Partner

Economic Development

Mindy Wilmot
Partner/Workforce Coordinator, Kern-EDC
Bakersfield, CA 93301
County: Kern
http://www.kedc.com

Organization:
Kern Economic Development Corporation (Kern-EDC) is a private, nonprofit company dedicated to ensuring a diverse and strong economic climate for all businesses in Kern County. It recruits new businesses to Kern County, helps established businesses with relocation and/or expansion efforts and works with local companies to provide economic data, workforce information and facilitation of the regulatory process. Kern-EDC is a partner on two WIRED projects, listed below.

Tasks:
Project 1.3 - Inventory of Key Innovation Assets:
- Identification and profiling of a minimum of 140 California Innovation Corridor Innovation Assets (Federal and private Research and Development labs, military installations, college/university research centers and private companies).
- Add the 140 profiles to Connectory.com. Design an economic development resource database tool (Corridor Innovative Asset Portal) to house the 140 profiles, as a Corridor Portal.
Project 3.1 - Workforce Analysis:
- With partners, generate a minimum of 200 company responses to the project survey, and develop and publicize a final report of the survey results.
- Develop strategies to address identified training and education gaps, and share strategies across the 9 regions and the entire Corridor.


Experience/core competencies:
Core competencies include workforce development and business expansion in Kern County.

Partnerships with other relevant organizations:
KEDC works closely with all government and non-profit agencies in Kern County.

Opportunities for collaboration:
Business Development; Business Incentives; Cluster Analysis; Economic Development; Economic Impact Analysis; Economic Modeling; Facilitation (meetings, etc.); Innovation Support; Marketing; Project Management; Project Partnering; Public Private Partners