New Haven’s time is now: Key ingredients for the region’s future success

In Greater New Haven, we are experiencing a period of great economic growth, and with a concentrated effort there can be more success in our future. New Haven is a cultural capital with an engine for innovation, a vibrant business community, and a large talent pool from our highly-educated residents and exceptional universities and colleges. Talent is our competitive advantage, and efforts are already underway to strengthen our workforce. As a region, we need to double down on opportunities with our engaged business community to continue to bring jobs and investment to Greater New Haven. Just look up and you can see New Haven’s recent success. Avelo Airlines has made New Haven its hub, with flights arriving and departing for destinations from Florida to Chicago and many places in between. In downtown New Haven, steel is rising as construction advances for the 101 College St. building that will be home to new bioscience companies, including Arvinas, a company that is rapidly expanding its operations, and Alexion AstraZeneca, doubling its lab floor space and research capabilities. On the ground there are more positive signs, our manufacturers are hiring, and startups are having success – locally-grown Biorez just announced that it is partnering with a larger company, Conmed, and will continue to add jobs in New Haven. Yale New Haven Health is moving forward with its game-changing Neuroscience Center. These are just a few of the success stories happening all around us. There are many ingredients for forming a successful regional economy. We already have many institutions of higher education, a central location in the state, anchor companies, and startup businesses, as well as talent. As we move forward, we must continue to build on these successes. This includes strengthening our infrastructure for transportation, housing, utilities, and creating more places for business to grow sustainably. With support from the Regional Water Authority and United Illuminating, the Chamber is investing in economic development programs. Innovation happens here in New Haven; we need to bring more of it to the forefront and attract more capital investment to produce jobs locally. Yale Ventures is creating new connections between world-class talent and our community, bringing their ideas to fruition right here in New Haven. We also must continue to support businesses that are already here – the region boasts an impressive legacy of manufacturing, aerospace, medical device, healthcare, and biopharma companies as well as other sectors. As the Greater New Haven region continues its path toward economic growth, it is important to continue to expand inclusive growth efforts in the business community and in the region. Important inclusive growth efforts such as supporting those re-entering the workforce and supporting our Black, Indigenous and people of color-owned businesses are key to the region’s success. Organizations like ConnCAT have stepped up to provide workforce training programs with wraparound services to those who are under-represented in the workforce. New Haven Promise and New Haven Works create career pathways for New Haven residents. Businesses like Penn Globe have implemented new policies such as flexible working hours to retain working parents. The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven launched the Stepping Forward campaign to advance racial equity. Efforts like these are vital in inclusive growth strategies, but there is still much more to do to ensure economic success is happening for everyone. Creating and building upon programs that encourage and promote entrepreneurs and support the growth of minority-owned businesses by providing resources, access to capital, and physical space for their companies should be of priority if we hope to continue to see the region succeed. Business community support Talent is a key differentiator for regions in today’s global economy. We have some built-in advantages with a skilled and highly-educated workforce and six world-class universities and colleges – Albertus Magnus College, Gateway Community College, Southern Connecticut State University, Quinnipiac University, University of New Haven and Yale University. We will need to do more. Working with the Governor’s Workforce Council and Office of Workforce Strategy, as well as partners like Workforce Alliance, industry leaders are uniting to build talent pipelines that will support their companies into the future. Creating these partnerships with our education providers to match training and skills with the jobs our companies are offering helps to fill critical workforce gaps. This is just one strategy that our region is using to strengthen our talent pool. Talent initiatives and our overall economic strategy only work when we have participation from the business community. Now is the time to get involved. The entire community needs to hear the voices of our business leaders – you are creating jobs and making investments in the future. Your engagement will help us seize more opportunities to move the Greater New Haven region forward. Garrett Sheehan is the president and CEO of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce.