CALED Chairman Bruce Ackerman Reports to Members

As we begin the second year of my term as CALED's Chairman of the Board, I am amazed at how much we have accomplished in this last year-not only us as an association, but also us as a profession. At the beginning of my term, we outlined what our goals were over the next two years and I am pleased to share some of the highlights with you. In addition, the CALED work program is included in this issue showing more detail on all of the activities we undertake to advance the field and profession of Economic Development.

At our Board of Directors' Retreat in June of 2007, your CALED Leadership identified crucial needs for Economic Developers and our industry in the upcoming years and collaborated on solutions that can meet those needs. Specifically, I am reporting to you on the key focus areas that came out of that meeting.

What is the State's role in Economic Development? As California's premier statewide economic development association, CALED has been asked to share our view on what a new paradigm for a State role in economic development should look like. As part of our Prosperity California Initiative, we have spent the past year defining a vision statement on what it would take to have a prosperous California and the role of Economic Developers in making this happen. We realize this is an important issue for our membership. At our Annual Conference, we dedicated a session for an open discussion on this topic expecting 30-40 people: We were amazed and excited to have over 150 show up for the forum. This was one of four meetings we held to get feedback on this critical initiative. CALED will report the outcome of these meetings later this year.

Who are the Economic Developers of the future? The face of economic development is changing, and we are working diligently not only to address current changes, but also to predict new trends and develop creative services and methods of delivery to help our members provide the best service they can to their communities and businesses. We are currently working on an exciting update of the CALED web site that will allow us to provide you the information you want in the way you want to receive it. In addition, as part of our work with The California Academy for Economic Development, we are researching a unique opportunity with several universities across California to create a certificate or Masters program for Economic Development.

How do Economic Developers make a difference? As many of you have shared with me, this topic is near and dear to a lot of us because the reach of Economic Developers goes far beyond helping business and assisting in the creation of quality jobs. CALED spends a lot of time working with members helping them find ways to measure their effectiveness and communicate their value to their constituents. We also research tools and trends to identify innovative ways that our members can deliver services to their communities and stay ahead of their competition. In this vein, we have been updating and promoting two very important tools to help you:

1) The Impact Calculator program, which gives you a quick and accurate assessment of the impact on your community of a specific project or business development.

2) The Tools for Business Success service, which provides your start-up companies and small businesses with basic and advanced information they need to get their business started and keep it growing. We now have 50+ organizations with this resource on their web site and are thankful to have secured funding from Wells Fargo, Southern California Edison, Rabobank, and USDA Rural Development to expand and maintain this much-needed service.

These are just a few of the ways CALED will continue to support the field and profession of economic development. In addition, we have been your voice at the State level for over 28 years, and CALED's commitment to you is that our goal is to make sure you are heard. This year we released the inaugural issue of California Business Images: a magazine dedicated to promoting the success of California's Economic Developers through the eyes of successful businesses. We have received a terrific response to this publication from legislators, partners, advertisers, and members. People are hungry to hear that California is a place where businesses thrive-thanks to you-California's Local Economic Developers.

As you can tell, we've had an exciting year and expect to continue with this momentum. I encourage you to get involved and stay involved as we move forward in promoting Economic Development in California and the communities we serve.

Sincerely,

Bruce Ackerman - Chairman of the Board, CALED
President & CEO, Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley