About 180 community leaders and business professionals will join Commerce Lexington this week for the organization’s visit to the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, with the aim of studying the area’s successes and challenges in the hopes of sparks new ideas and initiatives for the Bluegrass.
Commerce Lexington’s annual leadership visit, which will be held this year on June 7-9, is one of the longest-running of its kind among chambers and economic development groups nationally. Previous trips have influenced a variety of local programs, including the Access Loan small business financing program, Coldstream Research Park, Thursday Night Live, and the recently created EMERGE conference.
“These community-building intercity visits provide participants with great opportunities to take the best of what we see in another region and apply it to something that may be able to further enhance the Bluegrass Region,” said Carla Blanton, board chair for Commerce Lexington, in a release. “During our trip to Minneapolis-Saint Paul, we’ll hear from leaders there on a variety of topics like higher education, innovation, regionalism, arts and culture, talent recruitment and retention, diversity, and more.”
This year’s leadership visit, which is presented by the McBrayer law firm, will include a visit to the University of Minnesota’s McNamara Alumni Center for a panel discussion featuring University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto and University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler. Former Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak will also address the group as one of multiple speakers on the topic of regionalism.
Additional topics to be explored on the trip include talent retention and recruitment, arts and culture and efforts to attract Fortune 500 companies. The visit’s full agenda can be found online at www.commercelexington.com/minneapolis-2017.html. Social media updates on the trip can also be followed on Twitter at www.twitter.com/CommerceLex or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LeadershipVisit.