Every week, ‘Good News of the Week’ features a curation of positive headlines from San Diego, delivered straight to your inbox. A blend of aggregated stories from San Diego’s most trusted news sources and original EDC-created content, GNOTW provides a comprehensive recap of the region’s best stories from the past week.
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For the week of June 17, 2022, here’s what we’re reading:
Advancing San Diego: Preferred Providers of I.T. and Cyber talent
San Diego Regional EDC joined forces with San Diego Workforce Partnership and the Cyber Center of Excellence to launch CyberHire—a program designed to address the region’s growing demand for Cybersecurity talent and connect job seekers to meaningful careers.
Through two rounds of competitive application processes, the following education providers have been designated Preferred Providers of Cybersecurity and IT Talent, recognition from industry for their work in most effectively training the entry-level local workforce:
Through the CyberHire program, participants enrolled in the Preferred Provider programs receive industry-verified certification in A+ and Network+ or Security+ along with career counseling and wrap-around services from the San Diego Workforce Partnership.
If you are a San Diego business interested in hiring CyberHire participants to fill your entry-level IT and Cybersecurity roles,contact us. Through funding provided by the James Irvine Foundation, the San Diego Workforce Partnership will:
Place program participants in paid internships.
Subsidize wages for on-the-job training.
Host events for employers to meet CyberHire participants and showcase career opportunities at their companies.
About CyberHire: Presented by The James Irvine Foundation, CyberHire aims to transition unemployed, underemployed, and low-wage workers to quality Cybersecurity careers. CyberHire will help San Diegans launch a meaningful career that allows them to support themselves and their families.
Every week, ‘Good News of the Week’ features a curation of positive headlines from San Diego, delivered straight to your inbox. A blend of aggregated stories from San Diego’s most trusted news sources and original EDC-created content, GNOTW provides a comprehensive recap of the region’s best stories from the past week.
Get Good News of the Week in your inbox every Friday.→ Sign up
For the week of June 10, 2022, here’s what we’re reading:
As San Diego Regional EDC continues to drive an inclusive growth and recovery strategy for the region, outgoing Board Chair Julian Parra passes the gavel to Jennie Brooks, Senior Vice President of Booz Allen Hamilton, to lead EDC’s board for a two-year term.
As San Diego Regional EDC continues to drive an inclusive growth and recovery strategy for the region, outgoing Board Chair Julian Parra passes the gavel to Jennie Brooks, Senior Vice President of Booz Allen Hamilton.
“After five years on the board, I look forward to taking on this new role and working even more closely with EDC’s team. Our mission is to drive greater inclusion, resilience, and innovation across San Diego—aimed at empowering and supporting our region and its people,” said Jennie Brooks, Senior Vice President at Booz Allen Hamilton and leader of the firm’s regional office, which employees more than 1,200 San Diegans.
While San Diego’s innovation economy has more than rebounded, local small businesses, tourism and service jobs, lower income communities, and people of color continue to bear the brunt of the pandemic; and the goalposts outlined in the Inclusive Growth Initiative are now farther from reach. It is imperative the region create more skilled talent, economically-stabilizing jobs, and thriving households, or San Diego’s competitiveness is at risk.
“I am proud to pass the gavel to my colleague and friend Jennie Brooks,“ said outgoing Chair Julian Parra of Bank of America, who led EDC through the pandemic, in directly supporting more businesses than ever before. “The necessity of economic inclusion has never been more clear; I have full faith Jennie will continue this important work for the betterment of our region, its people, and its employers.”
As chair, Brooks is supported by four officers: Vice Chair, Rob Douglas, President & COO, ResMed; Vice Chair of Inclusive Growth, Lisette Islas, EVP & Chief Impact Officer, MAAC; Treasurer, Tom Seidler, SVP Community & Military Affairs, San Diego Padres; and Secretary, Barbara Wight, CFO, Taylor Guitars.
Along with the election of a new chair, EDC’s board also elected eight new board members: Debora Burke, Vice President and General Counsel, General Dynamics NASSCO; Kimberly Brewer, Senior Vice President, Development, URW; Cliff Cho, SVP and Market Executive, Bank of America; Kelly Davis, Chief Strategy Officer, SVP of Operations, Sony Electronics; Ingo Hentschel, Senior Vice President, Cox Communications; Jason Jager, Senior Partner & Managing Director, Boston Consulting Group; Tracy Murphy, President, IQHQ; Deborah Nguyen, Site Head & Vice President, Head of GI / Inflammation Drug Discovery Unit, Takeda San Diego; and Karen Reinhardt, Head of U.S. HR, ASML.
EDC is a membership-based non-profit organization that mobilizes government and civic leaders around an inclusive economic development strategy in order to connect data to decision making, maximize regional prosperity, enhance global competitiveness and position San Diego effectively for investment and talent. The organization’s nearly 200 investors range from growing startups like SkySafe, to the region’s largest employers like Qualcomm and SDG&E, to the leading anchor institutions such as universities, hospitals, and sports franchises, among others.
EMPLOYER LED, DEMAND DRIVEN, OUTCOMES BASED With nearly 200 members, EDC represents just a small fraction of the region’s employers. It is only with and through a broader group of stakeholders that the following Inclusive Growth goals will be met:
100,000 new quality jobs in small businesses
20,000 skilled workers per year
75,000 newly thriving households
As such, EDC will continue to enlist the endorsement and support of key regional partners and employers committed to using the Inclusive Growth framework to inform their priorities, tactics, and resource allocation.
“As a senior leader of a major consulting and technology employer in San Diego, Jennie is perfectly positioned to lead EDC in this unique moment in time,” said Mark Cafferty, President & CEO, San Diego Regional EDC. “With a pandemic still not behind us, Jennie’s leadership, commitment, and deep understanding of San Diego’s strengths and opportunities are exactly what the organization needs as we continue to make the business case for inclusion.”
In a normal year, EDC’s Annual Dinner brings together 900 of the region’s business and community leaders to celebrate our organization and San Diego’s success over the last year, and to honor select individuals and entities whose work has stood out as most benefiting the region.
With two years of events missed and the words ‘COVID’ and ‘pandemic’ now part of everyday vernacular, our 2022 Annual Dinner will again bring the San Diego business and civic community together for a night of celebration.
EDC is proud to present the inaugural Life Changing Awards to:
Every week, ‘Good News of the Week’ features a curation of positive headlines from San Diego, delivered straight to your inbox. A blend of aggregated stories from San Diego’s most trusted news sources and original EDC-created content, GNOTW provides a comprehensive recap of the region’s best stories from the past week.
Get Good News of the Week in your inbox every Friday.→ Sign up
For the week of June 3, 2022, here’s what we’re reading:
Join us and more than 900 business and community leaders on June 9 for a night of celebration, honoring our region’s healthcare systems and The San Diego Foundation with the 2022 Life Changing Awards.
For the first time in almost three years, San Diego Regional EDC will welcome investors, board members, and community partners to our Annual Dinner.
This year’s event—hosted under the night sky at Petco Park—will feel a bit like a family reunion for us, having had so much time pass since we have been able to gather with the region’s broader economic development community to celebrate our work and our relationships. Alongside sponsors who represent an amazing cross-section of our economy and our work, there are two special relationships we will be taking time to recognize on June 9 with the 2022 Life Changing Awards:
The first is The San Diego Foundation. For almost 50 years, The San Diego Foundation has served as our primary community and philanthropic foundation, supporting a wide range of causes and organizations throughout our region. But never has its work been more important or its resources more critical to San Diegans than during the many months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the region’s healthcare systems and public health officials grappled with an unprecedented crisis and managed new and changing regulations, threats, and policies emerging around us, The San Diego Foundation sprang into action, starting the COVID-19 Community Response Fund to get resources directly to those hit hardest by the pandemic—individuals who were out of work, families who needed to put food on the table, elderly residents who were shut off from services and support, and more. The Foundation raised and distributed more than $65 million to more than 250 non-profits and community-based service providers in the first 15 months of the pandemic to help ease the suffering, uncertainty, and fear felt across San Diego.
We will also be recognizing the most visible heroes of the pandemic—our region’s healthcare professionals and systems. For more than two full years, the individuals who work within and lead our hospitals, clinics, medical practices, and healthcare access points throughout the county have supported, treated, and healed countless local and neighboring patients and families.
From testing, to vaccinations, to life-saving care, to mental health and emotional support, and much, much more, words cannot possibly express what we know they have been through nor what they have meant and continue to mean to our community. Thanks, awards, and accolades seem insignificant in the face of true heroism, selflessness, and service. But as an economic development community, we will pause to remember, celebrate, and thank our region’s healthcare professionals for being the very best of who we are through the most difficult times we may ever know.
So please join us for this special evening, in a special place, surrounded by special people, who all play their part in making San Diego the ‘Life Changing’ place we continue to know and love.
Every week, ‘Good News of the Week’ features a curation of positive headlines from San Diego, delivered straight to your inbox. A blend of aggregated stories from San Diego’s most trusted news sources and original EDC-created content, GNOTW provides a comprehensive recap of the region’s best stories from the past week.
Get Good News of the Week in your inbox every Friday.→ Sign up
For the week of May 27, 2022, here’s what we’re reading:
On June 9, EDC’s signature event will again gather more than 900 business and community leaders for a night of celebration. Join us at Petco Park for a unique dining experience, conversations with colleagues and new friends, and a short program honoring our region’s healthcare systems and The San Diego Foundation.
Every week, ‘Good News of the Week’ features a curation of positive headlines from San Diego, delivered straight to your inbox. A blend of aggregated stories from San Diego’s most trusted news sources and original EDC-created content, GNOTW provides a comprehensive recap of the region’s best stories from the past week.
Get Good News of the Week in your inbox every Friday.→ Sign up
For the week of May 20, 2022, here’s what we’re reading:
Every quarter, EDC analyzes key economic indicators that are important to understanding the regional economy through trends in employment, housing, and investment.
In Q1 2022: VC investments in Life Sciences continue amid uncertainty surrounding inflation, while home prices continue to soar despite fewer sales.
EDC, local leaders cut the ribbon on Red Door’s innovative office space
Today, EDC member Red Door Interactive, a national, award-winning marketing agency, unveiled its new San Diego headquarters alongside EDC and staff from Councilmember Vivian Moreno’s office at a ribbon cutting ceremony. Reflective of Red Door’s company culture and vision for the future of the modern workplace, the company’s three-building campus features panoramic views of Downtown San Diego, a variety of collaboration hubs, seven outdoor patio spaces, an urban garden, and state-of-the-art technology for interactive video conferencing throughout the campus, among other amenities for its 90-person staff to enjoy.
For Red Door, the project has been years in the making; the company originally purchased the land in Sherman Heights, a designated Opportunity Zone, for its new headquarters in 2020. Despite a variety of pandemic-fueled hurdles, construction for the project was crafted entirely by local vendors including AVRP, Swinerton, Cultura, and many more.
“We’re excited to bring our diverse team of talented, creative minds to this neighborhood,” Reid Carr, CEO and co-founder of Red Door Interactive, said. “This is not only a place of work for us, but a home for the work we do as a collective. We built this campus with an eye toward the future of work, along with the ability to reflect some of the best San Diego has to offer—outdoor spaces, accessibility, and the spirit of its unique neighborhoods.”
With 20 years in offices in Downtown San Diego, including an award-winning, ground floor space in the DiamondView Tower at Petco Park, this new headquarters marks a bold move to a nearby neighborhood. It also represents Red Door’s commitment to physically coming together as a team, while also continuing to openly support hybrid and remote work—a philosophy the company embraced long before the pandemic.
Red Door hopes its new campus is a step toward bringing more awareness and investment to Sherman Heights. The neighborhood has long been regarded as a vibrant, historic place, rich in culture with fantastic views of downtown, Coronado, and the Bay—but it’s also centrally located around some of San Diego’s greatest assets. Sherman Heights provides easy access to Interstates 5 and 15, and state Routes 163 and 94. It’s also a few minutes from the San Diego International Airport and walkable to Balboa Park, and the unique neighborhoods of East Village, Golden Hill, and Barrio Logan.
EDC’s Mark Cafferty shares, “Reid and the team at Red Door Interactive have always been stewards of our region—investing in organizations like EDC and charting paths for other local companies in San Diego’s urban core. Twenty years ago, the company began a movement in East Village that proved to be monumental for the growth of Downtown. We know Red Door will bring that same vision, passion, and creativity to the historic and vibrant Sherman Heights community.”
