Raise the Bar Together for Workforce Development

Date: April 23, 2014
Time:  2:30 pm - 4:00 pm EST
Questions? Please contact [email protected]

When workforce and economic development professionals work together, they are able to achieve greater results for their communities. With businesses increasingly concerned about the supply of skilled labor, economic developers are forming new collaborative relationships with educational institutions and business leaders aimed at helping companies to find the workers they need and workers to find the jobs that they want.

This webinar will present the findings, recommendations, and examples from IEDC’s Economic Development Research Partners (EDRP)’s recent research on best practices in workforce and economic development collaboration Raising the Bar Together: Successful Strategies for Workforce and Economic Development Collaboration.

Join IEDC on April 23 for a strategy-filled webinar on how to:

• Persuade stakeholders on the benefits of a partnership between workforce and economic development organizations 
• Establish and strengthen partnerships in workforce and economic development 
• Collaborate effectively from an in-depth case study on the successful strategies used in North Carolina’s Eastern Region

All registered attendees receive a free electronic copy of Raising the Bar Together: Successful Strategies for Workforce and Economic Development Collaboration following the webinar presentation.

Speakers

Dee Baird, PhD 
President & CEO 
Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance 
Cedar Rapids, IA

Dee Baird is CEO/President of the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance. The Economic Alliance began operations on January 1 after the successful merger of Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, Cedar Rapids Downtown District and Priority One. The Economic Alliance combines and aligns the economic development, business support and community development efforts of those former organizations with a vision to become one of the top economic growth regions in the country.

John D. Chaffee 
President & CEO 
NCEast Alliance 
Kinston, NC

John Chaffee is the President/CEO of the NCEast Alliance, a regional economic development agency serving more than 1 million residents within several small metropolitan and micropolitan areas from the fringe of the Research Triangle to the Atlantic Coast. Mr. Chaffee began his career of economic development in eastern North Carolina (1977) and was selected as executive director of the Pitt County Economic Development Commission in 1983. In January 2006, he retired from that post to become director of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center’s Eastern Regional Office in Greenville with the mission to facilitate capacity building for life sciences in eastern North Carolina. He was named CEO of North Carolina’s Eastern Region in April, 2009, which was recently succeeded by the NCEast Alliance. He counts among his successes the establishment of the first corporate park in the east, development of robust partnerships, strategies to recruit Japanese companies, and collaborative efforts to encourage the emergence of a life science R&D-based cluster in the Greenville Metro area.