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Brandon Burton 0:00
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You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2024 Chamber of the Year Finalist Series. And our guest for this episode is Mark Owens. Mark is the President and CEO of the Greater Winston Salem, Inc. Mark has over 14 years experience building communities through economic development. He was named president CEO of Winston Salem chamber, now greater Winston Salem Inc in 2017 and previously served as president and CEO of the greater Greer chamber in South Carolina. Mark is actively involved in the community in Winston Salem and forcep County, serving on the board of directors at Novant Health Forces Medical Center and the Piedmont Triad partnership, among others. Nationally, he serves on the board of directors for ACCE. He’s a graduate of Presbyterian College and the US Chamber Institute for organizational management, and he holds his CCE designation. Mark is a native of Charleston, South Carolina, and he is and his wife melody, have a son named Luke and a golden doodle named boots mark. Welcome to the chamber tap podcast. First of all, congratulations to you and your team. It’s a great accomplishment to be named as a chamber the year finalist. I’d love for you to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
Mark Owens 2:29
Yeah, thank you, Brandon. I really appreciate what you do for our industry. And having the opportunity to be on this podcast, it’s great to to meet everybody through through this platform, and looking forward to meeting others in person coming up soon. We’re really proud of greater Winston to be one of the finalists, and really honored to be a part of this recognition. And it’s been a great a great process, a great journey as a team. And we’ll look forward to sharing a little bit about that with you today. A little bit about me. Fun fact, wow. I think maybe when I was at Presbyterian College, I played soccer there and was able to get an internship at this thing called a chamber of commerce, which I had never heard of before. And so I started as an intern, and then actually worked part time for a year while I was in school at the Chamber of Commerce in Lawrence County, South Carolina. And so work based learning is near and dear to my heart and provided an opportunity for me to to discover an industry I never even knew about as a young person. So internship is is probably that fun fact about me being in a chamber to start off?
Brandon Burton 3:35
Yeah, that’s awesome. You’re sort of a product of the programs that are being modeled at your chamber now. And that’s a that’s awesome. A lot of people find chamber work by accident, but that’s right, that’s about as intentional as you can be doing an internship. So that’s that is a fun fact. Well, tell us a little bit about greater Winston, Salem, Inc, just size, staff, budget, scope of work to set the stage for our discussion.
Mark Owens 4:05
Yeah, absolutely. So we are here in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and greater Winston Salem, Inc was originally the greater Winston Salem Chamber of Commerce. Technically, we are 138 years old. Our chamber existed before Winston and Salem became one city, they were two separate cities. So our chamber claims a little bit of responsibility for bringing those cities together 100 years ago, but our organization is greater Winston Salem inquire the combination of the Chamber of Commerce and the economic development organization for the community. That was a merger that took place in 2019 I moved to Winston Salem in December of 2017, and in 2019 our boards voted to merge economic development back into the chamber of commerce and evolve our name to greater Winston Salem, Inc. Little do we know that our bylaws say our first day is literally April Fools of 2020. And so during covid, I was the only person in the office on the first day of this new, newly named organization. But our team is really focused on three main things. Our vision statement for 2030 which is to be the top mid sized city in the southeast, to be a more equitable community, and to be the best place to raise a family. And we really shape everything we do around that. We have 16 team members here at greater Winston, Salem Inc, about a $3 million budget, and when we started, we were at about 1.7 million. So we’ve had a lot of growth, not just economic development, but specifically workforce and utilizing grant opportunities, which I know we’ll talk about here in a few minutes, but we have a great board, a 29 member board of directors, a community that was built on textile and tobacco, and we’re evolving into biotech, life science and advanced manufacturing being a key component of our membership base. We have 848 members, so we are a growing community, but really tied to the fabric of Winston sale with our rich history, and it’s a great place to be. That’s awesome. Yeah, I
Brandon Burton 6:08
love these communities that have such a rich history. To be able to go back 138 years and be able to see the those beginnings, and see how the communities evolve, see how the economy has evolved, technologies, all these different things, and to be able to be there for the growth and and championing, championing, championing the cause and change, right? So in these chamber, the year finalist episodes, I really like focusing the majority of our time on the programs that were submitted, and your chamber the year application and kind of how they came to be, the history leading up to them, the impact they’re making in your community. And we’ll dive into those programs as soon as they get back from this quick break.
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All right. Mark, we’re back. Let’s let’s jump into the first program that was submitted on your your chamber the year application, if you can tell us what it is and kind of its origins and the momentum that it’s built over time. Yeah,
Mark Owens 8:48
I’m going to start with our Career Ready youth part of our program, and that’s something that’s been really a key component to our community. And what we do at greater with cell make you heard earlier that I was a former intern, work based learning is is really important to me, but our organization has been involved with working with our young people, specifically K through 12, for a long time now, since the the late 90s, we have been contracted by our K through 12 school system to do career readiness and career exploration. We also used to do some third grade reading, coaching, coordination, but since our school district has taken that in house, we’ve expanded what we do as we work on really feeling that start of the funnel of talent pipeline. We know by talking with our business community that access to top talent is a key factor for community and economic development for all of our communities, not just for today, but for tomorrow. And being able to get our community businesses to buy into our goals of being the top, mid sized city, that means we have to retain and prepare our young people for this emerging, evolving economy that we sit in our office. Sits in a factory that used to make cigarettes, and now there’s scientists in here with us doing research on how to regrow organs. And just that evolution of the economy of Winston Salem is why we’ve got to start preparing our young people for the work for tomorrow. So a few of the things that we do, one of which we start with our eighth and 10th graders, we call it wow. It’s called World of Work. We rent out our Coliseum or Wake Forest University, plays basketball, and every eighth grader and every 10th grader in Forsyth County comes through a career fair over a two day period. We’re talking almost 9000 students come through over those two days to see what kind of career paths are out there. We do that about a month before they sign up for CTE classes, because in our community, 99% of students that take CTE programmings Career and Technical Education graduate, as opposed to our graduation rate, which is at an all time high, at 86% so we know that career and technology technology education. And Technical Education provides a path forward in the future of the workforce. It creates more graduates, and it gets those young people ready for that next step. So after World of Work, what do we do next? We have a program called Aspire. It’s for our 11th and 12th graders. It’s paid internships, and we’ve started by focusing at our Title One schools. So those schools that have been traditionally underserved, and these students go through paid internships, $15 an hour, where we receive grants. And those grants, we reimburse the companies for paying for those young people up to $15 an hour for 100 hour internship. So we believe that these young people, you know, have an option to go work, and some are providing in, you know, for family household income. So we believe in paid internships and find ways to really encourage those young people to go explore, whether it’s at Novant Health or atrium health or hospital systems, whether it’s with our banks like truist and Bank of America, or whether it’s in small businesses or startups, we have programs where we can, we can supplement those companies that are paying for these interns and reimburse them. That program was launched, but we noticed something. We noticed that our students needed a little more preparation before they went into the workplace. So we launched our work ready certificate, where now we have a 15 hour credit contact to our credential program, where we do soft skills, mock interviews, resumes, and if they create finish those 15 hours of the credential program, they also receive a stipend where we partner with local big box retailers For Dress for Success program. So we provide them with dollars to go dress and be ready for the the internship placement that they receive. So now we have graduates going through that that are getting placed in their internship program. And we also noticed that we had some students that just needed a little extra mentorship. And that’s where senior Academy comes in, and senior Academy is for mostly for seniors and some juniors that have been identified by their guidance counselors as as maybe just needing a little extra motivation to get to graduation. So we recruit businesses, business members and individuals that want to do one on one mentorship with high school students, and we help them get over the graduation line. We have about 140 students each year, a part of senior Academy, and we’ve about a 98 to 99% graduation rate of those, one on one mentors. So we’re really looking at this career ready youth as an opportunity to look at the entire individual and say from eighth grade on that there’s a there’s a pipeline, there’s a pathway that’s clearly laid out for everybody in our community to participate, not just the individuals that have more resources. And I think that’s been really important in what we’re doing. We know our companies need this workforce of tomorrow, but we also know it’s the right thing for our community to continue to grow and develop young, talented, diverse leaders. And this program is so impactful. It’s, it’s one of our favorite things to do when we go to those graduations and those ceremonies where we see individuals get those credentials, it’s really exciting. That is
Brandon Burton 14:13
awesome. Yeah, I’ve heard of a lot of, you know, career readiness, you know, programs that chambers have done, and they’ll list a couple things, and then you kept saying, and then it leads to this, and then it leads to this, and then it leads to and I love how it’s just all packed together, and it is a roadmap that leads to success. I was curious with the Aspire, with the paid internships, are there certain business types that you’re trying to match them up with or is it open to any Chamber members that want to offer internships? Or how do you go about promoting that and putting those offerings out there?
Mark Owens 14:47
Yeah, that’s a great question. It’s open to every business in the community and all of our Chamber members. So we we really actually target companies in our retention visits. We visit with our. Top 150 employers every year, and we talk to them about their needs and ask them to participate. Of course, there’s some challenges, if in manufacturing and automotive spaces, where you have OSHA situations and safety, but we really actually want it to be, you know, what I would call those office related jobs, or those jobs that they have an interest in, like construction working in construction management or in a law firm. Our real goal is that these young people dream and hope and see what’s out there and and that they get this opportunity to be exposed to new career paths that they maybe thought weren’t attainable. We want every student to feel like they have the opportunity to have an internship and understand what it’s like to work in an office or work in management, or work at a bank or or work at a hospital. And I think one of the biggest surprises Brandon that we’ve had is that some of our young people that have done paid internships at the hospital, we’ve had 10 students at the hospital, is hired on part time to continue that after the internship, so they’ve gotten great career opportunities and jobs right off the bat, and it’s really something that we weren’t expecting to happen. But students are saying, you know, I never knew that I could work at a hospital. I didn’t think that was for me. And now there’s opportunities that open those doors and provide opportunity beyond just what they could dream. So we try to open it up for everybody, but it’s really intentional in our marketing efforts, and one on one communication, we really go ask, and we tell the company that, hey, we’re going to reimburse you. There’s no cost to you, just your time. And that’s really been a great thing to break down the barrier. And one last thing I’ll say on that Brandon, we also provide transportation. So if these young people don’t have transportation, we’ve partnered with a local, you know, what we call micro transit company, that can go pick up these young people and take them to and from their jobs. And so that’s been a barrier that we’ve been able to eliminate in this process.
Brandon Burton 16:56
That’s awesome. I love the exposure and getting these young people exposed to different career paths and opportunities and show them what’s possible, but also give them a taste of what it’s like to be in that setting. Because maybe they hate it, maybe they intern at a law office and think I don’t want to go to law school and spend hundreds of 1000s of dollars in student debt, but to be able to really set them on a course of what it is that they want to do and what they don’t want to do, I think it’s just as important, man. You
Mark Owens 17:27
took the words out of my mouth. We just talked about that this morning. We had an intern here working with us, and I said the same thing, you may find that you love it. You might might find out it’s not for you. And both things are incredibly valuable. So you’re right, it just gives the gives them an opportunity to see what’s out there and and try it before they go down that pathway. And if, if they do like it, then that’s where, you know, this second program we’ll talk about in a second kind of ties in, because we don’t want that pipeline to stop at one spot. We want to be able to help those students progress
Brandon Burton 18:01
in their careers. That’s right. Now, you guys are obviously about stacking these programs on top of each other, so let’s, let’s see where this takes us. So they graduate. You know, they’ve had these internships, they’ve got the Work Ready certificate to be ready for those internships, or dressing for success. They graduate now. What now? How do you continue them along that
Mark Owens 18:21
path? Yeah, it’s this is an area where I do hope we can improve a little bit, because there there may be some leakage in the pipeline here when when they graduate and go to school or go in the workforce, it’s hard to track where everybody goes and stay in touch, but that’s where this next program for scythe works comes into play. And what we saw is that we have a lot of organizations in our community, probably like yours, that are listening, that do workforce development or some component, but we’re not as coordinated as we could be. We, you know, you’re you’re sending somebody who’s looking for a job opportunity or more training or job interview skills or whatever it is. You may send them to two to three, four locations just to to fulfill and get all the knowledge they need. So we applied as a group to the county for for an ARPA grant through the American rescue plan act, and for what’s called for scythe works. What that is, it’s the county. It’s us. Is greater in salmon. It’s our goodwill partners. It’s our school system and our community college for site tech, the five of us are all on this grant, and it’s created a one stop workforce hub location. We physically moved our chamber office in with the career and workforce team of Forsyth Tech here in innovation quarter on Winston Salem, we share an office every Wednesdays. Walk in Wednesday people can come in any day, but we we target Wednesdays for one on one, career coaching, interview, training, access to scholarships to go to for site, tech, whatever it may be to help them access new openings. In addition to hosting seven seminars a month for the community, they’re all free of charge through the. Grant to be able to talk about re entry after maybe something that happened in the law or or stepping away to be a stay at home parent, re entering the workforce or hiring individuals with neurodiversity issues. So there’s a lot of great things that we’re doing there. We also created forsythworks nc.com, which is a one stop shop for job posting. We’re aggregating job postings that we’re seeing through indeed and other places all to one site, so somebody can go to that site say, hey, I’m interested in this job. Here’s the training that it would take. Here’s how I can go ahead and register for that training, or register for classes for SciTech or Goodwill’s offering this program. Here’s the expected salary range in that industry field. It’s really a way to kind of come alongside an individual specifically as the American rescue plan act designates qualified census tracks more underserved communities to really help and create economic mobility. That’s one thing that we’re really passionate about, is be a more equitable community, as you heard in our vision, and we believe we can do that through economic mobility. So access is key to this. So we’re doing that in English and in Spanish, and trying to make sure everybody has access to the information, the training, the skills and the tools, so that ultimately they get that career that changes their lives and their family’s lives. So we’re really, are of trying to stack, to be honest with you, we keep finding challenges, and that’s why we keep trying to add on to it. If we, if we kind of just pieced it together, we may not have it as comprehensive, and we’re not done. We want to keep growing and find new solutions, but we’re really proud of that partnership. So now we’re all working together, and everybody is on the same page, going in the same direction, and it’s creating some impact. It’s only been launched for about a year, and so we’re starting to see some great metrics come in,
Brandon Burton 21:49
awesome so I’m curious with the job posting site, the reference so it’s aggregating from all these different resources of job postings and putting into the one, one stop shop to be able to find a job in the community. Is there a certain platform you guys are using? Is it a proprietary thing? Or how are you aggregating all these different job postings? Well,
Mark Owens 22:10
you know that this one, you have people on your team that are smarter than you, so I’m not sure I’m the best. Then I can tell you, it’s an RSS feed we’re pulling mostly from indeed, but we also have in our, I think it’s a WordPress designed website to where we have a job board in there, and we give access to all of our partners to be able to enter it in. So most chambers, right, probably have job boards that your members can post on for free or for cost, or based off of a tier, we have that as well. So it’s really just kind of pulling all of that into one page. Sometimes the job will click you and take you to an indeed, posting. Sometimes it’ll take you straight to a company’s website. But it’s really designed to try to help the seeker go to one place, instead of needing to carve out and go to different sites to do that. Yeah. So
Brandon Burton 23:03
it sounds like you hire well as well.
Mark Owens 23:06
You have a great team. I can say RSS feed and WordPress. If you ask me how to do the those things, that’s not me. But I know, I know the little, really good team that makes all this possible. For sure,
Brandon Burton 23:19
absolutely. The key thing is that it works. So that’s, right, works. Yeah, that’s awesome. So I like asking, especially with you being a chamber, that you’re a finalist. I mean, you guys are kind of top of the game right now for chambers that are listening and wanting to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them to try to accomplish that goal?
Mark Owens 23:43
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I first want to just say our board and our staff that’s doing this amazing work together, and what it’s been really fun about this process, and I think kind of, as part of my answer to your question is we didn’t set out to go try to win an award. We tried to set out to make a difference. And I think whatever your community is facing, it’s going to be different for everybody. And so the first thing we did was go ask and listen and adapt. And I think that would be my first thing is go go together with partners and go find out what your members and your businesses are facing. We we sometimes get caught up thinking we know what our businesses and our members need, instead of listening first. So I think our first step was listening and then set out to really adapt and evolve and sell mission investments, not just transactional memberships, and really try to find a way to say, hey, we’re moving the community forward through our work, and we want you to be a part of that. So honestly, I would say, Put your head down a little bit. Go, ask. Go. Listen, it doesn’t happen overnight. We’ve been working on this. We’re honest. Were a little surprised to be a finalist. We again. We didn’t set out for for this as our goal, but the process of going through this has sharpened us even more. Has helped us put our plans together and and really audit ourselves and say, What are we doing? What are we doing? Well, what can we improve on? And I would just the last thing I would say is don’t be afraid to try something. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, you can try something again, but it’s really exciting, and I’m really thankful for ACCE, the regional associations, chamber, chat, podcast, sharing ideas, to be able to listen and find new ideas is really impactful. And I just encourage you to start by saying, we think we know what we’re doing, but let’s go ask and confirm that with our businesses and make sure we’re providing the value that they want, yeah,
Brandon Burton 25:50
and that I can appreciate. You know, the the application process, and like you said, not going out to to win an award, but the process has sharpened you to refine things, and I can see where you can look at all your programs at work and be able to almost organize them in a way that makes more sense, on a kind of a flow chart, if you will, that maybe that structure has always been there, but to see it laid out and presented in a way that makes sense, I think, really helps to get everybody on board and and, like you said, to be able to sell the mission of The Chamber and what you guys are after, rather than transactional members. So that’s very well said.
Mark Owens 26:26
Thank you. Yeah, and I just want the listeners to know, like, I worked in a smaller chamber with five people. I worked my first job was two and a half people. I was the half as an intern. I think there’s so many skills that transfer from small and larger chambers. I mean, it’s different challenges, but at the end of the day, if we all can just listen to our community members roll our sleeves up and try to get after it. And really, I know it’s hard sometimes to pause and work on your chamber instead of just in it, but I think that’s so important to step back, and this process has helped us to really, like I said, audit what we’re doing. Where are our gaps? What can we improve? And I think if you take that time to do that, those those retreats, or whatever it may be, it really sets you up for success. And your community will see that, and your businesses will will invest in you.
Brandon Burton 27:17
Yeah, I think that’s wise. So I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Mark Owens 27:29
Yeah, this is a great question, and it’s actually something that I think about a lot and read about with the horizon initiative and other things a lot, and it’s chambers are evolving. We’ve been around for a really long time, and I think we’ll be around for a really long time, but we all know that, as you know, Zoom has changed what we do. Let’s just call what it is we used to be in person all the time. You got to adapt and how you engage. And I think the future of chambers really, really is going to be focused around talent. And I really believe that networking and marketing and membership, activities and events is the bread and butter, and it’s crucial. But if we can figure out as an industry how to maximize our value as it relates to talent, attraction, retention and development, that’s an area that’s so important for our businesses across the country right now, we all know that shortage and how hard it is to do it with our own teams. Think about our businesses and what they’re facing in this if we can help solve that problem, or even just ease the tension around talent development, how can we continue to adapt? But I do you know, honestly want to it’s going to be harder and harder to get memberships. You know, companies are tighter, especially post pandemic, it’s tighter membership numbers take more effort to do. And I fully believe in selling a vision and why you’re doing things, not just what you get back for it. And I think that’s been the area that I think if our industry can continue to push forward on selling the vision and selling the balance of Community and Economic Development together, that’s where the future of successful chambers are going to go. And you know, we can’t be all things to everybody, but we can guide a community forward and try to be catalytic leaders in our community, get everybody on the same page. So it’s going to be a challenge. We’re going to be learning from each other. And can’t wait to listen to more episodes, to steal ideas from from my colleagues, for sure.
Brandon Burton 29:30
That’s right. It’s your your weekly R and D resource, right
Mark Owens 29:34
here. That’s right.
Brandon Burton 29:36
Well, Mark is as as we wrap up, I want to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect to learn more. How about about how you guys are doing things? Where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect? Yeah, I
Mark Owens 29:51
would be honored to connect just when, when you email or LinkedIn message, we know I’m going to have questions for you too. So prepare for a two way conversation. But it’s Mark Owens, markowens@winstonsalem.com or I’m on LinkedIn as Mark Owens with Greater Winston Salem Inc, those are the two I’m probably monitor the closest, and would love to reach out, connect and and really appreciate the opportunity to share what our team and our communities doing. I love this industry as somebody who’s been in it since an intern, and hopefully we can continue to to open the doors for future people to come in and be a part of this. But look forward to connecting
Brandon Burton 30:33
absolutely I’ll I’ll get that in our show notes for this episode make it easy to find and and shoot that email or click that LinkedIn link and connect with you, but Mark, this has been great having you on the podcast again. Congratulations to you and your team. I wish you guys the best of luck in Dallas as chamber of the year.
Mark Owens 30:52
Thanks, Brandon. Appreciate being with you. If
Brandon Burton 30:56
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