Chamber Annual Dinner & Powderhouse Awards

You are cordially invited to the Somerville Chamber of Commerce's 76th Anniversary  Annual Dinner & Powderhouse Awards sponsored by Verizon and Bunker Hill Community College with keynote address by Joe Boncore, MassBio CEO.    

In the role of CEO, Joe leads MassBio’s efforts to sustain Massachusetts’ economic competitiveness focusing on issues around infrastructure, workforce, and digital health, and manages federal affairs, as well as state and municipal government relations. In an increasingly competitive national economic environment, Joe has been outspoken in his advocacy for legislative solutions that ensure patients have affordable access to drugs they need to stay healthy, actions to alleviate the housing and transportation crises, policies and programming to increase diversity and equity in the life sciences workforce, and the regionalization of the industry across the Commonwealth. Joe also brings the lived experience of a patient advocate, having spent months in the NICU with his twin boys, who were born extremely premature, where he witnessed firsthand the benefits of the innovation ecosystem unique to Massachusetts.
 
Prior to joining MassBio in September 2021, Joe served as the State Senator for the First Suffolk and Middlesex districts, representing his hometown of Winthrop; the Boston communities of East Boston, North End, Chinatown, Beacon Hill, Bay Village, and South End; the Cambridge neighborhoods of Cambridgeport, Riverside and MIT; and the City of Revere.  While in the State Senate, Joe was the Chair of the Joint Committee on Transportation, Chair of the Senate’s Committee on Personnel and Administration, Chair of the Joint Committee on Housing, Vice Chair of Rules, and member of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, Senate Ethics Committee, Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets, and the Committee on Financial Services. Joe also served as Senate Chair for the Massachusetts Biotech Caucus, where he advanced legislation to ensure patient access to breakthrough cures and therapies.
 
Before being elected to the state legislature in 2016, Joe practiced law specializing in criminal law in his private practice and as a public defender with Suffolk Lawyers for Justice.
 
Boncore earned his bachelor’s degree in political science and government from Providence College in 2004 and received his juris doctorate from the Massachusetts School of Law. Joe resides in Winthrop with his wife Christine and three sons, twins John and Philip, and Dante.