When you imagine what Massachusetts’ ambassador to the fast moving and sometimes-funky innovation sector might be like, Katie Stebbins isn’t what immediately springs to mind. Instead of an MIT-credentialed Cambridge hotshot, she’s a 44-year-old mother of two who commutes daily from her Springfield home.

To extend her official working day, Stebbins puts her commute to good use, scheduling phone meetings with venture capitalists and innovation mechanics. With any luck, by the time she’s back in Hoop City she’ll eat, and, on occasion, cook dinner with her husband (Massachusetts Gaming Commissioner Bruce Stebbins) and two children, ages 8 and 10.

As Gov. Charlie Baker's inaugural assistant secretary of innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship within the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, Stebbins, on the job since April, is a key player as Baker knuckles down to blueprint a plan to maintain the state's role as a tech leader in the face of growing competition from New York and California.

Baker was elected — at least in part — because his promises to make Massachusetts an easier and less expensive place to do business were more credible than his opponents'. To Baker, that means less government interference and regulation while simultaneously trying to use state resources to support the sectors that will give back to Massachusetts the most.

Technology's growth and impact on the state can't be overstated. Science and technology in Massachusetts isn't exactly a cottage industry so much as a prime economic engine for the rest of the state. The Bay State ranks number one in the Milken Institute's State Tech and Science Index.

Massachusetts is among national leaders in research and development investment, venture capital investment, and in residents who hold science, engineering and health doctoral degrees, according to the U.S. Cluster Mapping Project, a national economic statistics database on industry clusters and regional business environments from Harvard Business School's Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and U.S. Economic Development Administration.

Baker's team is reaching out to Kendall Square kingpin MIT to help the state's own rich educational resources focus more on advanced tech jobs. The state backs a partnership that includes MIT and Worcester's Quinsigamond Community College to work with a federal program to expand the use of photonics — the application of manipulated light — in manufacturing and training locally.

Before coming to Beacon Hill, Stebbins ran the Holyoke Innovation District, an initiative to foster technology jobs in that city based around the state's new Green High Performance Computing Center, a supercomputing enterprise that provides services for "computationally intensive" modern science and engineering projects. Green High Performance Center computers support thousands of local and global researchers.

In Holyoke. Who knew.

Advantage: Western Mass.

Stebbins sees her current role as staying informed and connected in the clusters state government has identified as growth sectors. It's her job, Stebbins says, to maintain Massachusetts' competitiveness in the high-tech sectors and to make sure growing companies are satisfied enough to stay here.

The Springfield resident also sees her home in Western Massachusetts as part of why she's an advantageous choice to lead Baker's tech team.

"I think it would have been very natural for someone from Kendall Square to head up the state's tech innovation and entrepreneurship work, but I think there's also a risk in that you could become very, very focused only on what's happening and the success of Kendall Square and Boston, and not think about, 'How does success here incubate success in the rest of the state?'" Stebbins said.

At the end of the year, Baker and Housing and Economic Development Secretary Jay Ash have promised to release an economic development plan for the future of the state. Stebbins is charged now with absorbing all she can about where the state is and where it needs to go in the tech sector. The report will detail how Baker proposes to grow the economy. Stebbins' input on technology and innovation will be key to what the Republican administration decides to do.

Stebbins said she was nervous when she began her job in April, but since has found the established innovation class in Cambridge and across the Fort Point Channel very welcoming. But some Boston-based technologists, she said, aren't aware that Massachusetts has other cities contributing to the tech sector.

"There are these amazing things going on in Worcester and in New Bedford and we're doing this out in Springfield, and how can we connect the dots?" Stebbins asked. "How can we make, how can we create opportunities to solve the world's problems in places that look like the world, but might also look like Holyoke, that might look like New Bedford?"

According to the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative's 2014 annual Innovation Index, "regions outside of Greater Boston provide ecosystems for innovation that are stable and resilient. These communities boast a lower cost of living, which serves to attract new commerce and enterprise, and a proximity to Boston, New York, and other metropolitan areas which can feed novel ideas, drive new energies, and offer channels to global markets."

"She is approaching that divide with the mindset of a connector, which I think is healthy," Devin Cole, director of business development for the Workbar Network of co-working office space, told WGBH News. "In the past, the Commonwealth's approach has been to let Boston worry about itself and focus on other cities/towns that ‘need more help.’ I think she represents a positive change in that mindset.”

Clusters, Plural

That work is taking shape as the Baker administration's economic development team puts together a statewide blueprint to guide the economy.

Stebbins cuts a sleek profile and exhibits a sense of earnest urgency as she discusses her work. She has plans to engage more with the state's health care establishment, and to strengthen the burgeoning digital health cluster.

She wants to make big data on everything from state health care to economic trends available to entrepreneurs so they can build smarter application and target consumers. And she's very interested in the growing field of marine robotics that is gestating in Woods Hole and along the South Shore.

Advances in underwater robots allow research centers like the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to mount unmanned scientific explorations in areas that weren't previously accessible. The developing sector could pair the state's traditional coastal resources with the next big thing in automation technology and marine research.

"These clusters are growing," she said. "They're doing very well. It's my job to say, 'All right, where is this market opportunity and what does the state need to do to make sure that Massachusetts gains or maintains a competitive edge in this market."

Another goal of Stebbins' new post is to recast the notion that the state's chief tech assets are only clustered around Boston or Route 495. She is fond of reminding often-provincial Bay Staters that San Jose and San Francisco — two famously active and collaborative California tech hubs — are about the same distance from each other as Boston is to Worcester.

"Our tech regions exist in our minds, but not on a map," Stebbins said. "And as we can alter our perceptions of our assets in this state, we can broaden our capacity and opportunities."

She thinks there needs to be a shift in the local tech community away from viewing some parts of the state as "less than" the Boston market, Stebbins said.

Stebbins describes herself as "a bit of a gypsy" since her upbringing meant following her father to various parts of the country as he taught at various in higher education institutions. The experience exposed her to numerous American cities, both large and small; prosperous and in decline.

Stebbins earned her bachelor's degree at the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1997 and landed a job as a city planner for Springfield, Mass. That city, her new home, was at the time in fiscal turmoil and under the control of the state.

"When I got to Springfield, the challenges were so real and the economy was in a position where it needed new thinking and new partnerships," Stebbins said. "I just saw a lot of opportunity there for myself as a young professional."

In the upheaval of Springfield's receivership, Stebbins said she took advantage of being a young person amidst a changing environment. This put her on the ground floor of many experimental and early stage ideas, some that helped shape the city's successful emergence from receivership.

Stebbins met her new boss Ash, when he worked as the city manager of Chelsea, another municipality that had come through state receivership in the 1990s. Ash and Stebbins worked together as part of the Federal Reserve's Working Cities Challenge, a program that focuses on lifting up the region's often neglected former manufacturing bases.

Stebbins isn't afraid to throw some sharp elbows in defense of her home region of the state, especially in her spare time. She's such a western Mass booster she even embraced Western Mass. as a blocker on the Pair O' Dice roller derby team based in Wilbraham. Under the rink moniker "Springfield," Stebbins played for two seasons on the roller derby team. Her number is the same as the state's westernmost area code: 413.