Michelle Simms has not only returned to the Genesis Centre. She is now running the St. John’s startup incubator.

Simms had worked at the Genesis Centre on the Memorial University campus for 14 years, most recently as Vice-President of Programs and Operations. In June, she left to take a position with the Business Development Bank of Canada.

But she soon learned that Genesis CEO Greg Hood had agreed to take a job back in his native Toronto. She was approached and accepted the position of President and CEO of the Genesis Centre. After seven weeks with BDC, she rejoined Genesis last week.

“Being able to come back to the Genesis Centre in this role was a really exciting opportunity to me and one that I couldn’t pass up,” she said in an interview Tuesday. “Being able to put my mark on the Centre would be great, and we have a really incredible team here.”

The appointment of the new CEO is the latest in a wave of changes at the Genesis Centre, which opened in 1993 as an agency to commercialize intellectual property at Memorial. It has evolved into an incubator that offers office space and programming to St. John’s startups. Of the 11 tenants in its offices now, none have grown out of IP developed at the university.

In 2014, David King, who had been with the Genesis organization since its opening, left to take up a teaching position in Qatar. He was replaced by Hood, who Simms said has now found a position in Toronto that allows him to be with his family.

Meanwhile, the Genesis Centre plans to leave its elegant offices in Memorial's Bruneau Centre for Research and Innovation in 2017 for the university’s new development at the Battery, on the side of Signal Hill.

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Simms is slotting back into a team that is gelling together at the Genesis Centre. Angelo Casanas, Manager of Startups and Partnerships, joined the organization from the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto last year.  And Dana Parsons, the CEO of St. John’s Brownie Points, came on board this year as the Centre’s Venture Lead.

Since rejoining, Simms has already made a few changes. She recently toured incubator spaces in Silicon Valley and realized they feature more open spaces than Genesis. So she has tried to create more collaborative spaces in the existing facility. This will be a major push in the Battery complex, which she hopes will house as many as 20 companies of different sizes.

In the long-term, Simms hopes to enhance the Genesis Centre’s partnerships. The Centre is one of several Atlantic Canadian organizations that recently partnered with the MaRS Market Intelligence Services. Simms wants to work with more organizations across Canada and the U.S. Similarly, Simms hopes to continue to work with groups in Newfoundland and Labrador that are dedicated to building the startup community.

“The Genesis Centre has in my opinion has always been a strong pillar of the technology sector in Newfoundland and Labrador, and we have always worked closely with our partners,” she said. “I envision that continuing.”