OUR LEAD STORY – CALGARY’S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

 
OUR LEAD STORY – CALGARY’S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
By Bill Avery
 
Bruce Graham took the lectern to introduce our Guest Speaker – Mary Moran CEO Calgary Economic Development.  Mary began by acknowledging that we live in a “different time” and a “challenging time”.  Despite the radical shift in the marketplace, Mary says that we can continue to embrace “Be Part of our Energy” as a brand for our City.
 
Following that thinking, The City of Calgary’s 100 year strategy is to make Calgary –
 
“ A great place to make a living”
“A great place to make a life”
 

The Calgary Economic Development Strategy has been named “Building on our Energy” aligning with Calgary’s promotional brand. The Strategy puts forward six energies as our areas of focus: Global, Entrepreneurial, Innovative, Community, People and Collaborative. These areas of focus build on the strength of the energy sector, support entrepreneurs, give greater attention to growing technology and innovation as well as raise the profile and importance of building, attracting and retaining a skilled work force through a renewed focus on people and community. Finally, and most importantly, there is attention given to the need to work better together and collaborate to ensure the implementation of the Strategy is successful.

Calgary Economic Development has at its core strong vision and mission concepts:

Vision: Calgary is a city of boundless energy. The source of our energy and economic success is our sense of community and our commitment to shared prosperity and sustainable development. We welcome everyone to be part of the energy.

Mission: To align The City of Calgary, its civic partners, private sector and other community organizations in achieving economic competitiveness, embracing shared prosperity and building a strong community.

Building on our Energy is a strategy for Calgary. It is a broad strategy meant to serve as a guide for everyone that contributes to the economic development of Calgary. The implementation of the Strategy will require extensive collaboration among sometimes disparate stakeholders committed to making Calgary a great place to make a living and a great place to make a life.

Outstanding actions are planned for this year.  Calgary Economic Development will lead or co-lead 15 of the 31 actions planned in the updated Strategy. Innovate Calgary, Tourism Calgary, Calgary Arts Development, Calgary TELUS Convention Centre, post-secondary institutions; the Calgary Regional Partnership and City Administration will be the lead organizations for the remaining actions. These organizations are important facilitators and enablers of economic development activities.

Mary concluded by delineating nine priorities on the agenda for this year and beyond.

1.      Head Office – Downtown

2.      Talent Strategy (entice people to move here – develop a talent hub)

3.      Talent Retention

4.      Accelerate Diversification

5.      Film Centre

6.      Agri-business

7.      Renewable Energy

8.      Innovation – Develop a Culture of Innovation

9.      Local Campaign – encourage use of local business

Mary concluded by emphasizing a desire to create citizen satisfaction in the Calgary community – through reputation building.  Creating an environment that demonstrates to all the opportunities that exist in Calgary through

·         Global Energy

·         Entertaining Energy (ie.Film Television Production)

·         Innovative Energy

·         People Energy

·         Community Energy

·         Collaborative Energy

A HEARTFELT THANK YOU!

Rotarian Sophie Serafino was called upon to thank the speaker and presented Mary with a certificate from CAWST.

President Rob added his thanks and called the meeting to a conclusion.

 
Our speaker, Mary Morin