Our Meeting was called to order by President Mike McKay

 

Goat Rider: Matt Kelly

 

Inductions: 

 

Announcements
 

Rtn. Doris Preucil shared information about the upcoming Preucil School recital at Hancher Auditorium and introduced one of the Preucil School students and her accompanist to play Mazurka, one of the pieces to be featured at that recital.
 

Rtn. Steve West introduced Jennifer Daly as the person responsible for creating the Iowa Children's Museum. Since that vital work, she has moved into economic development for communities, most notably at Mount Pleasant and recently for Peoria in Illinois. She joined us as the new leader of ICAD and the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance's (CRMEA) joint venture to promote regional economic growth: the Cedar Rapids Iowa City Corridor Development Corporation.
 

Jennifer shared that she had not planned to move back to the Iowa City area until later in life, since it was at the top of her list for where she and her husband wanted to retire. She has two children around middle school age and thought they'd graduate from high school in Peoria. However, a headhunter made her a pitch she couldn't resist and when she visited the Cedar Rapids Iowa City area, she was sold on her new role.

 

Since moving back, she has hired a great team and has been asking a lot of questions about what makes our area attractive to live in. In that work, she's discovered two things. First, there are some really great industry-specific clusters of companies in our area including those in health care, education and life sciences. Second, companies seeking to attract talented employees to this area need the most help in packaging this seven-county region (same footprint as Kirkwood College) for ease of communicating its benefits to others.
 

To that end, Jennifer brought together an all-star team of marketing professionals from around the area and put them in a room together for twodays with one goal: make our regional branding opportunities even clearer. Out of that session came a brand she has revealed only to a few groups so far: ICR. Spoken, it's Iowa City Cedar Rapids, but for branding purposes the C is singular. The vision is that ICR will gain name recognition as a region in the same way that MSP, KC and NYC are recognized.
 

Jennifer shared the Development Corporation's two goals: 1) a 25% growth in interstate attraction of businesses and 2) as measured by ICR employers: more qualified applicants, more qualified diverse applicants, and an increase in employee retention rates. Answering the question of who we are as a region was the first step in her work and she shared a few more projects that have been started, including a symposium of educators and partners working with high school students to educate them about local employment options. Jennifer fielded a number of questions, including describing how ICAD and CRMEA will continue to work to support and attract start-up growth while the Development Corporation will focus on interstate busines attraction.

 

President Mike thanked Jennifer for her presentation and opened the floor for any comments.

 

The meeting ended at 1:00 pm as President Mike led the assembly in reciting The Four Way Test.