John Chen
President and Co-Founder, Neighborhood Innovation Center
John is an engineer turned social entrepreneur, a process improvement consultant, and an accidental restaurateur. His healthcare management engineering and analytics background led to his technology startup in a cloud computing solution in 2005, still being used by some of today's largest healthcare systems. His fascination with architecture and how technology and design can change the world bring his SolutionWorks Investments, a residential real estate practice, into a mix-used micro developer in Dutchtown, one of the largest, most diverse neighborhoods in the City of St. Louis.
A first-generation immigrant, John and his wife Caya are devoting all their energy and time now to reinvigorating entrepreneurship, finding and iterating real estate solutions for neighborhood food, retails, and tech-driven small businesses support. John co-founded Downtown Dutchtown Business Association, is a co-founder of Urban Eats, and the new social impact startup Neighborhood Innovation Center (NICstl).
Experienced Founder with a demonstrated history of working in business development and strategy formation, the information technology and services delivery. A strong problem solver & strategic thinker with unique ability to connect invisible dots, identify patterns and insights. Deep professional experience in Social Enterprise, Lean Start-ups, Business Process Improvement, Data and Analytics.
All Sessions by John Chen
AI as Your Small Team’s Superpower: Doing More With What You Already Have
NCICWe never set out to 'do AI.' We set out to build clarity, team capacity, and repeatable processes—without the luxury of a big team or budget. That meant finding practical ways to train people faster, document what works, and align everyone around shared goals. So we started recording voice notes, narrating our processes, and asking ChatGPT to turn them into onboarding guides, checklists, and workflows. It’s not perfect—but it’s evolving with us. In this hands-on session, we’ll show exactly how we’ve trained our staff, onboarded volunteers, and supported new hires using AI tools and our real workflows. You’ll see how this approach works whether someone is virtual, part-time, or learning by doing—and how it’s helping us build stronger systems through continuous learning and iteration, as part of our journey to grow Dutchtown Innovation Hub into a thriving, world-class innovation community, without losing the soul of the work.