grow
December 2017
a greensboro chamber of commerce publication
Vol. 1, Issue #4
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The Greensboro Chamber of Commerce is the largest business organization in the community serving more than 1,000 member businesses through programming designed to help them succeed and grow. A partner in the Guilford County Economic Development Alliance, the Chamber also serves as Greensboro primary economic development organization, with special emphasis placed on community and entrepreneurial advancement through Action Greensboro and Launch Greensboro.
grow
IN THIS ISSUE
december 2017
a greensboro chamber of commerce publication
Creative approaches needed for skilled workforce, good jobs
Publisher Brent Christensen bchristensen@greensboro.org Editor/Graphic Designer Megan Mabry mmabry@greensboro.org
Develop and implement a collaborative strategy for recruitment, retention and expansion of businesses in targeted industries, as well as planning for future buildings and sites for targeted growth.
Photography Courtesy of the Greensboro Chamber unless otherwise noted
Right from the startup: Greensboro grows its own
Advertising Kathleen Donohue kdonohue@greensboro.org
Focus on entrepreneurship and small business development to expand the culture of inclusive innovation throughout Greensboro and Guilford County
grow is published quarterly by the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce for the distribution to its investors, members, and other interested parties. The publication is written and edited by the Chamber and editorial decisions are made by its staff. The views expressed in grow should not be interpreted as the official policy of the Chamber. The publisher reserves the right to decline advertising considered unsuitable for publication.
Telling Our Story Create a shared and inclusive vision for Greensboro that will engage, inspire, and excite the entire community
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Creative approaches needed for skilled workforce, quality jobs by Eddie Huffman The goals are ambitious, including 200 new companies and 7,500 new jobs. But the fiveyear GROW campaign – which the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce will launch in 2018 – isn’t merely about getting warm bodies into paying positions. It’s about developing a diverse, highly skilled workforce to attract and fill high-quality jobs. “This region has a great quality of life, great cost of living, and it’s located in a great area of a great state,” says Jon Bell, cochair of the GROW campaign. “The pieces are here for tremendous success, and we just have to put it all together.” Campaign organizers have designated four primary components: Creating Quality Jobs, Talent and Workforce Development, Starting and Growing Our Own, and
Marketing and Communications. Bell took time to address those first two components, as did two other people working to bring more and better jobs to Greensboro: Mary Lesa Pegg of UNCG and Tammy Simmons of Machine Specialties (MSI). Bell is CEO of Bell Partners, an investment and management company working with apartment communities throughout the country. His role with GROW is similar to his role with his own company: raising money. The fundraising goal for the GROW campaign is $10 million, which Bell hopes to exceed. “I didn’t want to just be guy when I call, you know I’m asking for something – and it’s probably money,” he says. “I’m sensitive to that reputation. Yet with this I just believed so much in it. I was passionate about it and I knew
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it was something the region really needed. I was not only comfortable but proud to make the call, because I could easily justify and stand by the need to raise this money.” Pegg is graduate recruiter in the Office of the Dean at the Bryan School of Business and Economics at UNCG. She also serves on the GROW campaign leadership council and the synerG council for Greensboro’s network of young professionals. At 26, Pegg understands the importance to the community of keeping and attracting young people. She grew up in WinstonSalem and once planned to live in Charlotte, but discovered a lot to like about Greensboro while earning her master’s degree from UNCG. She thinks local companies can find creativity ways to retain others like her.
“We’ve got 10,000 students graduating from a Greensboro school every year,” Pegg says. “That is a lot of talent. Instead of outsourcing a lot of your recruiting and sending folks to other universities, I would love to see companies continue to support and maybe amp up some of that support for these local universities.”
Point, sponsors GAP. It is the first and only National Fund for Workforce Solutions site in the state.
Simmons works with Guilford Apprenticeship Partners (GAP) to retain young people in the community starting as early as high school. Though still employed by MSI – a company in Whitsett that manufactures precision parts for a variety of industries, including aerospace, medical, and the military – she spends 90 percent of her time these days marketing and promoting GAP.
“We are looking to get even more this year,” Simmons says.
The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, along with the Chamber and Business High
MSI is a founding member of GAP and hosted some of the initial organizing meetings three years ago, Simmons says. The company has 150 employees and currently has 16 GAP apprentices.
High school students who meet certain standards for grades, courses taken, and attendance are eligible for the program. Apprentices who make it in get a full ride for a two-year community college degree while also earning a full-time wage. The program aims to replace aging specialists in such fields as tool and dye, machinists, welders, quality technicians, and maintenance technicians,
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Simmons says. Some of them may go on to become engineers or advance in other ways. The program grew out of a need of MSI and other companies to replace people in specialized positions who are hitting retirement age. “Most of the skilled workforce that we have is aging,” Simmons says. “In our case we not only want to keep what we’ve got, but we want to grow. We had to come up with something else.”
Want to learn more? Visit our website for more information about the GROW campaign and how you can be involved in the next five years of the Greensboro Chamber.
Right from the startup: Greensboro grows its own By Eddie Huffman One startup creates software to help manufacturers boost productivity. The other promotes environmental sustainability via carbon credits and tree planting. Both turned to Launch Greensboro for help getting off the ground. Their stories and others like them illustrate how Greensboro is going beyond efforts to recruit and retain existing companies. Launch Greensboro works to build new companies. It does so by bringing together a variety
of programs such as Capital Connects and LaunchCamp to help entrepreneurs with funding, feedback, and follow through. Jonathan Woahn is the CEO of Ampogee, the software company helping manufacturers boost productivity. He and the company’s co-founder and COO, Brian Lopatka, began working with LaunchLab (then called Triad Startup Lab) in early 2016. “We met with a lot of people in the area,” Woahn says. “Prior to this, we hadn’t had a
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lot of chance to verbalize our elevator pitch to people, so it helped us to think about how to communicate our business.” He and Lopatka met when Lopatka was a client at a firm where Woahn worked. They started collaborating on a different project and ultimately hit on the idea for Ampogee. Launch Greensboro helped them take their idea for a cloud-based platform to track manufacturing objectives from concept to reality. “It helped us to know that the people we were working with
were interested in helping us to grow the business for our sake, not necessarily for any personal agenda,” says Woahn, now a member of Launch Greensboro’s advisory board. Shawn Gagné is founder and CEO of Urban Offsets, the startup promoting environmental sustainability via carbon credits and tree planting. He has lived in Greensboro since 2010, and set up shop here after graduating from Groundwork Labs, a startup incubator in Durham. “I firmly believe in supporting the community that helped me grow,” Gagné says.
Greensboro needs to differentiate itself from other urban areas in the region, such as the bio-tech focus of Winston-Salem and the research focus of the Triangle, Gagné says. “We not just a maker city, where we make things with our hands,” he says. “We’re also an idea center. Having clear leadership at the helm like Lou Anne, and support from the Chamber, will allow us to define our voice quickly and retain the talent needed to build.”
Want to learn more? Launch Greensboro works with all startups, from ideation to scaling and growing. Check out all of our programs here.
Pictured : Shawn Gagné (left) courtesy of Made in Greensboro. Below: Jonathan Woahan and Brian Lopatka of Ampogee, courtesy of @getampogee.
Urban Offsets now has six employees and offices at Revolution Mill. “So the challenge for me as a scaling startup now is, do I go where the money is – which is typically outside Greensboro – or can I find a way to grow in scale in such a way that I don’t have to leave Greensboro?” Gagné says. He pays it forward by mentoring others through Launch Greensboro. Gagne believes Launch Greensboro and its executive vice president for entrepreneurship, Lou Anne Flanders-Stec, are forging a distinctive identity for the city and building an environment that will allow startups to grow and thrive.
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TELLING OUR STORY
by Eddie Huffman
Commerce Board of Directors.
Greensboro has a lot to offer individuals and companies already here or thinking about relocating, and the GROW campaign aims to make the city even more attractive over the next five years. Multimillion dollar plans are in the works to create new jobs and companies, boost minority business revenue, provide capital for emerging businesses, and fill hundreds of chronically vacant positions.
“We want to remind ourselves how great our city is,” Bachmann says. “And in telling our story to ourselves, it allows us to share all the great things about Greensboro with others – people who are thinking about relocating their business or family here.” Derek Ellington is a fellow board member and chair of its economic development committee. He is also the Triad market president for Bank of America.
The challenge? Making sure the word about those ambitious plans gets out to all the right people. That’s why Marketing and Communications is one of the campaign’s four key pillars, along with Create Quality Jobs, Talent and Workforce Development, and Starting and Growing Our Own. Anita Bachmann has lived in Greensboro for 25 years, and she says even longtime residents sometimes need reminders about everything the city has to offer. She is CEO of United Healthcare’s Community Health Plan and a member of the Greensboro Chamber of
“We are going to take some time to learn from what worked well in past,” Ellington says. “But we’re but also going to really challenge ourselves to see how we can do things differently going forward to maximize the current forms of media and communications.” Marketing and communications for the GROW campaign will take multiple approaches, including traditional media, social media, online, and printed materials. Community discussions will take place with key leaders such as CEOs,
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CFOs, and community relations representatives of companies large and small, Ellington says. There will be one-on-one meetings with certain business leaders and community influencers. “We want to educate them about where we are with the GROW campaign, what the goals are, and, most importantly, how can we get them involved,” Ellington says. The marketing and communications effort will also target an audience well beyond the Greensboro city limits. “We want to do a better job of telling our story globally,” Ellington says. “We have over 200 companies based here in triad that are either U.S.-based multinational companies or subsidiaries of foreign entities. How do we leverage that? We’ve created a great environment for global companies to thrive. How do we attract more?”
Bachmann points to another target audience: young people choosing where to build their lives and careers. “We want young professionals to see how attractive the city is to live, to work, and to play,” she says. “We’re using a lot of the large employers to talk about some of the opportunities they have from a workforce standpoint.” Ellington notes a message he came up with to drive home the point of the campaign: “We can grow Greensboro, we will grow Greensboro, we will grow Greensboro together.”
Want to learn more?
Our YP guide to Greensboro is already up and running, check it out here.
Put our problem solvers to work for your organization! Learn about consulting projects and talent recruitment at Bryan.UNCG.edu/partners. Bramley Crisco, Employer Relations 336.334.4159 or bkcrisco@uncg.edu
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