Zach Walker's Bio:
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Zach Walker will bring us our June ninth program about Global Cities Initiative. Kansas City and Independence joined an economic development network created by the Global Cities Initiative, a five-year joint project of the Brookings Institution and JPMorgan Chase. Launched in 2012, the initiative helps business and civic leaders grow their metropolitan economies by strengthening international connections and competitiveness. GCI activities include producing data and research to guide decisions, fostering practice and policy innovations, and facilitating a peer learning network. This network, the Global Cities Initiative’s Exchange, assists metropolitan areas as they develop plans to achieve sustainable growth, first addressing exports and then foreign direct investment. Kansas City will start its involvement in the Exchange by developing a metropolitan export plan in 2015.
We are one of eight metro areas accepted to the GCI Exchange’s 2015 group, the final cohort of the 28-metro-area network. The Brookings Institution selected metro areas for the Exchange through a competitive process based on their readiness and commitment to pursue the Exchange’s global competitiveness principles.
Zach Walker has been the City of Independence's management analyst since March 2012. He works collaboratively with the City Council, City Manager, and city departments and directs projects to provide recommendations. These recommendations are designed to improve daily operations, reduce costs, and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our city that has 1100 employees and a total operating budget of $292 million.