Regional Collaboration for Equitable Growth with Joe Stefko of ROC2025

[2:00]  Building an interest in political science

[3:55] Establishment of ROC2025 from the Boston Consulting Group's report on regional economic growth - for coordination and resource cultivation

[7:30] Four main goals of ROC2025:
1 - Adding 30,000 Net New Jobs
2 - Increasing Regional Wealth by 20%
3 - Elevating 20,000 out of Poverty
4 - Increasing Regional GDP by 10%

[10:15] The intersection of economic growth and equity
"Economically inclusive communities experience higher rates of job growth and higher rates of income growth. Equity isn't tangential to our mission. It really is central...it's an opportunity to contribute to a changed future for our community." says Dr. Joe Stefko, President & CEO of ROC2025.

[12:00] "Just" Growth and taking a regional focus - Study and book:
http://justgrowth.org/

[13:00] Other cities we can learn from and benchmarking against our peer metros

[19:30] The impacts of COVID and Black Lives Matter on the 2025 goals

[23:30] Early progress from initial investments of ROC2025

Strategic Pillars (in collaboration with other Rochester economic development organizations)
[26:00] Talent strategy (with Rochester Chamber) - growing the size of the employable labor pool - both retaining local graduates and creating access and training for middle skills jobs 

[33:00] Business attraction, retention and expansion (with Greater Rochester Enterprise) - 4 out of 5 new jobs are created by jobs that are already here!

[36:30] Support innovation and downtown development (with Rochester Downtown Development Corporation) - mobility, placemaking and growing street-level activity in the urban core

[40:00] Greater ROC regional branding campaign - an opportunity to tell our story in a bold, powerful and audacious way

[43:00] This isn't the first regional branding campaign...what makes this time different?

"This is an open source brand. This is not the ROC2025 story. This is the community's story...Ours is not a region of one story. Everybody seems to have a different lens on what they love about this region. What we've attempted to do is engage the community in building out that story. This will be an ever-evolving story if we do our job right. It will be a story that incorporates diverse voices and diverse perspectives on what makes our region great...or 'Greater.'"

[50:15] How can business leaders get involved

Learn more about ROC2025 at https://www.roc2025.org/ and about the Greater ROC branding campaign at https://greaterroc.com/