CEOs for Cities produces additional insights for urban leaders through access to speeches on urban issues, city slide shows and other key reflections from CEOs for Cities President and CEO Carol Coletta.

 

December 2007

Speech: Our Cities Matter

Carol Coletta, CEOs for Cities President and CEO, spoke to a gathering of 400 at a Community Challenge Town Hall meeting in Flint, Michigan. This speech delivered the message that cities are the solution to the most urgent challenges our nation faces, and that the fate of Flint is important. Click here
to view the speech in its entirety.

 

November 2007 | talented

CityOpportunities

Central cities are now a location preference for both young talented workers and people in creative occupations. And, increasingly, families with children are opting for cities and forgoing the suburbs. Urban leaders need to recognize and capitalize on these favorable trends in cities. Carol Coletta presented this slide show illustrating these opportunities at the IDA conference in New York. A full copy of her speech can be found here.

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October 2007

Smart Networking in a Global World

How can cities network themselves to success? That’s the question we posed to Sean Safford, Robin Chase and Tara Lemmey during “Smart Networking in a Global World” panel at our National Meeting in Chicago. Read the summary of their remarks here.

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October 2007

Remixing Cities Keynote

In his latest work, Remixing Cities, Charles Leadbeater explores how co-creation and innovation can transform public services and unleash the talents of all citizens. Charlie spoke to CEOs for Cities' members last month at our National Meeting in Chicago about the concept of co-creation and mass creativity. His full remarks can be downloaded here.

Although innovation is typically believed to come from special people in special places, most innovations are social, collaborative and cumulative. If you want an innovative city, you have to create the conditions for cumulative, collaborative combinations of people across sectors.

And innovation matters because delivering what people want is getting more difficult.

Think about the qualities of the city that Joe Cortight was talking about yesterday -- variety, discovery, opportunity, convenience. Does anyone here have a Discovery Department? Where is your Commission of Variety? These are highly intangible qualities that we don’t have institutions or policies to deliver. And yet, they’re part of what cities are held accountable for.

People want cities to be safe, clean, vibrant, friendly, and open. None of these are qualities that we have departments to deliver, and yet mayors are held responsible for these highly intangible things.

You cannot deliver a safe city in the way that you can deliver a pizza or a package from UPS. Good policing is a vital part of it, but it's not enough.

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October 2007

National Meeting Reflections: Part 1

CEOs for Cities National Meeting, September 25-26, Chicago
Summary of Discussion on Connecting Low Wage Workers to the Global Economy
Meeting sponsored in part by a generous gift from Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

Julia Lane
Senior Vice President for Economics, Labor and Population Studies
National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago

Change is the defining characteristic of the U.S. economy. Change stems from globalization, deregulation and competition.

There is an enormous amount of reallocation that goes on in the economy. About one in 20 establishments opens or goes out of business every quarter. One in 13 jobs is destroyed or created. One in four job spells either begins or ends. So there are huge amounts of turmoil. But economic turbulence is a driving force of productive growth.

Research shows that high wage, high quality, low-turnover firms are more likely to survive than low-wage firms. Middle age people who are able to stay in the same job seem to do better than people who don’t. (However, for younger workers, job hopping seems to pay off.)

Persistence pays off: Most workers who stay in the labor market are able to improve their career paths through changing jobs, until they finally land on a relatively good job ladder. For low-wage workers in particular, job placement with high-wage, high quality, low-turnover firms (vs. low-wage firms) makes a huge difference.

Where you work (firm, industry) can be more important than education level.

“Creative Destruction” is natural, but there probably needs to be some transition assistance for workers caught up in turbulence

Not all low-wage jobs are created equal. Compelling evidence suggests that temporary help jobs and jobs in health services can provide a learning pathway to more high-wage work.

See Julia Lane’s slides here.

Elliott Brown
Founder and President
Springboard Forward

A lot of things are not working for low-wage workers, but a few things are. Springboard has a vision that entry-level jobs in the fast-growing services industries can be springboards to successful careers.

The Wisconsin-based nonprofit’s strategy is to get companies to hire career coaches for its lowest paid employees to create for them career plans independent of their employers. These career plans essentially ask workers what they want to be when they grow up, based on their dreams and passions. The intent is to turn the job into an opportunity to fulfill those passions, rather than a dead-end.

The idea is based on something called “engaged employment.” Springboard’s experience shows that employees remain with their employers longer because of the value coaches add and the improved measures of engagement that result.

Linda Gibbs
Deputy Mayor, Health and Human Services
New York City

New York City’s workforce reforms began with the city taking all of its employment services and workforce development and putting them into the city’s business development agency. Although the combination was a “really, really tough change” to make, according to Linda, the outcomes have been very good, with a “tremendous increase in the number of successful job placements.”

In New York, Small Business Services works with local business partners to create one-stop centers throughout the city. “When you walk in, on the blackboard, there is a list of local employers and who’s hiring today.” The centers have developed relationships with those employers and established a reputation with them, so that now the human resource people at employers are calling the centers saying, “I’ve got 12 openings this week, and this is what I need.” Then job coaches are working with individuals walking through the door and matching them to opportunities. Job coaches are also using their own skills to bring together support services they can add to the people coming in seeking employment. Some walk-ins are immediately employable. But others need some kind of skill development and training. Others need work support in the form of public benefits, so coaches work hard to take public benefits and wrap them around would-be workers.

The strategies of Small Business Services have been listening to local employers, looking at local employment trends, looking at the growth sectors and where increases in employment are anticipated, and then working at an individual level to make those matches. And increasingly, SBS is looking not just at that initial job placement but also helping with worker retention and advancement, encouraging companies to invest in their workers so that people stay in jobs longer and successfully.

New York has opened three sector-focused workforce development centers. The city is also matching dollar for dollar employer-sponsored training grants, in an effort to invest in the workforce for stability.

The work of the SBS is measured, in part, against the city’s larger goal of reducing poverty by focusing on key populations, specifically disconnected youth, the very hard to employ, and prisoners reentering the community. Getting SBS to accept that as their job, rather than just making the quickest employer-employee matches, is a new challenge the City of New York is now tackling.

New York also views its community college system as a fundamental piece of the solution to connecting low-skilled workers to the global economy.

To combat the very low graduation rate (20%) at City University New York, CUNY has set a goal of graduating 50% of the 1000 Fall enrollees in three years and 75% in four years. The structure that Chancellor Mike Goldstein has developed to meet those goals is to assure students on the day they enter CUNY that they can get all their classes, do all their work, complete all of their projects and take their exams during a defined time period of the week – morning, afternoon, evening or weekend. With that guarantee, students can commit to a job schedule.

Robert Giloth
Director of Family Economic Success
The Annie E. Casey Foundation

Employer-driven, sector-based partnerships to train and hire workers show promising results in connecting people to better jobs and in advancing careers. Key to these partnerships are having employers or industry sectors at the center with community colleges and other nonprofits playing supporting roles, but all focused on career advancement. Skillworks, developed by Paul Grogan and the Boston Foundation, is a model for this kind of partnership. The Boston Foundation has put together $15 million to invest in these industry partnerships, which now include healthcare, building service and auto repair.

A national fund of $50 million called National Fund for Workforce Solutions has just been announced to emulate the Skillworks approach in 10 cities (with hopes of going to 30 cities and some rural areas). The ambition is to reshape how America invests in workforce development.

If the industry partnerships focus on industries and operate regionally, then Center for Working Families focus on families and operate at a neighborhood level. CWF attempts to bundle and sequence workforce development and work supports, including EITC, access to affordable financial services and wealth-creating activities. Evaluations show that this bundled services approach is working.

Maria Hibbs
Executive Director
The Partnership for New Communities

All unemployed people do not have the same experiences or the same needs. Opportunity Chicago, responsible for placing Chicago public housing residents in jobs, segmented residents into three groups: chronically unemployed, sporadically employed and consistently employed. Then services were tailored accordingly. The program to date has surpassed its goals (1300 workers were placed in year one and by September of year two the program has already exceeded its annual goal.)

Davis Jenkins
Senior Research Associate
Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University

Community colleges must play a significant role in moving people into better jobs because decent-paying, career-path jobs generally require at least some post-secondary training and because they offer the advantages of being low-cost with open door access. (In addition, employers use associate degrees to screen for literacy and motivation.) Therefore, community college reform is necessary, just as K-12 reform was necessary. Associate degrees must represent real certification for readiness.

Community colleges will be responsive but only if they are pressed.

Community colleges need distinguished leadership, and business and civic leaders must play a role in the selection of leadership and partnering with these institutions.

Todd Swanstrom
Professor of Public Policy
Saint Louis University

What really matters to regions is resilience or how you respond to challenges. The ability of regions to adapt to challenges by redeploying assets to achieve higher levels of functioning is the essence of resilience.

The St. Louis regional workforce development is a case study in resilience. St. Louis suffered severe deindustrialization. Jobs became decentralized while housing did not, leaving high levels of unemployment and poverty in the core city.

Where could jobs be found to replace those that were lost? Construction. With estimates that over the next 30 years we will produce 217 billion square feet of new or rejuvenated space, the opportunity is very big for new job creation, particularly for African-Americans. (Audience members pointed out that African-Americans and women are underrepresented in construction. However, others noted that construction is one of the few industries where ex-offenders are given a second chance. And our speaker made the distinction between “low-road” construction firms and “high-road” construction firms. Also noted was the fact that while union jobs are high pay, construction unions have traditionally not encouraged minority participation.)

But for the construction employment opportunity to be realized, policies must be “joined up.” There are, for instance, 267 entities doing job training in St. Louis. And the money for job training was “pretty much tied down.” So it is difficult to achieve the “immaculate conception” and form something new.

We need cooperation across governments, collaboration across sectors, and coordination across functions. But collaboration sometimes requires conflict, and we must be willing to change the status quo to get to a new outcome.

 

October 2007 | connected, distinctive, innovative, talented

Speech: What Makes Cities Succeed?

CEOs for Cities President and CEO Carol Coletta talks about the four dimensions of a successful city and the importance of creativity in making cities work in this keynote delivered at the “Creative City Network of Canada Conference” in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. You may view the speech by clicking here.

 

September 2007

Speech: Cities are the Solution

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley hosted the Mayors Hemispheric Forum on September 24-26. This summit brought together mayors from throughout the Americas to engage in dialogue on key urban topics.

CEOs for Cities President and CEO Carol Coletta gave opening remarks. The speech can be found here .

 

September 2007

Speech: Creative Cities and the Creative Economy

D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty has launched a year-long exploration of D.C.'s creative economy and how it can be used to transform neighborhoods and contribute to D.C.’s overall economic vibrancy.

CEOs for Cities President and CEO Carol Coletta was a featured speaker at the launch. The speech can be found here.

Download File (PDF 94 KB)

 

October 2006

Speech: The Case for Cities

CEOs for Cities president Carol Coletta makes the case for cities in this speech delivered at the “Living the Plan of Nashville” at the Nashville Civic Design Center. Download her comments by clicking here. You may view the speech by clicking here.

 

June 2006 | distinctive, innovative

Carol Coletta Speaks at Design Strategy Conference

CEOs for Cities President and CEO Carol Coletta recently spoke at the Institute of Design Strategy Conference in Chicago about the opportunity for design thinking to change cities. You may download the audio of Carol's speech by clicking here.