses are innovating and growing in Connecticut!

BizCast provides new content every other week, introduces members of CBIA staff, and tells stories about how businesses are innovating and growing in Connecticut!

'Moving the Needle' to Reimagine Connecticut

CBIA BizCast

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