Mark Cafferty: Why Inclusive Growth Is Smart Business

Grant Oliphant
Hey, Crystal,

Crystal Page
hi grant. How are you today?

Grant Oliphant
I am good. We just wrapped up a conversation with somebody who I think we're eager to share his perspective with the community. Mark Cafferty, who heads the Economic Development Corporation,

Crystal Page
yeah. I think what people should enjoy from what I know of Mark, is he is just energetic and positive, but also just such a collaborator in the region.

Grant Oliphant
Yeah. So what people should know is the Economic Development Corporation, is an organization that represents major employers in the San Diego region. He's been heading it for 13 years. He's brought a unique perspective, partly informed by his being a dad and caring about the future that his kids will inherit, that comes out partly by his background in workforce development, and then partly by just having a broad worldview about where San Diego sits in the world and what our needs are if we're really going to be the future economy that we want to become.

Crystal Page
and I love that he leads that regional vision. So maybe we should hear from you and him.

Grant Oliphant
Let's dive in and hear from him, and then we'll talk at the back end. Sounds good.

Grant Oliphant
All right. Mark Cafferty, thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me. It is a real pleasure to get to have this conversation. You are one of the people I met when I first came to San Diego. On the right, actually, I'm on my way to town, and were so welcoming and had such a broad view about the city that I couldn't have San Diego. Couldn't have wished for a better introducer.

Mark Cafferty
Thank you. Thank you.

Grant Oliphant
Well, and I found, I found, in the years since, that that is who you are and what you try to be while you're trying to lead a fairly complicated change agenda for the community. But before we get to all of that, why don't we talk a little bit about you and where you came from and how you came into this role. So tell us a little bit about your background. Everybody knows you came from Boston. That's right. That's right, but say a little bit more than I came from.

Mark Cafferty
I was born and raised back in Boston. I actually met my wife back in Boston when she was in grad school, and then she became well, she went to medical school, luckily stayed in Boston, and then she went to medical school on Navy scholarship. So at the time, we knew that she would either be in San Diego or Bethesda. Believe it or not, I actually wanted to go to Bethesda, because that's essentially DC, and I thought I could work in DC for a few years. I was working for a nonprofit that was under the umbrella of the mayor's office, working really closely with the mayor's office, led the mayor Boston summer jobs program in the year 2000 that's the year before we moved to San Diego, and then we came across country, like a lot of folks do, she got her her orders to be in San Diego in in 2001 I thought we'd maybe do three years here as her payback time, and then go back to Boston. My entire family and history was there, and I fell in love with San Diego. I mean, I think, you know, the I appreciate the comments about being someone who is welcoming when people are coming to San Diego. I felt very welcomed coming to San Diego. And part of it was I felt welcomed at a point in time when my wife was in Iraq. So we got here in 2001 and in September 11, happened six months later, and within a year of that, she was in in the deserts in Iraq with the marine first expeditionary force as their doctor, and I had no contact with her. And so you get embraced by the Navy families and embraced by the community in a way I'm not sure you would almost anywhere else. And by the time she got back, I felt like I was just completely in love with San Diego. Had really kind of fallen in love with it during that time, and just always try to do my part to be as welcoming to others as it was to me.

Grant Oliphant
So what was one thing that Boston gave you that you wouldn't have gotten from being raised in San Diego?

Mark Cafferty


Mark Cafferty
the main thing that I think Boston gave me is, in my career, I worked for an amazing individual who just really, he was the former deputy mayor of the city, and he, I think, more than anything, loved having young people from the city come into the organization. Was called the Boston. And Private Industry Council, and really kind of fall in love with service to their community. And so I was just surrounded in those days by just the sharpest and most diverse group of people in Boston, all around the same age, all with a similar civic pride, but coming at it from different places, and Neil just cultivated that in us. And I feel like when I left to come here. There was a pride in doing the sort of work I was able to continue to do here that I'm not sure if I had started working for someone else at that same point my career, I would have, I would have landed on the ground in San Diego the same way.

Grant Oliphant
Yeah. And since you started with the story about your wife, I do want to say a big part of who you are is that your family matters to you, and you organize your life in a way that reflects that. Can you just say a little bit about how, as you think about, we're going to talk about professional issues and regional issues, but why? How does family come to play for you in terms of the work you're doing?

Mark Cafferty
You know, for me, again, really great role modeling. So my parents were both teachers. They both worked, which was rare in my neighborhood, that both both parents worked, was rare in my neighborhood, that both parents had gone to college. They had my sister and I working at a pretty young age. You know, any kind of summer job, child labor job, anything we could find. I think she has me beat. I started working at 14. She started working even younger, I think, with a paper route back in those days. So just I really, I mean, I really was lucky to see my two parents support each other later in their careers. They started as elementary school teachers. Later in their careers, my mom was the Deputy Superintendent of Boston Public Schools, and watching my dad support her in that role was like, maybe she was amazing, but he was amazing supporting her in that role. And so, so to me, that always, that always was something that was that was very, very important to me, and who she was and who she was becoming in the city was really important to me. And again, going back to working for this gentleman named Neil Sullivan at the Boston Private Industry Council in the years when there was some significant reauthorization of the Department of Labor and there was an entirely new part of the work that needed to be created in the city. Neil didn't want to do that work. He loved the youth side. He loved working with organized labor and youth and sort of like civic leaders, but this was going to be running what are now referred to as the One Stop career center network around the country. This was really the adult job training programs. And he worked with this woman years before, and her name was Nancy Snyder. And Nancy, when she came to the organization, she made it really clear, I'll come and do the do the job. I'll be your deputy director, but I'm not working Fridays because I'm going to see my daughter grow up. And that was her, and she said, and you know, I'll do more in four days than anyone else will give you in five. And he was like, done. So I just really felt like again, real early on, way before things like COVID pulled us all out of work, and way before my own personal work life balance was at all what it is today. I just saw great leadership embrace that. And so Neil's message to her, I felt was, you're the best person for this, and whatever you need to do, I'm gonna support it. And so I feel like these days, I mean, my family is super important to me, and everybody says that, and it's true with everyone, but I try to make sure that the people who work around me, you know, know that when I'm leaving, I'll say I'm going to pick I'm going to pick high and Quinn up at school, and then I'll be back at an event later tonight. But I just tonight. But I just always want to make sure they know where I'm going and that it's okay for them to be doing that as well. Because I just think we're we all work a lot of hours, and so I think people should be able to comfortably find the time that they need to do the things that their family need to do.

Grant Oliphant
Such a great message for a leader to convey and yeah, thank you for continuing the role modeling so you arrive here, you you become head of the Workforce Partnership. Took a while. Yes, I'm shortening the bio here for the sake of time, and you know, so that our listeners and viewers can can catch up with the story to present time, but you you had the Workforce Partnership. Obviously, get a lot of exposure to workforce training, issues, challenges that employers face and and job aspirants face, and then eventually you are given the opportunity to lead this organization called the Economic Development Corporation. I always want to call it Council, but tell us a little bit about what the EDC is and what makes it unique in San Diego.

Mark Cafferty
So the EDC has been around for 60 years. Is actually our 60th anniversary this year. That's about the point in time when a lot of economic development organizations were initiated or created. Chambers had been around a lot longer, and chambers has sort of historically been the place that businesses went to to do business with each other. So your law firm might want my printing business and vice versa, and we'd meet through the chamber. Chambers were becoming sort of a political voice for the business community. But. 60 years back, a lot of emerging economies across the country were starting to think, we need somebody who's going out and really marketing the region as a business destination. There were mature economies by then, but a place like San Diego and a whole host of the bigger economies of today, Austin, Seattle, you name it, we weren't big metropolis yet, like economies yet. And I think the thought process, you know, made sense in those days. They thought you would go to other places, convince CEOs in those places that they should move their businesses to low cost Southern California, where we had all kinds of land, right? Those were very different days. And the reality is, in the in the decades that have followed to kind of fast forward in the story. The focus has always been to try to figure out how to amplify and accelerate economic growth in the region. It's taken a lot of years, but I think you know if any economist probably would have told you back then that attraction is not a particularly strong builder of an economy, investing in your small and medium sized businesses, investing in your talent, knowing what your economic assets are, those are the real, transformational things in an economy. And so I think along the way, people started to realize, wow, we're right on the Mexico border. That's a that's a huge asset for us. You know, we're the largest military installation in the nation. That's got to mean something for this defense economy that's growing. We're right on the Pacific, facing Asia. And as as you know, more and more trade was being done in Asia that, you know, bode well for San Diego. But really the, I mean, I would say in a lot of ways, you know, UCSD initiation and, you know, creation is what's now a top tier university side by side with any university on the globe, SDSU, for that matter, and so on. But I think the talent proposition in San Diego for decades now has been what people know and understand makes this economy so great. So the question now is, how do you make sure that it's not just great because you convince the best and brightest from around the world to come in and take work here, but you actually give young people growing up in this in this community an opportunity to thrive here, the same way in small businesses, regardless of what neighborhood they might be in to have access to those big economic anchors, and that's much more of our agenda these days.

Grant Oliphant
For people who may be confused about who sits around the table at the EDC, you mentioned the chamber, and many of the same companies that are members of the chamber are also members of the EDC. So what's the differentiation, and who are those companies?

Mark Cafferty
So big difference has always been, the chambers get, like, 1000s of members, maybe 2500 members or more. We have about 150 investors, as we call them, and they're all employers, and they are all large employers for the most part. So tend to think of the EDC membership as being the largest employers in the region, but using employers very broadly. So that's not just inclusive of Qualcomm and Sempra and, you know, Taylor guitars and and Dexcom and ResMed. That's also our airport, our port, our community colleges, our universities, large philanthropic organizations, increasingly large nonprofit organizations that are serving the community all of our hospitals. So I tend to think that when you look at the 150 or so EDC investors, you have really great cross section of San Diego's economy, like if you look at it and just kind of look across, and you look think geographically for this huge region that we live in, you think bi nationally, for a region that sits on the border, you think of, what are those big anchors that I talked about earlier? Our hope is that that is sort of a that the 150 reflect that as best as possible. And I think that while the chamber continues to be a really great partner of ours and a really great place for people to go to, to meet each other, do business with each other, have access to great networking events, they do really great policy related work, we have listened really closely to these 150 who invest in us, and that's what's led us to initiating rebuilding the World Trade Center in San Diego, and sort of using it as an opportunity to increase global trade for the region, and build a research team that really is analyzing and looking at the the economy on a regular basis and making sure folks in the community have really good access to information and data on the economy. We do a lot of storytelling on the economy, but we try to do that through the lens of really smart and great people working for really great companies. I mean, anyone can market their own EDC and say, you know, we've got a great team that's working really hard for the business community. What everyone can't do is talk about, you know, an amazing scientist who ends her day every day, and goes surfing like, you know, that there's, there's stories about San Diego, or somebody who grew up in on both sides of the border, you know, now leading an institution in San Diego, those stories are what I think the marketing of an economy is all about today, and so we have a team that does that as well. So it's allowed us to really, I mean, work businesses, day in and day out, but it's also allowed us to put some strategies in place that can really move the needle more than just working with a handful of businesses.

Grant Oliphant
So I want to set the table for this next question by describing what I experienced at my very, very first exposure to the EDC. So it was on on my way into town, and I had been invited to your leadership retreat, and there were 40. Or so people in the room and I had just come from a town where I had really been working with your analogous organization, kind of in in Pittsburgh for a lot of years, trying to get them to focus on principles of inclusive growth, so looking at racial dynamics and how they excluded some people and not others, and trying to figure out how to open up the economy more legitimately to more people. And I kind of expected that that would be the battle I might have to fight here, and I walked into a room full of folks who were actively talking about inclusive growth and had goals associated with it, and it nearly blew my mind. I mean, the idea that that San Diego had a business oriented group that was willing to focus on this issue and had named it and had embraced it, seemed highly unusual to me. So can you tell us a little bit about that effort and how you got there

Mark Cafferty
absolutely so yeah, and I remember we intercepted you on your way. We had known we

Grant Oliphant
I really thought it was going to be a thrilling weekend hanging out with a bunch of people at a retreat over a week long.

Mark Cafferty
Known Pete Ellsworth well, and Pete, for those who don't know, is a member of the board at premise, and long has been, but he was a great, I mean, Pete is the notary who signed the original articles of incorporation with EDC 60 years ago.

Grant Oliphant
All roads, yeah, in some ways.

Mark Cafferty
So luckily, through Him, we we got you to come, but, but by then, when you walk, and that was, that was mid, late COVID, you know, we were there was the first time most of us had actually left the region to do anything. We didn't leave to go very far. We were only in Palm Desert, but it was trying to get, like, sort of far enough away where it felt like a leadership trip. Everybody was sort of dying the to be back together. And, you know, for us, at that point in time, we were five ish years into an effort that grew, grew out of really coming to our board and doing what we have to do every year, which is to say, there's 25 of us. You know your your investment allows 25 of us to do this work. Is a this is a huge economy with a million plus jobs in it, to move the needle in that economy. These are the strategies that we think we need to focus on to accomplish the most. And through a partnership with Brookings, which originally started focused on trade, but through a partnership with Brookings, we began to sit around the table with other cities who like us were seeing at that point in time, surging profits, really low unemployment rates. And then all of us could just look around and see huge segments of our population that were not connected to that at all.

Mark Cafferty
And I remember having a conversation with a small business in southeast San Diego, where they said, those big economic anchors that you talk about might as well be four states away, because I just don't get any access to them. And so we began sitting down with some other cities and trying to think, is there a role that an economic development organization can play in creating a more inclusive economic development strategy? Because to be honest, if you look back over the last 60 years, an awful lot of the folks who sit around the table in EDCs, including our own, are people who were part of the the, you know, the lending policies and the economic policies and the education policies that created an exacerbated poverty in very, very bad conditions in cities and urban areas. And remember, we had a banker on the board around that same time that same time that you came to meet with us, and he said, What if we could spend the next 60 years trying to proactively do things the right way? What if we spent the next 60 years disproportionately looking at those places that we've left behind and figure out how we can invest the right way? And I think that inspired a lot of us. Inspired me, coming from a workforce background, I don't ever want to pretend like I had a lot to do with it, but

Mark Cafferty
the one thing I always had in the back of my mind was that the economy for me, my work, had always been through career opportunities for individuals, and so businesses were at the table, yes, but it was can you get access to places that young people, adult workers, people re entering the workforce, hadn't had access to historically, and When you would see places that could do that, you would see those people do really well. And so my thought was, if we can just get people to think that the real economic currency in San Diego, the real economic anchor, is people, then it's not far from getting them to think about who the people are and you know, and how you support the people the right way. And that was around the time, that was where we were at. Around the time that you came, we had just established some big, inclusive goals, some big, hairy, audacious goals, as Jim Collins would call them. We were moving in the right direction, and then COVID hit. And when COVID hit, it changed our work on a dime. We have an investment model where businesses invest in the organization. We almost always are working with businesses that are growing, and suddenly we had major partners who just couldn't invest anymore because they had no idea what their future was going to be like. And every business that we worked with was trying to survive. There was nobody at that point in time coming to us because they had a challenge with growth. They had a challenge with keeping their doors open. So we had to completely change the paradigm and certify people do different work. So. Around the time that you came, we hadn't quite moved out of that. But what we had learned during COVID, and a lot of people said, Well, why don't you just you probably should just sweep those inclusive programs aside and just focus on this. What we learned during COVID is the very populations that we had talked about needing to focus on were the ones who were disproportionately impacted by COVID.

Grant Oliphant
The thing you were doing was the very secret, absolutely right? Building, yeah,

Mark Cafferty
famously, you know, I remember we asked a board member of ours, a kind of conservative builder in San Diego, should we double down on these goals? And he said, We should triple down on these goals. That's, that's where we're at right now.

Grant Oliphant
So three years later, you just had a leadership retreat. I was there again, and I have to say it was, well, it was a lot more fun for me because I actually knew people in the room this time, but it was a sobering meeting and also an uplifting meeting. So can you tell us a little bit about what you heard in that retreat,

Mark Cafferty
absolutely, we first. It's probably important to note we had started plant so every year our organization, we started doing a series of leadership trips, pre COVID, but around the time where we were really focused on inclusion, to try to see other cities that were trying to do the same thing. And it may not be that their EDC was doing the same thing. It might have been led by philanthropy. It might have been led by their Mayor's office or their chamber. Their chamber, but those leadership trips were really helpful. And then when COVID hit, we didn't travel. Obviously, during COVID, we had that we had a retreat to kind of level set again, and when we came out of that retreat, we did two leadership trips that were fine, but we weren't. We weren't in that cohort with Brookings anymore. We weren't, we didn't know who the people in other cities were who were doing this work, so we're trying to find them. And it was hit or miss. So we'd go to a city, it would be an interesting city to see. We'd meet some interesting people, but you didn't leave really feeling like our people, our equivalents, were around the table, telling us what the strategy looked like in that place. So our current chair, Jenny Brooks, who's been been chair for three years, amazing person, thought maybe in her last act, we should do a retreat again, and we should really think we're five years out from these 2030 goals that we've set. And for anyone who doesn't follow our work closely, our 2030 goals are tied to really, the three things that I think any economic development organization should be focused say a little bit about whether they do or not. The first is training more skilled workers. Is getting more people, in particular, young people of color in this community, trained for the career opportunities that are growing in San Diego. And we can identify those opportunities, and we know what degrees and programs get you there, and then we can look at the huge mismatches we have, and who's enrolling in those programs and who's getting access to those jobs. The second is creating more quality jobs in our small businesses. And that one's confusing to people by title, but where that that goal comes from is San Diego is 98% small businesses. And that sounds like a huge number that actually it's bigger than it is in most places, because almost 70% of our overall workforce, 65% of our overall workforce is employed in small businesses, and the small businesses struggle to compete with the bigger businesses. So oftentimes someone works there. They can't compete with the wages of the bigger businesses. They can't compete with a lot of the benefits, and they lose folks to the bigger players. And so you can just say to businesses, increase your wages, offer better benefits. But if the business is struggling to do that, what are the strategies that some of us need to be responsible for to help them do that? So it's not just creating new jobs, it's creating more jobs in small businesses, so that people are getting paid higher wages, they're getting access to benefits, and they don't need to leave to go to bigger places in order to succeed. The third goal is creating 75,000 new thriving households in this region between now and 2030 that doesn't sound like a big number. It's almost a shameful goal, because if we do that successfully, that will mean that only 51% of our households in San Diego are thriving. So if there's 75,000 new thriving households by a national household index that we look at, and that doesn't mean that that that doesn't mean that half of our region is living at poverty, but it means that to be thriving, you can pay all of your bills. You can pay for the education expenses of your children, you can pay for your medical expenses, you can have some money left over so that you can invest or or lead a quality life. And right now, not even 50% of our residents in this county live at that level. So that goal is to remind us that just to get to a majority of 75,000 new thriving households, to get to a place where all San Diego is a thriving is just something we have to never stop pursuing. So though that's where those those goals come from, and for us, you know, you were coming into the first retreat when we had established them and we were trying to figure out, how do we stay on track? This last retreat was for us to sit down and say, Are we still on track? And the thing that let

Grant Oliphant
me just interrupt you to say that so the goal with the 51% is, is the 75,000 new households and the 51 Percent is just simply to get to the majority of households and a feasible goal, and you control exactly what levers of power to make that happen? Not a lot. Yeah, I think this is a really important Yeah, this is so you control any

Mark Cafferty
we I don't. Here's where I think we have here's where I think we have power in that. Yeah, so while there's only 150 investors in EDC, that 150 investors probably employ fully a third of our workforce. So if we could galvanize them the right way, if we could, if we can, could, could do something collectively, there can be great impact there. The the bigger part that you're getting at, and why I asked you to actually speak at the end of the retreat, was what we're trying to get across to folks is, these are our regional goals. The only way we get there is through this flywheel effect. The only way that we get there is if cities and philanthropic organizations and universities and businesses are all coming to us to say, you know, here's the part that we can do, here's what we can do at our university to try to make sure that we're meeting those goals. And as you saw in the closing panel that we had when we had the retreat, we had asked one of you from each of those worlds to sort of come forward and talk about what that looked like, in hopes of getting the other folks who are in the room to realize that when they leave a retreat and they're inspired, a lot of them will say, Well, what do I do now? And what we want them to realize is, whether you are running a medium sized business or community college, whatever it might be, you have some places where you can lead, and you can lead in a direction that continues to move us towards these goals.

Grant Oliphant
Yeah, and my point in asking the question was, in part to get to that, but also just really to draw out. You know, we don't use this term as much anymore, but what you're leading is a coalition of willing, and there is no power that you have to wave your magic wand and say, okay, it will be. So it's to try and build a movement.

Mark Cafferty
No, I agree. I agree. And that's, I think that's how the only way that we can compete in San Diego.

Grant Oliphant
So I think what's interesting is those three goals that you articulated remain as relevant today as they were when you set out to do them, but the mood at this last retreat was different, very different. So talk a little bit about that.

Mark Cafferty
Yeah, I remember saying at one point during the retreat that when we were looking at some progress we'd made over the last four years, I felt the need to remind people we'd made that progress in a nation and then a world, in a lot of ways, where an emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion was embraced and supported and fostered. We're now entering into a chapter, and I don't have to tell folks in great detail where that's not the case anymore, where we're in a very, very different, in a lot of ways, tragic situation, in my mind, in the sense that a lot of the very progress that was made is being erased. A lot of the as we heard at that retreat, and I thought, you know, articulated so well from individuals in the room, people's identity is being erased. People's History is being erased. And so you you go from having sort of an emphasis on these goals, where most folks around you are also rowing in the same direction, to suddenly having everyone around you wanting to row in the same direction. And you heard this during the retreat, many saying, and I want to fight back. I just don't know if I can, because if I do, it could mean us losing all this funding. It could mean us losing all this these jobs. Would mean we can't support and serve the community that we serve. And so all around us were, to me, many of the best leaders in San Diego across all kinds of different walks of life, all articulating how much of a struggle it is to make sure they continue to focus on the things that they've been focused on, also encouraging us as an organization not to stop focusing on it. I mean, that was the thing that I thought was really moving for me was not one person in there saying to us, and I think the EDC should pump the brakes at all. In fact, in a lot of ways, people were saying, you can speak in a way that a government funded entity cannot. You can speak in a way right now that universities and community colleges might not be able to without facing some consequences. And we feel that that's right.

Mark Cafferty
We feel that that's part of what we're supposed to be as a voice for the business community. And I think being the voice for the right things at the right times is really all that matters. You know, being a voice for telling folks how great your economy is when it's really not doesn't accomplish anything. Being honest and authentic about what the opportunities might be and what the challenges are is that's what I've learned from the very best people in this line of work,

Grant Oliphant
and thank you for that I am I'm just struck by how unusual it is to hear that from somebody in a position like yours. So I really appreciate your leadership. It just underscores why I wanted to have mark here to talk with us help people who may be struggling with this anyway, to understand, you know, because I can imagine some people saying, well, look, you know, this is, this is the, the agenda you, you marked out, you know, in the in the language of some in our culture right now would be considered woke. And you. Right, and it could be waved away and dismissed based on that. Why is it more than just wokeness to care about opening up pipelines of opportunity to young people who otherwise might not be able to get them to create jobs that actually help people maintain families, to help households begin to thrive in a way that they're not help help folks who may be struggling with this issue to understand why that is important for business or for a

Mark Cafferty
region. So it's interesting. I've been thinking a lot. I've been thinking a lot about words lately and what has happened with them, but if we strip it all away, I mean, my take on it is in any walk of life.

Mark Cafferty
You know, diversity means at its core, lots of people from lots of different backgrounds, lots of things that are different. And there's a belief. Not everybody may believe this, but there is a there is a really, really strong set of data to back up that the more diversity of thought you have around you, the more diversity of experiences you have around you, whatever outcome you're seeking, you'll find a better outcome. It's almost universal that you can find data that will tell you that. So just having folks with different backgrounds, you know, equity, just wanting everybody to have the same access. I mean, who can't be for that? Who's Who's not for that? So if you're not for equity, what are you for? I mean, and so when people want to go after that word, it's mind blowing to me. And then inclusion, it means just welcoming people in, you know, when I came to this region, and you came to this region like, you know, the thing that we both took away was it was a welcoming place. It's not a welcoming place for everybody. And so when you're not willing to support those things, I don't know what you stand for. And then when you throw in a word, like, woke, I mean, to me, woke at the end of the day is a word that is being trivialized today, and it's a word that, for the longest time has just meant aware, you know, aware of what's going on and so, so thinking of all those things to me personally, if we're if we were just looking purely at the data, and I were to show you the demographics of who the young People in this region are right now, in the demographics of our most high paying industries, the ones that should power us long into the future, you would see right away that the young people in our schools, by way of race and ethnicity, do not look at all like the people who are powering those industries right now. And if those industries are going to thrive in the future, they have to be figuring out how they make that transition, and there are lots of us who can help to facilitate that transition. The community colleges are a remarkable facilitator of that transition. Large nonprofits that have worked with the education system and communities in San Diego have been doing economic development for decades. What a lot of them will say to me is we've just really been waiting for the employers to come to the table, so the fact that the EDC can pull the employers in a little bit closer to that work makes it stronger. All of the leaders and sort of warriors on that front are out there. And right now I feel like I responsibility on me, for me personally, the responsibility I put on my own shoulders is I've been put into a role to speak for the business community. I've been put into a role to speak for large employers. And so I've got to take that more seriously now than ever. And if I look around and I think that those goals that we set, you know now six ish years ago was sort of kind of started on a climb towards them six ish years ago are still the right goals. We have to be, think we have to be speaking on this more more than ever right now. And I think there's, there is no way of getting to the economic future that we want in San Diego, and it being successful without doing that through inclusion. There's just absolutely no way wecould do

Grant Oliphant
I think that last point was the was the one I really wanted to get at, because you're not getting pushback from the people around your table and the business leaders, because they know to create the economy that or to feed the economy that San Diego has created, we have to do that through a fair playing field and through an inclusive economy,

Mark Cafferty
absolutely. Andif they're thinking of customers, it's a more diverse base of customers. So they're thinking of suppliers, it's a more diverse base of suppliers, and the workforce is all the things that we've already talked about.

Grant Oliphant
I also recall from from being around the table in that recent retreat, there was a strange mix of despair and and inspiring resolve. You know, I think people were absolutely determined to stick to their guns about doing the right thing as they saw the right thing and and what they saw as the right thing is very much along the lines of of what we're talking about. I think it is also true that parts of San Diego's economy are being made vulnerable by this in ways that we can't deny. Absolutely so if you if you can't talk about women in medical research and can't Research Women's Health, then suddenly your leadership in that becomes vulnerable. If you, if you are subject to random and massive cuts in medical research, you're not going to be a medical research global leader any longer play that out across healthcare and other areas of the work. How worried are you about the precarity of San Diego's economy in the present environment, given what we're experiencing coming out of Washington?

Mark Cafferty
Very, very worried and, and I think that's the part that that's the part that worries me the most. I'm a big believer that the arc of the moral universe is long, but bends towards justice and but there is a point in time that we're in right now where what could be lost at universities, what could be lost in organizations that have been doing scientific research and medical research, just as you talked about what that then does to populations who are relying on clinical trials and and grant opportunities to really try to make sure that the health and well being and understanding of what's needed in communities is still, is still at the forefront. That is all being jeopardized right now, and San Diego disproportionately so so much of our work is beholden to the government. In the federal government, I think, for folks who don't realize that, in San Diego, when you look at our largest industry, being defense, almost entirely beholden to the that one's pretty obvious.

Mark Cafferty
But when you look at biotech and technology, which people get excited about, so much of that is beholden to medical and scientific and technological research, so much of that is federal in nature, and so much of the work that people are striving for, it takes so long for those breakthroughs to occur that it's not likely at all that other sources of capital can lean in and fill that. And that's what governments are for, right? This is what this is the role historically that that this government has supposedly played better than any but that's the role that governments play, and that's that's what's at jeopardy right now. And you wrap the trade and the just sort of the International tone into that, and it makes things challenging, and at times it seems like it's all consuming. I think, I think the great thing about that retreat and some other events that you and I have been to since is that despite that, you still see the resolve, you know, of people who feel like they know what they've got to do a little differently. And you heard, you heard several people saying, if I've got to tweak a few things, I'll do that. If I have to speak about something a different way for a while, I'll do that just to make sure that I'm, you know, continuously able to do the work that we're doing. But but with each passing day I worry the most about our universities, our major public universities, and what they've come to mean to this region. And so much of that, so much of that, really under attack right now. Yeah,

Grant Oliphant
and there's no sugar coating that. So I think we'll just, we'll just leave that and acknowledge that it's a reality that the region is dealing with and and will continue to deal with, and yet, we have some amazing strengths. And I think that's also part of what I hear a lot from people, is despite these struggles, the strengths of the region are still the strengths of the region. One of those is the fact that we are a binational region, tri national region, really, when you include the tribal nations that are here, talk a little bit about how you see that strength, even in an era where we have a contested border policy, how that redounds to our favor as a region.

Mark Cafferty
Oftentimes, when people ask me what I think the most special thing about San Diego is, I almost feel bad because I sort of default to another country, but the proximity to Mexico, what I've learned about San Diego, and so much of the so much of it through a binational lens, is really astonishing. And so much of the country does not understand that, and they don't understand it culturally, for sure, they do not understand it economically. There are lawmakers in Washington, DC who don't even understand a fraction of it, and yet they are. They're coming up with new policies by the day that will be detrimental to the nation's economy. But I do think the strength lies in sort of the the ongoing resilience and the border is fascinating to me in that at some point in time, it was actually Japanese and Asian businesses that came and invested south of the border, because they knew that they could do manufacturing there, and they'd have the skilled workforce to do it at a reduced cost, and then they could do whatever they needed to do, whether it was distribution or whether it was R and D on the US side of the border, and have a US footprint as well. It was Asia who taught us that. And now, when I came to San Diego 21 years ago, 24 years ago, it was, it was really the the thought was, well, low cost manufacturing on one side of the border, really important, r, d on the other side of border. That's what the that's what the binational picture looks like. If you fast forward to today, there are more engineers graduating in Mexico than there are in the United States. And so yes, we have businesses that are here in this region because they can do R D on one side of the border, and now increasingly advanced manufacturing on the other side of the border, but you have an entire industry that has sprung up where where software engineers and folks with really great technology backgrounds. Are doing work for San Diego based companies in Tijuana, while they're also maintaining a workforce in San Diego.

Mark Cafferty
And that's making it's making our region more valuable to them because of its proximity to Mexico. There's other parts of the world. They could be outsourcing that world to that work to but they want to do it there, because they know that the talent is here and the talent is there. And so I think the binational talent is, is, you know, really, really, at the end of the day, the competitive advantage for San Diego. one of the most wonderful things for me coming from a city like Boston, which has, you know, is a diverse city, and has folks who come from everywhere, but you don't live near a border. So if you meet someone who is Haitian, and they came in at a particular point in time, or if you meet someone who's Cape Verdean. They came in from very far away, and you don't really see what that experience felt like for them, except when they've arrived in the city. And when you are here, you meet people every day who literally grew up on both sides of the border. And it happens all the time, and leaders in this community who went to school on one side of the border had family on the other side went to college. On one side went back to work. On the other every walk of life in San Diego, I come across people who grew up on both sides of this border and are proud of that and really sort of embrace that. And I feel like there is an element of that that strengthens San Diego's economy and culture in a pretty significant way. There's a pride that runs through that. So to me, right now, you know, the with the universities under fire, they'll weather this. It's going to be really, really hard, but they'll weather this. And with certain industries, you know, trying to figure out how they pivot and change that, they'll weather this as well. I just really feel like it's the spirit of the people who are here. And so much of that, to me, is anchored in the binational identity of the region.

Grant Oliphant
I love that answer, and it and it reflects a truth about you, which I've observed, which is that you are very good at staying focused over time, and you adhere to a set of values, and you try and keep your organization focused on that set of values. You have spoken in other contexts about fire drills that you see companies subject to and and that's a fact of life. I mean, you know, new things come up. We panic, we we run to adjust. We think that's the the crisis du jour. So how do you keep the folks around your table focused on the long term and not subject to fire drills. Yeah, it's

Mark Cafferty
hard today. It's the hardest. I think it's been in my 13 years at EDC, but it's the same strategy. We really just try to listen to folks, and we try to figure out where the amazing thing in San Diego as well is when folks come to us and they have a challenge. And they have a challenge, and let's say the challenge is we need to we now need to change, and we need to do manufacturing closer to here than we're within. We've been doing it before. The great thing about San Diego is, through us, through through our small, little organization, we seem to be a phone call or two away from someone who can deal with that very issue. And so there's always sort of this network that allows you to sort of leverage the weight of the business community and the community around you to really sort of make sure that you're helping others, you know, when they need it. And during COVID, when some businesses were struggling, significantly others were doing well, like others were actually in that moment, needed more than ever. And so you would kind of see certain parts of the economy that would balance out others, and then folks that could really kind of help support the other side of the equation. So equation. But I think, you know, right now, what's harder about it is how purposeful the fire drills are and how unnecessary the fire drills are. And if we had eight or two, if you and I had eight or 10 businesses, it feels more like arson, yeah, really, really true, right? It feels like, you know, I'm going to set the fires and I'm going to put them out and I'm going to take the credit for putting them out, and then I'm gonna light another one the next day. And so, but we had 10 businesses in the room, and they were all around the table with us, and you said, Are you experiencing any challenges because of what's happening in Washington? If they were being honest, every single one of them would say yes to us, and they would share immediately the things that were, you know, the most challenging for them. Some of them are quieter about it because they're concerned. And just the fact that that folks are concerned makes it worse, right? Like the thought that, like, if you speak out against this stuff, that someone's going to find your quote on a website somewhere and come after you. If you are you speak out on a college campus, someone's literally going to come find you and try to send you back to, you know, a country that you may have come from a long time ago, and those things just don't seem American at all, you know, horribly so and and yet they're happening all around us right now. So I feel like what we're trying to do is, you know, is try to stay focused. And we're trying to stay focused with people on those three goals, right like,

Mark Cafferty
even as things change, are we training enough young people for the jobs of today and tomorrow, and if those jobs are changing, and if certain industries are more vulnerable than others, are we pivoting the right way? And are we communicating with the educators who do that work to make sure? Are we helping small businesses as they suddenly might see a. A customer base change for them, or they their business, or an industry that they're supplying, suddenly tightening up. Are we helping them redirect to other places and at the end of the day, is it all leaving, leading to more people who can live and thrive in San Diego?

Mark Cafferty
You know, economies go up and down. You know, recessions happen. Worse can happen. You know, we've lived through COVID. We're living through this now, and, you know, we'll get out on the other side stronger for it. I believe that. But if we take our eyes off of those goals, or if we start thinking, well, we'll delay them, we'll push them off, we don't get there. And I think, you know, and that's, that's where I think mistakes get made, is when we've identified what needs to be done to really help a population in a region thrive long into the future, no matter what the circumstances are around us. We have to stay focused on that.

Grant Oliphant
So I has. I hesitate to bring up the word tariffs, because the situation will have certainly changed by the time, probably by the time that I'm talking right so, but small businesses are uniquely susceptible to tariffs, and San Diego has this interesting dynamic, because we are a border city where we have products moving back and forth across the border multiple times as they're being assembled. Absolutely built. Are you hearing about that from the businesses that you represent?

Mark Cafferty
Absolutely yeah, you know, Nakia Clark from our team. Well, she leads our World Trade Center and lots of other initiatives for the organization. She is being asked daily, if not more than daily, to speak on this. And the challenge is, you know, speaking on Tuesday, and then seeing what Wednesday has coming. And now, if you then step out of that role and just say, well, she's an economic thinker and advisor if you're running a business. And you know, I think what you want about businesses, large and small, the reality is, for any of us, if we were running a business, the certainty and understanding is what really and so in we all know that things change, markets change people, change behaviors, change technology changes, but having sort of that certainty and understanding is what allows you, year in and year out, to figure out how many people you can employ, what you can pay them, what the costs of things are going to be for your business, you know, in all aspects of it, and when you are changing that for people daily, or changing it and then pretending like it's not really going to impact them, like these, All these costs are going to be absorbed by someone. Absorbed by someone else, when anyone who runs these businesses knows that's not the case at all. We had, I mean, we had a company in San Diego, and day that we were meeting with US Senator saying we have trucks idling on both sides of the border, going in both directions. None of the drivers, knowing if they can even pass, should pass. If they're going to, there's going to be tariffs and fees applied or not, and that's stuff that people are dealing with every day, you know. And it's not just in the big technology companies and the big biotech companies, but people who are just, you know, working in, you know, day to day products that we all sort of take for granted, that people do not realize. Have, you know, components being put into them on both sides of the border, you know, and crossing the border in both directions multiple times. And when you live in a border economy, you see that and feel that every day. You can point to the very companies that are doing that. And in the rest of the country, when people you know sort of celebrate policies they know very little about, they're going to see the impact, and they're going to feel the impact in their households, and then we're seeing it already across the nation, and it's not good.

Grant Oliphant
So I think two cardinal rules of getting through a time like we're dealing with now are speak the truth about what you see at which you model and you just have and the second is focus on the things that you can control, which you clearly are continuing to do by maintaining your focus on the inclusive growth goals for the region, which you still see as valuable. I want to end this on a, on a on a positive note. And thank you for your leadership, but I tell us about what gives you hope right now and and fills you with inspiration about the region

Mark Cafferty
people, right? I mean, it's just, I mean, the what I see, and I will tell you this, I was the Kyoto Prize Symposium here in San Diego not long ago. For those of people who don't know what that is, it's prize is given out to great, great leaders in math and science and engineering in the arts, but they also give out three scholarships to San Diego based students and three to Tijuana based students. And hear those young people stand up on stage at 17 years old and talk about what they are working on right now, where they've been accepted to school, why a loss in their family caused them at 14 years old to start figuring out how to find out a cure if a particular disease, how climate change and the fires in LA and poverty in Mexico, whatever it may be, is caused them as young people, the smartest of the young people around us, to really say, I'm going to go off to Harvard or Stanford or UCSD or wherever it may be, and I'm going to solve this issue, is inspiring. I think. Think, you know, when I see lots of people say, Oh, the generations that are coming behind us, the generations that are coming up behind us, are probably going to succeed where my generation has failed. And I say that, you know, with great respect for leaders who I have worked with for a long, long time, but I just really draw a lot of hope from what I see and hear in young people. And I will, and I'll also say, you know, you and I were at the TED conference recently, and there was a moment in there where there was a gentleman who was presenting, and he started his presentation by walking through how the news is presented to us and how so much of it is designed and it's it is really kind of reinforced by what's negative. But he ended by saying, if you just stop and sweep all that away, and I was to tell you, all of these things are happening in the world right now. If I had told you that 10 years ago, you would have thought all of these things were the biggest breakthroughs ever. These would be some of the most important moments in history, and they're happening right now, and we're letting all this drown it out. And so those are the people who inspire me, because they just remind me that they're right, you know, that they're right. And then that's what's great about doing this work, but it's also what's great about just humanity and and that's what inspires me.

Grant Oliphant
Well, Mark, we we sped through this time. I actually your mention of the TED talk is a perfect place to wrap up, because that story, I loved that talk, and it was, yeah, he talked bluntly about the terrible news, and you can buy into that story, but he also told the story of the amazing news, and we can create that story. And I just want to thank you for being on that side of the ledger and the focus that you're bringing to the work here in San Diego. I really appreciate it. I appreciate the positivism. And yes, we will get through this.

Mark Cafferty
I agree, and thank you. Same to you.

Grant Oliphant
Well, we covered a lot of ground. Mark still has a little bit of Boston in him in terms of how quickly he can talk and cover territory. What were your takeaways?

Crystal Page
Well, I appreciated that you both started with the personal and the fact that he prioritizes his family, because that's what drives him. I just thought that was a very humanizing moment. So that's the first thing that stood out to me,

Grant Oliphant
and that's who he is too. You know, you learn very quickly in dealing with Mark that that's the type of leader he is. So when he was talking about that, that was genuine. I think it also mirrors the messages that you hear coming out of EDC. It's very much a business oriented organization. It focuses on what the needs of business are, but it is able to do it through a really uniquely human lens, and it's what struck me when I first came here three years ago and encountered mark in that retreat that we talked about that, wow, this region is willing to talk about the importance of equity and inclusion to creating a future that will actually sustain the type of economy that we need, right? And and share it with everyone,

Crystal Page
yeah. And I love when you two talked about the the uniqueness of the funding mechanism here, versus other places where it's primarily government funded, because it seems like it does allow for the freedom for them to engage in a different way,

Grant Oliphant
yeah. And maybe that's partly why this happens, but I think people in San Diego should be proud of the fact that this is a fairly unique approach for an EDC to take, or an analysis this type of organization to take, that the really understanding that the Secret to Building the economy of the future, even at a regional level, is making sure that young people are able to access the jobs that will exist and that that will allow them to prosper, and making sure that more of those jobs are actually at family sustaining wages, and then making sure that households can thrive through things like managing housing costs and so forth. We use lots of fancy words for that, and sometimes in the national debate right now. And Mark was so clear and good on this, you know the there's so much debate over diversity, equity, inclusion, but he spelled each of those out. And I would challenge anybody who thinks at all in terms of either economic goals or or fairness, why that approach doesn't make sense. You know, it just clearly makes tremendous sense for our region.

Crystal Page
I think that that's right, and just the way he asked the question, like, is anyone against equal access or access for everyone? And I would hope no one says no to that. No one says yes to that, or no. You know what? I mean, yeah. Well, I mean,

Grant Oliphant
I do, you know we are, I mean, let's face it, we're in this weird time. Yeah, and, but I think what I really. Really appreciated about mark in this conversation. And I said it to him is, it's important to be honest and tell the truth about what you're seeing. He's very honest about who he is and what his organization's agenda is and what he is seeing as threats to that. That's really key. And the other thing that I said to him was, I also appreciate that he focuses on the piece of this that we in San Diego can affect, so we in San Diego can affect fairness and including everyone, and opening up these pipelines of opportunity and and not getting picked off base because of an unproductive national conversation that is trying to demonize people using labels rather than real actions and real outcomes,

Crystal Page
right? Well, and just to build off of that even more, it gave me pause when you all talked about the competitive edge being that we're bi national we get a double pool of talent from both sides of the border. I think all of these things, these are not only our competitive edge, but it allows us to to model what's possible when people actually want to work together.

Grant Oliphant
Well, you know, one, one thing that struck me crystal when he was talking about that, and thank you for drawing attention to it, is so much of what is positive also presents challenges when you're dealing with the type of change and chaos that we're dealing with right now. But being on the border is long term, a net asset for San Diego. The culture of this place is informed by it. The businesses are informed by it, and ultimately, the country that we're a part of is strengthened by having access to that cross pollination that happens, but it does present unique challenges at a time when the meaning of that border and the nature of trade relationships is so hotly contested. Yeah,

Crystal Page
my brain goes so many places on that Grant. You know, it makes me want us to work with Mark to have, like, a San Diego commercial that's like, double your city, double your fun, like the double mid commercial at San Diego. But I just really appreciated the thoughtfulness that he approaches our economy with. I think you and he both are in that same vein, and I hope we continue to drill down into this conversation more.

Grant Oliphant
Yeah, well, I think inevitably we will. We probably just scratched the surface with Mark in terms of this, and I think that what what we're going to be learning over the next few months and years are some hard lessons about how dependent we are on each other and on the world, and ultimately, I've got to believe it will make us better because of people like Mark, leaning into those spaces where developing connections and and the interdependencies that we have will ultimately make us stronger, even if we're struggling with it now,

Crystal Page
I think that's a beautiful final thought to to end this episode of stop and talk with All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Grant Oliphant
This is a production of the Prebys Foundation,

Crystal Page
hosted by Grant Oliphant

Grant Oliphant
co hosted by Crystal page

Crystal Page
CO produced by Crystal page and Adam Greenfield,

Grant Oliphant
engineered by Adam Greenfield,

Crystal Page
production coordination by Tess Karesky,

Grant Oliphant
video production by Edgar Ontiveros Medina.

Crystal Page
Special thanks to the Prebys Foundation team.

Grant Oliphant
The stop and talk theme song was created by San Diego's own Mr. Lyrical groove.

Crystal Page
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai