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SAN DIEGO LEADERSHIP
EXCHANGE JOINS MORE THAN 100 ST. LOUIS REGIONAL LEADERS IN FOCUS
ON MAJOR METRO ISSUES
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In what has
become an annual tradition in the St. Louis metro area, more than
100 regional leaders visited San Diego last month for the RCGA Regional
Leadership Exchange to San Diego.
Regional civic, government and business leaders participated
in the RCGA Annual Leadership Exchange to San Diego
last month. The St. Louis delegates met with more
than 25 of their San Diego counterparts in a very
full agenda during the three-day trip. |
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The Leadership Exchange program is an opportunity to learn from
the experience of other regions as St. Louis continues to address
the issues it faces. The creation of the Downtown Now! plan to revitalize
the region’s center city, recent St. Louis venture capital initiatives,
the creation of the Technology Gateway Council, and efforts to grow
the St. Louis region’s high tech industry sector in plant and life
sciences, information technologies, and advanced manufacturing ---
each trace their roots, in part, back to ideas generated through
the Leadership Exchange program.
RCGA Chairman Doug Yaeger, RCGA Board members John Bachmann, and
Patricia Whitaker, and St. Louis Black Roundtable Chairman Rev.
B.T. Rice led the St. Louis delegation.
San Diego’s major strengths are its thriving biotech economy supported
by 14 million square feet of lab space, and its ability to raise
many hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital to foster
biotech startups, as well as its downtown residential development.
Downtown San Diego has created some 17,000 housing units just since
1998.
Among the topics during the three-day San Diego Exchange were: “What
Makes San Diego Work? Candid Inside Perspectives,” featuring City
Club of San Diego President George Mitrovich; San Diego Union-Tribune
Editorial Page Editor Bob Kittle; Malin Burnham of The Burnham Institute
life sciences research organization; Unified Port of San Diego Vice
Chairman Peter Davis; San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce President
and CEO Jessie Knight; and NBA Hall-of-Famer and now San Diego civic
leader, Bill Walton.
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Members of the St. Louis delegation listen to Eric
Judson, Vice President for Development for the San
Diego Padres, standing at left, as he discusses plans
for San Diego’s soon-to-open downtown ballpark, PETCO
Park. |
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Other topics included “The Dynamics of a New Downtown Ballpark,”
featuring San Diego Padres Vice President for Development Eric Judson,
as well as a tour of PETCO Park; “San Diego’s Far-Reaching Infrastructure
Strategies,” with California Rebuild America Coalition (CalRAC)
founder and director Sarah Layton Wallace and San Diego Association
of Governments (SANDAG) Executive Director Gary Gallegos; and “New
Partnerships Among Universities, Businesses and Civic Organizations,”
featuring Julie Meier Wright, President & CEO of San Diego’s Regional
Economic Development Corporation; and Mary Walshok, Dean of the
University Extension at UCSD and national biotech leader. Joe Panetta,
President and CEO of the world-renowned life sciences organization
BIOCOM, moderated a panel discussion titled “The San Diego Area’s
Biotech Success Story,” featuring Dr. Polly Murphy, Vice President
for Technology Transfer, Salk Institute for Biological Studies;
Brent Jacobs, Senior Vice President, Burnham Real Estate Services’
Life Science Group; and Dr. Kenneth Widder, CEO, NovaCardia Inc.
The delegation also toured the Salk Institute for Biological Studies
in La Jolla.
This was the RCGA’s seventh Leadership Exchange; previous Leadership
Trips were to Boston, Cleveland, Seattle, Baltimore, Denver and
Toronto.
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