Happy New Year GEDA!
I hope you all are rested and ready for a great 2020. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being on the board of directors the last several years and consider it an honor to chair the association this year. I want to give tremendous thanks to all of the chairs I’ve served alongside these past few years. I believe each year we have made great progress for the association. Missy Kendrick is in the most coveted seat now of being past-past chair and will handle nominations for new board members. And now Pat Merritt gets to sit in the passenger seat as immediate past chair. Job well done in 2019 Pat!
For my first newsletter of the new year I’m going to fall on the sword of being cheesy and talk about “clear” vision and mission for 2020! My hope is that this will be a year of clarity for you and your organizations. It’s important that we can clearly communicate our mission as economic developers to our constituents which ultimately builds trust and buy-in. There are tons of opportunities that we face daily that we often have a hard time saying “no” to. One of my personal goals for 2020 is to stay focused on my why and say no to opportunities that don’t align. That will drive success for 2020, clarity on your why. It’s also a charge that I’m putting to our board this year, let’s be clear about our mission and align our priorities accordingly.
Our vision is that we are the nation’s premier economic development association dedicated to driving Georgia’s prosperity. Our mission is to serve as THE resource for networking, professional development and public policy for Georgia’s Economic Development Community.
We focused on our mission and priorities at our board retreat this past fall and laid out a new strategic framework. We’re positioned to be nimble in our implementation, going from a 5-year strategy to one that is 3-years in duration. We are in a fast-paced world today, we can’t be 2 years behind what our members are experiencing if we want to be THE resource for you. One phenomenal result of our prior strategic plan led by Anna Chaffin was the hiring of Cornerstone to lobby on behalf of GEDA. We have greatly improved our profile and engagement with our legislators statewide and created new partnerships.
This year we’ve done and continue to do some restructuring of our committees and SIG’s. One of the things we’ve heard from many members is a lack of opportunity to engage in committees. We have also heard that there is more happening with our economic development professionals than what we are discussing. So, we’ve created a new shared interest group (SIG) focused on Public-Private Partnerships and redevelopment. We’ll intensify our membership engagement, ensuring that you experience GEDA in a much more meaningful way. We’ve also created an ad-hoc committee that will have a review and make recommendations on changes to our special service awards that take place at the end of the year. There are these priorities and more to come this year. I look forward to working on behalf of each of you and moving our state forward!