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Jay McHarg, CEO of AeroSafe Global, has been named as the 2026 recipient of the Herbert W. Vanden Brul Entrepreneurial Award, presented by Saunders College of Business at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Established in 1984, the award is presented annually to a Rochester-area entrepreneur who has enhanced the regional economy through innovative business leadership.

The recipient is selected by a committee of area civic leaders, business leaders, former awardees, and RIT faculty and staff, symbolizing the important connection between RIT and the Rochester business community. McHarg will be honored at the Vanden Brul Entrepreneurial Award Luncheon from noon to 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 11, inside the Susan R. Holliday Center on campus. Registration remains open until May 31.

McHarg began his career as a structural engineer in Montreal before moving into finance and corporate development in Boston. He joined what eventually became AeroSafe Global out of a desire to build something, rather than buy it.

“I was more enamored with the founders of these companies than I was the businesses themselves,” McHarg said. “The idea of going to build something was kind of a dream. I guess I didn't realize I had it in me, but that's what I wanted to do.”

Bringing Rochester ingenuity to the world, AeroSafe Global delivers temperature-sensitive medications to patients in more than 85 countries through what the company calls Cold-Chain-as-a-Service–an integrated platform combining NASA-grade thermal technology, a global closed-loop reuse network, and AI-enabled logistics software. The company reframes the last mile of pharmaceutical delivery as “the first moment of care,” a philosophy McHarg credits for the company's deep partnerships with manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies, and health systems including Pfizer, Merck, CVS, Walgreens, and the University of Rochester.

According to McHarg, the pivot that made the business viable was the decision more than a decade ago to convert AeroSafe from a product company into a service company built around reuse. NASA had already been using the company's thermal technology for years, but the cost was prohibitive for healthcare applications. The only path forward was a global program to retrieve, refurbish, and redeploy the packaging itself.

“We set up a global reuse program, and we landed on reuse island, and we literally burnt the ships,” McHarg said. “If this doesn't work, we're out of business, and I told everybody in the company that. So, we just made it work.”

AeroSafe boasts a return rate at nearly 99 percent, and its packaging is reused an average of 80 times — compared to a competitor average of five. Investments in automation, including a spiral freezer system in Indianapolis that preconditions coolants at precise temperatures, have allowed AeroSafe to scale up to compete for the largest pharmaceutical contracts.

The company has been recognized as the No. 1 growth company on the Rochester Top 100 list, and McHarg was named the 2020 Rochester Business Person of the Year and 2025 NewSpring Capital CEO of the Year. He was also selected as an Endeavor Entrepreneur for his contribution to high-impact global economic growth and serves on the board of the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce.

For McHarg, these honors, including the Vanden Brul Award, come as a surprise.

“I'm not much of a social butterfly,” McHarg admitted. “When I'm not working, I'm with my family. So, I didn't know anybody was really paying attention. It's awkward for me to receive that kind of praise, because I think of myself as a team player. But I'm accepting it on behalf of my amazing team.”

McHarg said Rochester has been central to AeroSafe's identity and to his family's life since he relocated for the job, pointing to the region's depth of engineering and operations talent and the city’s legacy established by Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch + Lomb, and a workforce culture he describes as loyal and unafraid of complex problems.

“Rochester was a real pleasant surprise,” McHarg said. “Nothing's beneath anybody here. People roll up their sleeves and get the work done.”

McHarg has begun conversations with local schools about expanding technical education and trade pathways and previously served on a foundational board supporting RIT's National Technical Institute for the Deaf—a connection that traces back to summers spent working at a camp for deaf and physically disabled children outside Montreal.

Saunders College will also honor three RIT students with the Herbert W. Vanden Brul Student Entrepreneurial Award. This award, established in 2019, recognizes outstanding RIT undergraduate or graduate students who have demonstrated the potential to become successful entrepreneurs. The students will find out their placement of finish at the awards ceremony on June 11.

• Jonathan Bateman, an applied math and computing security and sociology and anthropology dual major from Denver, is a multi-time founder, including Real Recognizes Real AI, a platform that combines cryptography, biometrics, and shared memories to help users authenticate the identity of their digital contacts and outsmart deepfakes. He was an honoree of RIT’s Gap Year Entrepreneurship Fellowship Program.
• Gustav Blom ‘26 (management information systems), from Stockholm, Sweden, is the co-founder of CYPER, a cybersecurity platform that helps small- and medium-sized businesses assess and strengthen their cybersecurity posture through self-assessment tools that tailor recommendations to their industry, size, and risk profile. He was also a member of the RIT men’s hockey team.
• Aidan MaKinster, studying product design for innovation in the School of Individualized Study, is the founder of RAIZE Industries, a mountain biking venture whose flagship product, the Multi Position Mountain Bike Stem, offers on-the-fly adjustable steering geometry at the push of a button. MaKinster, a Waterloo, N.Y., native, is also a member of several clubs, including RIT Tech Crew.

Information about the Vanden Brul award is available on the Saunders College website.