Brookhaven Supervisor Mark Lesko announced this week he was leaving the town on Sept. 14 to become executive director of Accelerate Long Island, the fledgling organization he helped create last year.
Lesko has served as Brookhaven’s chief executive since winning a special election in March 2009 when then-Supervisor Brian X. Foley left to take a position as a one-term state senator. The deputy supervisor, Councilwoman Kathleen Walsh, will act as town supervisor after Lesko leaves until a new one is elected in November.
The upstart group that seeks to commercialize research coming out of Stony Brook University, Hofstra University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System had been searching for an executive director since February.