Alumnus Helps Innovators Grow and Scale Products That Improve Personal Mobility

When William Chernicoff, PhD, EMBA ’21, started his career in the environment and sustainability space, he never thought he’d be where he is today, running the research program at the Toyota Mobility Foundation. Originally, he was meant to be in the role for only a few years to stand up and run the program, but he said his tenure is open-ended at this point.

“We keep finding new things to solve here, so as long as I can keep delivering value, I’ll do that.”

The organization’s mission is to enable more people to go more places. “We frame our work to empower individuals through what we call “active mobility,” which encompasses rehabilitative, assisted and adaptive technology. Those are the things that help individuals have agency in their lives That means independence, to be able to move when and how they want,” said Chernicoff. “The best autonomous vehicle in the world won’t help someone if a person can’t get to that vehicle, or when they get dropped off where they’re going, they can’t move around.” 

Chernicoff has been instrumental in working with the organization’s Mobility Unlimited Hub, a Toronto based collaboration between MaRS Discovery District and the Toyota Mobility Foundation. The hub created and anchored an ecosystem that helps startups move from pre-growth stage innovation to market scale. “We just started our second cohort. We will have 10 more startups. So, we have six in the first cohort and 10 in the second,” Chernicoff said. “We are going to look to extend, and if the board approves, I’ll be able to do a third cohort of 10 startups.” The success of the hub is featured in a newly released BBC series, “The Age of Automation”. Chernicoff said the BBC did a great job highlighting the mission and why the work is so important.

With a background in systems engineering and materials engineering, Chernicoff found himself in the Washington, D.C., area working at the U.S. Department of Transportation earlier in his career. He was moving into the policy space when Toyota was looking for someone with his background. “They were trying to create a more technically oriented policy analysis group separate from government affairs,” he said. “That’s what brought me to Toyota.”

He finished his PhD during his early days with Toyota but had already started thinking about building up the business acumen side.  

“I’ve never had any formal finance or accounting training. I had responsibility for assessing and supporting market transformation, which inherently depended on sustainable business cases.  Then later, part of my responsibility was to conduct intrapreneurship and at the same time, eight years ago, we started doing work with startups in the mobility space and we’re trying to select them,” said Chernicoff. “I felt I really needed to understand the business side of this a little bit more. That was kind of the final push.” He chose Smith’s EMBA program to further his knowledge. Through his peers in the cohort, Chernicoff said the “lived experiences” of the other students enhanced what was also taught in the classroom.

“Maryland has a strong reputation; you’ve got a doctoral program at Smith. And you look at the pedigree of the faculty; they are great faculty.” Chernicoff continues to engage with Smith, bringing action learning projects to students.

“Through the two different semesters and the two different courses, I got a lot of really, really critical evaluation and perspective and input [from the students],” he said. “It got me very far along in the process and the work was done in a comprehensive and professional way, particularly the decision framework that the students developed. It was referenced and it was documented. It allowed me to compare and contrast and filter down to a narrow subset of locations that allowed me to then have effective conversations internally about the decision process on where we should go for our next hub.” 

Teaching and building capacity in others are forms of deep engagement that he has been proud to do throughout his career. “Everyone learns and everyone gains something from it. Then there is this benefit of training and building a stronger workforce, which collectively has a lot of indirect benefits for companies and society.”

Chernicoff finds he continues to learn in the many ways he engages with Smith. “I love going back and attending events when I can, because people are sharing information and knowledge. You’ve got to constantly be challenging yourself.”

From training the next generation of professionals to bringing life-changing assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative personal mobility technology to those who need it, Chernicoff has much to be proud of. “If I look back in say 10 years from now, I’m confident that the work we’ve done in Toronto will leave a very powerful legacy of destigmatizing this space. Helping the number of people that will be assisted by the technologies that these products and startups are going to bring to market, that matters,” he said. “We stand to help hundreds of thousands if not millions of people and over time that will of course expand. If I have contributed to that and I’ve made a difference by doing something that otherwise wouldn’t have happened, that has had a large amplifying effect, I’ll be proud of that.”