June 2016
In This IssueA Core Commitment: EDA Creates Ladders of Economic Opportunity Assistant Secretary Jay Williams with local and federal representatives at Nashville Promise Zone announcement.
By Jay Williams is the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development. Since taking office in 2009, President Obama has pursued place-based policies to leverage investments by focusing resources in targeted locations and drawing on the compounding effect of well-coordinated action. Presently, to best serve our communities, the Federal government is collaborating like never before to catalyze these local plans to drive job creation. By pursuing placed-based policies and by breaking down Washington silos, we are best able to seed local strategies to spur regional economic growth. Success Story: Virginia Innovation Partnership Spurs Commercialization of New Technologies UVA President Teresa Sullivan and Deputy Assistant Secretary Matt Erskine at the 2012 announcement of VIP. Photo Credit: UVAToday
In 2012, the University of Virginia was awarded an i6 Challenge grant and created the Virginia Innovation Partnership (VIP) to help fund and facilitate the best of Virginia’s college and university researchers’ ideas and technologies with the goal of commercialization. The i6 Challenge is a part of the Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) Program. EDA’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIE) leads RIS to spur innovation capacity-building activities in regions across the nation. Highlight: Administration visits Connecticut to Tout Progress Under the State’s IMCP Designation Assistant Secretary Jay Williams touring Asnuntuck Community College’s Advanced Manufacturing Center.
For more than 100 years, the state of Connecticut has been a leader in the aerospace and shipbuilding industries. Building off of the state’s strong reputation for manufacturing, in 2015, the Hartford region was designated an Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership (IMCP) community. On June 3, EDA Assistant Secretary Jay Williams and Jason Miller, White House Deputy Director of the National Economic Council visited the Connecticut Advanced Manufacturing Communities (AMC) Region to see the region’s progress first-hand. The visit began with a roundtable discussion and student-led tour of the Asnuntuck Community College’s Advanced Manufacturing Center, the site of the AMC’s pipeline and apprenticeship programs. Young men from the Boys & Girls Club of Hartford’s Passport to Manhood Program joined Assistant Secretary Williams for the tour and roundtable discussion. This engagement was coordinated as a part of the White House’s My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) initiative, which Assistant Secretary Williams serves as an Ambassador. Following the visit to Asnuntuck, the group toured Polamer Precision and Pratt & Whitney, two aerospace manufacturers that are a part of the AMC IMCP community. During the Pratt & Whitney tour, the group heard progress reports from community partners and creators of the AMC IMCP community. |
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Last week, the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) released the fifth iteration of the National Preparedness Report (NPR). The NPR is an annual status report on the nation’s progress toward reaching the National Preparedness Goal of a secure and resilient nation. Entrepreneurs need community support to overcome challenging problems – let EDA help your community harness those resources through the 2016 Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) grant competition. Deadline to apply is 6/24. The federal partnership regarding career pathways has expanded and strengthened. The U.S. Department of Commerce is now involved! See how in this joint letter.
On May 19, Deputy Assistant Secretary Matt Erskine visited the Alaska Center for Energy and Power to review an EDA funded microgrids project aimed at reducing energy costs in rural Alaska. To learn more about this innovative project, listen to his segment.
On May 25, the Minority Business Development Agency and White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders hosted the first-ever National AAPI Business Summit. Assistant Secretary Jay Williams participated in a panel discussion with Vinai Thummalapally, Executive Director of SelectUSA and John Thompson, Director of the Census Bureau, and educated summit attendees on the Commerce Department’s economic development initiatives.
On May 26, Assistant Secretary Jay Williams served as the keynote speaker at the I-70/75 Development Association’s Regional Economic Development Summit at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio. Following the summit, he met with the Southwestern Ohio Aerospace Region (SOAR), an IMCP community, to discuss their progress over the past two years.
GRANT UPDATE: U.S. Department of Commerce Invests $1.5 Million to Help Create Critical Manufacturing Jobs in Bristol, Tenn. Learn more. GRANT UPDATE: U.S. Department of Commerce Invests $2.6 Million to Support the Development of the Mid-Atlantic Advanced Manufacturing Center in Greensville County, Va. Learn more. The 2016 EDA National Conference website is now live. View session presentations, photos, EDA grant testimonials and more here.
Through EDA funding, Operation HOPE launched HOPE Inside Atlanta Police Department, a program to provide financial support services to more than 2,000 law enforcement officers and employees in Atlanta, Ga.
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