# Jerry Balentine, President of NYIT | Rebranding Long Island as Silicon Island

By: Justin Abrams
Published: 2026-08-14

Ask a plumber if he needs AI and he will tell you he puts pipes together.

Now imagine software that reads his schedule, tells him what to load in the truck before he leaves, predicts what each job will need, and reorders the day so the quick ones clear early. Same guy. Same pipes. Completely different business.

In this episode of Forward to Extraordinary, Justin Abrams,  ⁨@cuzzinjustin⁩ , sits down with Dr. Jerry Balentine, fifth president of New York Institute of Technology,  ⁨@nyitview⁩ . Born in Germany, trained in emergency medicine in the South Bronx, and the guy who said yes when two bosses said no to opening an urgent care center on Rikers Island. Three industries later, he runs a university.

This one is for Long Island, and for anybody who thinks innovation is something that happens somewhere else.

We get into:

- Why AI is an opportunity for Long Island, not a disruptor
- A minor in AI open to nursing, accounting, and architecture students
- Students who are years ahead of their professors and their president
- The 39 student startups on campus and the building New York Tech gave them
- Why the talent Long Island breeds keeps leaving, and what would make it stay
- Built with AI versus uses AI, and why Main Street is closer to this than it thinks
- If you have never failed on a project, you have not done enough projects
- Three careers, one discovery: the problems are always the same

Learn more about New York Tech: https://www.nyit.edu
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jerry.balentine/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerry-balentine-41139082/
New York Tech website:
Office of the President: https://www.nyit.edu/about/leadership/president/
Full bio page: https://www.nyit.edu/bio/president/

Forward to Extraordinary is part of the Strictly From Nowhere podcast experiment. New episodes weekly.

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