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Each year, EDC honors an individual who has demonstrated outstanding leadership in addressing challenges and making significant contributions to improving our region. We are honored to announce Dr. Mary Walshok as the 2018 Honoree of the Herb Klein Civic Leadership Award. 

The Herb Klein Civic Leadership Award is presented by:

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The Duane Roth Renaissance Award is named in memory of a beloved community leader who tirelessly championed San Diego's innovation ecosystem and reframed how we view our economic diversity. This award recognizes an organization whose work is creating outstanding inventions, innovations or breakthroughs that have changed and improved the world around us. 

We are deeply honored to announce Sempra Energy as the 2018 Honoree of the Duane Roth Renaissance Award, presented by:

Sempra Energy is a San Diego-based Fortune 500 energy services holding company with an enviable track record of growth over its 20-year history. Sempra Energy provides safe, reliable energy through its regulated utilities and energy infrastructure businesses to approximately 43 million consumers worldwide with 20,000 employees, including the company’s most recent acquisition of a majority stake in Oncor, the largest utility in Texas. Major initiatives include system modernization, decarbonization and electrification, as well as innovative strategies to minimize impacts on the environment and maximize the deployment of cleaner energy sources.

Please join us at SeaWorld on May 31 to celebrate Sempra and more. Register here.

This post is part of an ongoing series dedicated to EDC’s 50^th Anniversary. Please follow along at #EDCTurns50.

Along came the 1970s. Former Mayor Frank Curran and EDC's first CEO Dallas Clark saw their vision of a diversified San Diego economy come to fruition under the aegis of then CEO Richard "Dick" Davis.

San Diego (and EDC) were in good hands, as Malin Burnham stepped up to chair EDC in 1972 and Pete Wilson took over as Mayor.

We combed through the archives- here are a few of our favorite below:

Our innovation economy was beginning to take shape
New business is flowing to the region. From Sony, to the Wickes Corporation to Beckman Instruments, San Diego was booming in many industries, including the emerging field of “health sciences electronics.” We now know this industry as medical devices.

(Correctly) Predicting our future
At the same time, UC San Diego was beginning to establish itself as the research based institute that it is today. In 1971, National Science Foundation Director William McElroy became chancellor of UC San Diego, attracting world-class faculty. An article in the San Diego Union  from 1974 asks UC San Diego researchers to predict what San Diego would be like in the year 2000. Professor William Neirenberg got it right, “between 1974 and the year 2000, San Diego will become one of the top three or four research and development areas in the world…”

Shipbuilding diversifies to include oil tankers and ferries

Kearny Mesa booms along Convoy St.


The close of the decade saw the birth of two iconic downtown San Diego landmarks: our beloved Convention Center and the idyllic Seaport Village.
From an edc newsletter

Telling the world our story
As the economy diversified, EDC began to share San Diego’s story with the world.

An advertisement in Businessweek (late 1970s- early 1980s)

Advertisement, unknown publication, 1976

We’ll be celebrating all through 2015, but we’ll be paying homage to our past – as well as celebrating our future – at EDC’s 50^th annual dinner event on June 4, 2015, at SeaWorld San Diego.  Until then, join us here online every month as recount our top moments, starting with the decades that have defined us.