For more information, contact:
Sarah Lubeck
(619) 234-8484
sl@sandiegobusiness.org
EDC put San Diego on the global stage; made the case for inclusion as an economic imperative; and helped catalyze company growth here and abroad. Watch our full story below.
With and through EDC's investors and partners, we will continue to build a thriving and inclusive San Diego. Here's to another year, in it together.
With and through our investors, EDC works to maximize San Diego’s economic competitiveness. Learn how in our Q3 report, which is segmented by our key teams/initiatives below:
Regional Support
EDC convenes resources and stakeholder groups to help talent and a diversity of companies thrive in the San Diego mega-region.
WTC San Diego
As part of EDC, World Trade Center San Diego works to cultivate a pipeline of export-ready firms, maximize FDI opportunities, and grow the region's global connectivity.
SD: Life. Changing.
EDC's marketing efforts serve to elevate the region as a top destination for talent, business, and investment.
As part of the San Diego: Life. Changing. campaign, EDC showcased why San Diego is a hotspot for talent and investment with and through the following in Q3:
Research
Understanding our economy begins with strong data. EDC develops economic reports to help business and civic leaders make informed decisions.
Telling a data-driven and inclusive story of San Diego, EDC released the following economic reports in Q3:
This work would not be possible without the investment and support of EDC's members/partners. Thank you for allowing us to support the businesses that make this region truly #SDlifechanging.
Each year, EDC carefully selects a peer metro for our annual Best Practices Leadership Trip – a chance for EDC and a group of key partners and stakeholders to learn from another region facing challenges similar to our own. The decision to go to Indianapolis this year was not a hard one. We were drawn to Indy not just as a fellow participant in the Brookings Inclusive Economic Development Learning Lab last year, but because of its regional approach to inclusive growth that has catalyzed since. We were further intrigued by Indy’s unique talent attraction and retention programs and its many collaborative efforts across government, business, and philanthropy. Over three days, our group of nearly 30 San Diegans was welcomed by Indy’s civic leaders who highlighted local programs, projects, and initiatives. Ultimately, our goal of the Leadership Trip is to inspire fresh approaches to our own challenges and opportunities at home.
A two-sided economy: The Indy Chamber kicked-off our visit with an overview of the economic disparities facing Indianapolis. Similar to EDC, the Indy Chamber led its region through the Brookings Institution Inclusive Growth Learning Lab designed to help economic development organizations (EDOs) build a data-driven platform that articulates the economic case (and imperative) for inclusion. Since the lab, the Indy Chamber has disseminated the Indy narrative throughout town, with many civic leaders referencing its findings throughout our visit. While Indianapolis bodes well on measures affordability, job growth, and entrepreneurship, it is also the 6th most economically segregated region in the U.S., with limited opportunities for upward mobility for individuals born into poverty. The impacts of automation exacerbate economic segregation and poverty in Indianapolis, which lost more than 20 percent of its manufacturing workforce over the last decade. In facing these realities, civic leaders have enacted new measures to increase job preparedness, homeownership, and overall economic security for Indianapolis residents.
The Cook Medical “unicorn”: In a particularly moving presentation, Pete Yonkman, president of Cook Medical, shared an incredible benefit that his company offers employees who wish to advance their educational goals. With more than 12,000 employees worldwide, Cook is a privately-held medical device manufacturer headquartered in Indiana with facilities in six countries, including K-Tube Technologies in Poway. Through a program called “My Cook Pathway,” Cook eliminated its high school diploma requirement for entry-level manufacturing positions in 2017. High-potential individuals without a high school degree are hired to work at Cook in the mornings before spending the afternoon studying for their GED. During the seven weeks it takes to earn their high school equivalency (HSE), Cook pays employees full-time wages and associated fees. Furthermore, Cook has partnered with the local Ivy Tech Community College to expand the program for employees interested in AA degrees or certificate programs, fronting registration fees and associated expenses and providing guidance on the financial aid process. After overwhelming response from its employees, Cook has since expanded the program even further. Now, Cook employees can get an HSE through a Master’s degree leveraging the My Cook Pathway program. Before introducing this program, fewer than 65 employees took advantage of education reimbursement. Two years later, more than 1,000 employees are enrolled. By leveraging various state and federal funding streams that support employee education, Cook offers this benefit to its employees for less than $2,000 per employee. When Cook leadership eliminated its high school diploma requirement, they decided they wouldn’t sit back and wait for highly educated employees to show up at their door. Now, they are active participants in preparing Indiana’s future workforce, with resumes flooding their doors and employee retention rates on the rise.
Connecting Talent: Through its lauded statewide community college system and multiple universities, Indianapolis is well positioned to produce the workforce its economy needs, but the Midwestern city risks losing talent to the “lure of the coasts.” Jason Kloth, CEO of Ascend Indiana, is front and center on a statewide effort to retain talent by increasing employer access to qualified workers while supporting the residents of Indiana in their pursuit of a meaningful career. After serving in many leadership positions for Teach for America, Kloth led the City of Indianapolis Office of Education Innovation (OEI) as the deputy mayor of education under Mayor Greg Ballard. Kloth is the mastermind behind Ascend, a nonprofit focused on creating a stronger alignment between the supply of skilled talent and demand from employers in Central Indiana. Ascend has raised more than $10 million to support its work. The organization provides strategic consulting services to help high-growth companies identify, evaluate, and secure education partners to deliver a custom talent pipeline, usually in less than a year. In a recent project with medical device giant Roche, Ascend partnered with the University of Indianapolis to address the company’s shortage of technicians fueled by increased retirement turnover. The result was a work-ready pipeline of 25 skilled, entry-level professionals in less than 12 months. Ascend has also created a next-level, cloud-based platform called “the Ascend Network” that matches qualified talent from 14 higher education institutions to positions at more than 70 large companies. The platform has helped place more than 400 individuals in Indiana. Through its experienced team of recruiters and matching algorithms, Ascend ensures high quality candidates and speeds up the hiring process for both individuals and companies. Needless to say, our group was astonished.
Before returning home, many members of our San Diego group continued onto Washington D.C. for a day at the Brookings Institution. The group was welcomed by Amy Liu, vice president and director of the Brookings Metropolitan Program, before Brookings fellows facilitated a series of discussions on how and why other metros are approaching inclusive growth to help us think more broadly about strategies for succeeding in a rapidly-changing economy.
San Diego’s Progress
After spending much of 2017 deepening our understanding of regional challenges facing San Diego, EDC has spent 2018 assembling an employer-led steering committee to build an inclusive growth agenda that benefits more people, companies and communities. Guided by the findings of a recent EDC study, EDC’s Inclusive Growth Steering Committee recently endorsed a regional goal to double the number of skilled workers produced in San Diego County to 20,000 per year by 2030. To support this goal, the committee developed recommendations around transparency, engagement, and investment for employers to adopt and implement within their own organizations. EDC continues to work with the steering committee to set goals and recommendations for employer engagement around our other two pillars of inclusive growth; small business competitiveness and addressing affordability.
Before Indy, we traveled to Nashville and Louisville, smaller regions confronting deeply entrenched histories of racial segregation and poverty. Indianapolis is home to one of the largest endowments in the country and would not be where it is today without the investment of the Lilly family. Each metro is unique in its history, resources, and politics, and will inevitably need to craft an inclusive economic development strategy that works for their community based on their particular circumstance. However, inclusive growth as both an economic and moral imperative is a sentiment that permeates among more and more leaders nationwide.
Regardless of how different our circumstance may be from Nashville, Louisville, or Indianapolis, the authenticity that is threaded throughout our visits each year encourages an honest dialogue among our San Diego delegation, leading to a heightened sense of unity in purpose and mission amongst our investors and newer partners. There is much to be done, but EDC and our stakeholders are committed to this work. It will remain driven by collaboration, coordination, and honesty. EDC’s mission is to maximize the region’s economic prosperity and global competitiveness. To live up to that mission, our economic development strategies must promote growth through inclusion.
Learn more at inclusiveSD.org.
The trip was made possible by the generous support of Southwest Airlines.
San Diego Aira is changing how people see the world, literally. The EvoNexus graduate was formed by several Rady School of Management alumni that had a vision to help blind and visually impaired individuals have a higher quality of life. The company has created a wearable technology that a blind or vision impaired (BVI) person can wear, which better connects them to their surroundings via a live individual who sees exactly what they would. These navigators transcribe the visual world into an auditory one. From shopping, to reading ingredients and instructions, picking out an outfit to traveling or calling an uber, Aira helps BVI individuals live a more independent lives. Based in San Diego, the company now employs 50 people, developers and navigators, that help clients across the country. And Aira is just getting started. Partnering with institutions like UC San Diego and San Diego International Airport, Aira Enabled Zones are being stood up to ensure BVI individuals are able to access this assistance for free while at school, on travel, etc.
San Diego Regional EDC has been proud to support Aira in creating strategic partnerships via introductions to San Diego institutions and regional partners. EDC was able to leverage its existing network to open new doors for Aira at key San Diego business and organizations including the San Diego Convention Center, San Diego Tourism Authority, Petco, Viasat, BD, Cubic, Canadian Department of Commerce, Zero8Hundred, Seaworld, Tijuana EDC, and more.
The company was also recently named to WTC San Diego's export accelerator program, MetroConnect.
Aira truly is another example of a truly #SDlifechanging company in San Diego.
Have you ever driven down the I-5 South near downtown and noticed the three large industrial buildings to your right? Do you know what happens there? That’s the U.S. Navy’s Space & Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR).
Last week, a small group of EDC board members got a behind-the-scenes tour of SPAWAR and its research lab in Point Loma SSC-Pac to answer that very question. On the tour, attendees saw firsthand some of the technology being developed and acquired by SPAWAR – technology that ranges from AI-guided cyber tools, nanosatellites, cryogenic communications, AR and VR technologies for sailors, and autonomous air, land, and water vehicles. SPAWAR directly employs nearly half of all the cybersecurity jobs (3,400) in San Diego, and its presence in San Diego is a huge contributing factor for many cyber companies to remain located in the region. It is daily responsible for the creation of advanced technologies for our country.
Additionally, attendees were provided an opportunity to learn about the U.S. Navy’s plans to explore a massive redevelopment of the SPAWAR facility that could provide the command with modern infrastructure, while acting as a catalyst for broader redevelopment in the midway area. It is rare to have a command like SPAWAR outside of the Washington D.C. beltway area and even more uncommon still for a community to have an opportunity to help such an important institution design and build a new facility.
For more information, you may access the Request for Interest via Navy Electronic Commerce Online (NECO) or Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) websites.
With and through our investors, EDC works to maximize San Diego’s economic competitiveness. Click through the links below to see how.
EDC's Q2 in review
Regional Support
EDC convenes resources and stakeholder groups to help talent and a diversity of companies thrive in the San Diego mega-region. The economic development team led and advised on a variety of projects with the following outcomes:
WTC San Diego
As part of EDC, World Trade Center San Diego (WTC) works to cultivate a pipeline of export-ready firms, maximize FDI opportunities, and grow the region's global connectivity.
The WTC team connected local businesses and industry leaders to foreign markets. Here's how:
San Diego: Life. Changing.
EDC's marketing efforts serve to elevate the region as a top destination for talent, business, and investment.
As part of the San Diego: Life. Changing. campaign, EDC's marketing-communications team debuted the following to equip businesses with the resources necessary to 'sell' the region:
Research
Understanding our economy begins with strong data. EDC develops economic reports to help business and civic leaders make informed decisions.
Our research team released the following economic reports in Q2:
See the full Quarterly Report here.
Well, that was fun.
Thank you to those who joined us at EDC's 52nd Annual Dinner, underwritten by Point Loma Nazarene University. This event continues to remind us how lucky we are to call San Diego home - we are a region that lifts each other up and celebrates all the life-changing people and innovation around us.
We were honored to celebrate Dr. Mary Walshok with the Herb Klein Civic Leadership Award presented by Alexandria Real Estate, and Sempra Energy with the Duane Roth Renaissance Award presented by Carrier Johnson + CULTURE. And, we welcomed EDC's new board chair, Janice Brown, founder of Brown Law Group.
Janice laid out a big vision for EDC and San Diego. And many of you have asked us how you can help make this a reality. Here are two quick things you can do that will make a big difference to us:
Like Janice eloquently said, we must continue to embrace change to fuel progress in our region and beyond. Thanks for pushing and helping us to do this work.
Download pictures from the event here. We'll be adding more as we receive them so check back soon.
EDC's Annual Dinner from San Diego on Vimeo.
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This week at EDC's 52nd Annual Dinner, we were honored to officially welcome Janice Brown as EDC's new board chair. After two years of leadership, Jim Zortman, retired Northrop Grumman executive and EDC chair since 2016, symbolically 'passed the gavel' to Janice.
Having served as an EDC board member for eight years, Janice has helped guide the organization's priorities and is well-equipped to lead EDC's inclusive growth and #SDlifechanging efforts, among other intitiatives. And she'll do so with more energy and class than we could hope for.
You can follow Janice on Twitter at @JPatrice4080.
EDC has partnered with Ballast Point to create a special Made in San Diego craft brew, exclusively available in San Diego County. Just like our campaign, this beer is made for San Diego, by San Diego.Raise a glass with us, and visit MadeinSD.com to learn more about this #SDlifechanging partnership.
The California Competes Tax Credit (CCTC) is an income tax credit program available to both small and large businesses with plans to expand in or relocate to the state of California. Negotiated by the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz), the California Competes Tax Credit program has awarded more than $600 million in credits to California companies since the program’s inception in 2014. In the FY 2017-18 round alone, the state will grant more than $230 million.
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Each year, the state grants a series of awards over three rounds: November, April, and June. In the April round of FY 2017-18 program, the state awarded 63 companies a total of $72 million in tax credits based on commitments to add more than 6,500 jobs and invest more than $490 million by 2021. San Diego received 16.27 percent of the total credits, just behind the LA metro that received 22 percent of credits.
Based on the recent announcement, 15 San Diego companies were awarded more than $11.7 million in tax credits. Compared to other metros across California, San Diego fared well across all measures. Of all metros, San Diego received the highest number of small business awards, with more than 40 percent of small business recipients hailing from San Diego. These small businesses were awarded more than $1.7 million in tax credits for commitments to create 71 jobs and invest $4.5 million.
San Diego large businesses – defined as more than $2 million in annual revenue – were awarded more than $10 million in credits. San Diego ranks second in the large business category, with 16 percent of total credits awarded to local large businesses. San Diego also earned the second place ranking in the amount of job creation among all metros, with almost 700 new jobs coming to the region over the next five years.
In this CCTC round, San Diego recipients will invest more than $67.5 million into the community and pay nearly $138 million in wages over the next five years. Since inception, more than 125 San Diego companies have been awarded more than $75 million in credits, committing to the creation of more than 8,500 jobs and $1.4 billion in investments.
Of the 15 company recipients, EDC consulted six winners throughout the application process. Among those that received EDC support, top awardees include Bank of the Internet ($5M credit), Planck Aerosystems ($600K credit), and Fuse Integration ($500K credit).
For more information regarding the California Competes Tax Credit program, please contact Jesse Gipe.
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San Diego Regional EDC's mission is to maximize the region's economic prosperity and global competitiveness.
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