Lehigh Valley is setting its economy up for success.
The region of eastern Pennsylvania, which encompasses Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton, along with smaller towns including Emmaus, Nazareth and Bangor, has its own Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation.
Declining steel and textile manufacturing industries pushed the corporate leadership of the area to create a strategy for regional economic revitalization and a talent attraction strategy, beginning in the mid-1990s.
Since then, LVEDC has recognized that aligning training and education of talent is integral to the economic strategy. So, the group brought more colleges, universities and trade schools into its board. Along with regional organizations and governments, LVEDC is developing an approach toward redevelopment and job creation.
“I call it a coalition of the willing,” says Don Cunningham, President and CEO of LVEDC and former mayor of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
The organization also focuses on marketing what the area has to offer, including its educational opportunities, the jobs available and the overall quality of life.
“That is the bedrock upon which you retain companies, attract companies and grow companies,” he says.
Partnering with educators
Part of what LVEDC is working toward is helping the local schools stay ahead of the curve. “You can’t run a company without people, and you can’t run a company without people with the right skills,” Cunningham says.
For example, the business and tech climate today is looking to artificial intelligence, which requires training and collaboration between educational institutions in order to best train and employ upcoming talent.
Business leaders have the option of developing their talent internally or also in conjunction with the local schools, knowing which certificate programs are available or encouraging educators to offer certain coursework that prepares their future workers with specific skills. In fact, educators are very likely looking to engage and create real experiences for their students, says Karianne Gelinas, vice president of regional partnerships and talent strategies at LVEDC and former teacher.
“I think that there is a gap in the language that schools use and that employers use when they all want the same thing. They want prepared people with the right skills,” she says. LVEDC is working to make those connections.
Laying the groundwork
With funding from the governor, LVEDC created a pilot program to support the region in a way that would bring the talent that employers need.
Beginning in 2017 with a talent study of the region — which was a survey of employers, focus groups and feedback from local organizations and educational systems — LVEDC worked to gain a full scope of employers’ workforce demands and the current offerings from K-12, colleges and technical schools.
“We’re seeking to understand each other better and get more involved with each other,” Gelinas says. “We’re not here to duplicate any work [of employers or schools], but rather to bring all of the right people around the table to understand what the problems are, where the pain points are, by employers, and how we can build talent solutions to meet demands so that our economy can be successful.”
From that study’s findings, LVEDC determined a need for sharing which jobs are in demand or high priority by employers in the area in order to better support students.
The Hot Careers Guide is a document that organizes local employers into various sectors and builds out the most in-demand occupations by type and education level. School counselors can walk students through visualizations of data and share available industries, roles, salaries and requirements of jobs they’re interested in, helping them choose courses or degree programs available.
LVEDC renews the guide annually with feedback from its partners, improving the user experience and updating the information.
Connecting students and companies
Every July, LVEDC hosts an Internship Summit with the colleges and universities within the region, linking businesses with interns. Employer speakers present to fellow employers about how they’re hosting internships and mentorship, providing support in diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging and offering meaningful projects to interns.
Topics at the Summit change every year. For example, the pandemic generated a conversation about remote internships. This year, the programming focused on providing meaningful projects. Accompanying the Summit is a directory that offers basic information about available internships, as well as a directory of schools.
All of these efforts act as touchpoints with the students. Ultimately, LVEDC is trying to make sure students have the opportunities to understand the local employer landscape and increase the likelihood that they’ll stay in Lehigh Valley after graduation, Gelinas says.
One company, Olympus Corporation of the Americas, taps Lehigh Valley-area students, employing upward of 50 interns each summer in a host of roles that include engineering, marketing, finance, IT, communications, HR and legal, says Julien Sauvagnargues, president of OCA.
“We found the LVEDC programming for interns to be a great complement to our program,” he says, adding that the Day of Caring nonprofit volunteer program LVEDC hosted for interns in the Lehigh Valley was particularly helpful. “The program offered networking and community-building opportunities that gave our interns professional development and social interactions that help young workers see the possibility of starting their professional life in the Lehigh Valley.”
Corporate and community
As part of its business strategy, OCA focuses on fostering strong ties with economic development organizations such as LVEDC and engaging meaningfully with the institutions that strengthen our communities, such as schools, non-profit organizations and health care systems, Sauvagnargues says.
“Companies succeed when they seek to harmonize the life and work of their employees and the people within their communities,” he says.
When companies are giving back to their local communities and being present at events and college career fairs, sharing what the organization can do for families, they provide a peek into what it’s like to work for them, Gelinas says. The investment in staff that focuses on these economic and community ties “pays back in ways that you don’t even realize,” she says, adding that the returns become cumulative over time.
Gelinas commends local organizations such as Evonik, Air Products and B. Braun Medical, which are putting in the work and being deeply engaged. “To their credit, these organizations are really strong community members and pillars of our community.”
Along with destination marketing of Lehigh Valley as a great place to visit, LVEDC is also promoting it as a place of business. The organization does this by highlighting statistics for business, such as its proximity to major cities such as New York, the size of the labor force, top employment sectors, GDP, unemployment and more. Existing businesses are encouraged to use a logo on products to indicate they are “Made in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.” This branding is consistent across advertisements for the region.
With this multitude of efforts from LVEDC and its partners, “our quality of life here continues to be visible and more competitive as it is now seen on a larger scale than perhaps in the past,” Gelinas says.
The payoff
To measure success, LVEDC tracks digital marketing metrics such as traffic on its website and social media, along with external counts of projects that come to Lehigh Valley that indicate expanding business.
Demographics and migration patterns show the area is successfully growing, and economic factors such as full employment and growing wages also show that efforts are paying off; median income has risen $10,000 in the past five years, along with median hourly wage at $22.50 per hour.
Cunningham says that he tends to look at the success of LVEDC as the success of the region. If the region is creating jobs and opportunities and is generating more income for everyone, those are great signs.
“I happen to believe that economic development is really not about companies, it’s about people,” Cunningham says. “If people at all socioeconomic levels have opportunity in the market, that’s the ultimate measure of success.”
