S4,E5 - Jess Abbott & Honora Spillane

This is Talk CNY, a semi-monthly podcast by CenterState CEO. We're an independent nonprofit committed to creating inclusive, equitable, and sustainable economic growth in Central New York. Join us as we meet the people and explore the projects driving the regional economy forward. This is Talk CNY, presented by NBT Bank. I'm Katie Zilcosky, Director of Communications at CenterState CEO and your host for Talk CNY. CenterState CEO isn't the same organization it was when it started, just over 15 years ago. We're bigger, taking on larger projects and embracing the diverse needs of our growing business community. So we knew in this moment of once-in-a-generation opportunity that we would need to evolve in order to better serve all businesses in our community at every stage and size. On this episode of Talk CNY, presented by NBT Bank, I'm joined by Senior Vice President of Membership and Business Experience Jess Abbott and Senior Vice President of Inclusive Growth Honora Spillane to talk about the new CenterState CEO Network.

Jess, Nora, thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you.

Happy to be here.

So at the end of February, we rolled out the CenterState CEO Network. It's an evolution, maybe of, how we approach membership across the organization. For our listeners, what are some of the top-line new things they should know about?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing about the network is that we're clearly defining the way that we engage with businesses at all levels in three very distinct tiers. There's membership. There's the new Network Associate, and then there is our client work.

Client really just means the programmatic work that we do across the board, whether it's economic development attraction and retention, the workforce development programming we do, or anything that happens here at the INPSYRE Innovation Hub.

And Network Associate, the new one.

Network Associate: so, this is for a business that is in a very specific state, right? Less than five FTEs (full time employees), maybe a single location, retail or hospitality. Folks that want to hear from us and also be able to contribute their voice to some small business strategy, but maybe don't have the need or the time to participate in some of the thought leadership and broader engagements that we have. They'll still receive our communications. They'll have our network pricing for events, but it's a different level of engagement than our members or our clients receive.

This is an expansion of our existing membership model. It's not all brand new, but there are new aspects. So, for someone who is a member right now, wondering what's going to change for me, what is going to change for them? What changes, what stays the same in the network?

I think the exciting thing is that the changes for our members are more, not less. And so for our longtime members, they can reach out to their account manager or look at our website and see an updated offering for their different tiers of membership. So it's the same traditional membership experience that they had, but a little bit more clearly defined. So what we're trying to do better is crosswalk the work that's being done across our organization into both member and client benefits. So maybe you knew you could always ask our policy team for some support on something, but now it's a little more clearly defined. So the exciting thing for our members is that the changes all mean more for them. It is more access to a broader network. It is all of the businesses that we were all working with, but more clearly defined in a more better tied together, engaged network.

Maybe you always knew that you could come to us for some policy support or for some data to help with your own projections, but we've more clearly articulated it. And now we also have the benefit of an expanded innovation hub with a bigger team providing more services. And so trying to crosswalk those two things together for both our clients and our members.

Yeah. I just want to ... Something that came up in a meeting earlier this week was this was kind of staring us in the face. And kudos to Jess and her team for just really taking a moment to wrap their brains around it and say like, how am I engaging and making sure that we're looking at the whole breadth of the universe. But it was. It was like right there for us, and we just missed it.

I had the benefit of coming in and needing to learn a lot really fast. And we had a really big network that taught me. And so I kept talking about our network, and then we realized we should probably talk about that with all of our partners. Yeah.

Pretty good for everybody.

It's good for everyone. It was a needed change, it sounds like. I think that needed change comes from a lot of changes in our own community. Can you explain why this is the right time for the network, and why we needed it in order to grow?

Yeah. I think we're not the same community we were 15 years ago when CenterState started. I think not only because of Micron, but the way CenterState has evolved. I've been here nearly seven years at this point. The way we engage on a more hands-on level with workforce development programming, with the providers, as we think more broadly about the regional economic development attraction retention strategies, we're doing more attraction than we've ever done. And so just thinking through how we talk about the work we do, we weren't really capturing it all. And it, I think, made people feel like they weren't sure if they should fit in or how do they do it. And we had the building formerly known as the Tech Garden. We had Tech Garden members, and they weren't sure. So this was also just really like a clarity thing for ... We're a unique organization and we interact with people a lot of different ways, and I think this is just really a reflection of that evolution and trying to simplify it a little bit.

And make it a little easier.

Make it a little bit more approachable.

We also have a lot of new members of our business community, whether it is longtime family-owned businesses where there are leadership changes, whether it is the benefit of the economic development team bringing in new opportunities. We have a different business network than was here previously. And so we wanted to make sure that we weren't missing anybody and that everybody knew how they could fit in and where they could fit in.

Yeah. So, as far as the network goes, for both of you in very similar roles in the organization, not in what you do day-to-day, but what you oversee, what are the most important parts of the network to you and your work?

I think for me, obviously as the SVP of Member and Business Experience, the membership piece is near and dear to my heart, but it is to me actually just as important to know and be aware of the work that Nora and her team are doing because we look to our members not only for the support that they give us, but for their thought leadership as well. And so I like to think for me, the membership is so important because it's a liaison between the needs of the business community and the work that my colleagues are doing and vice versa. If I hear enough things from a business community, I know who on Nora's team to go to to say, "This is something we should tackle." And I hope that Nora's team knows if they have a project where they need plugged in employers in a certain industry or of a certain size, to come to our team because we have some very engaged members.

I think the other ... Absolutely. Your team is fantastic.

No notes.

Yeah. But the other thing I think that we were able to do is really put some systems in place around how we do that interaction so that not only is it a better experience for those people in the network, but it's more systemized, it's replicable, it's equitable that the folks in an Upstart Accelerator program are getting the same level of service as other accelerator programs at INSPYRE, but also the same level of interaction with the business community. One thing that I'm particularly excited about is the, Jess mentioned the crosswalking. Clients being able to come to some of our higher level investor meetings and being able to engage with that part of the community that for a lot of people might not be something they even thought they should be in that room for. One thing that's exciting is in that crosswalk, we're able to make sure that everybody can be in all the spaces and places that we are in, too.

So you might be a client and participating in the Upstart Accelerator program, and you come to an Investor Meeting now and engage with some of the biggest businesses in our community. That's amazing networking, but it's also an experience that they might not get to have regularly otherwise. As part of just the experience of being a client, sometimes getting comfortable in those spaces in a sort of safe and welcoming environment is maybe the best thing that we can do, like safe space.

Yeah. And we always have our events. We have a great events team and a great marketing team, and our events have a huge audience, and they draw from both members and non-members, clients, and non-clients. Now we are able with this broader network to offer a significant difference in the network and non-network pricing for our events, both as a nod to this financial support that we get from our members, but also to be a little bit more accessible to some of the folks who may be at the start of their business journey. The main goal here is to have access for all businesses at all parts of their operations.

Now the network, while we just fully unveiled it recently, we've been kind of like rolling out bits and pieces of it as we went along. So we've already seen some great success with these new systems of connection. Can you tell me about some that you've seen so far as we've kind of had the small soft launch of the network prior to this?

Yeah.
I think one of the most exciting ones was very recent. And you are right. We've done a great job working across the teams, but now having everybody aware that it's okay for us to reach out to each other and to ask for these things has really just opened a lot of doors. And we have one company that's been highly involved, investor members with us, great thought leaders and great partners. And one of our GENIUS teams was connected to their team at a trade show in another state and came back, and we're like, "Hey, we met this company. I think they're local." So Nora's team reached out to my team and said, "Hey, do you know anything about this?" We were able to put it in front of leadership at that organization and who's to say how it will all play out, but it definitely helped facilitate what could potentially be a business changing sale for this company and also help support the activation of the supply chain locally, which is needed and some of the work that Nora's team is currently working on. So we have a tangible experience that happened just this week that feels pretty good. Yeah.

We were in the car coming back from another meeting and you were like working on it. It was awesome.
We'll have more in just a moment, but first we're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsor, NBT Bank.

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Welcome back to Talk CNY, presented by NBT Bank. I'm Katie Zilcosky, Director of Communications at CenterState CEO and your Host for Talk CNY. On this episode, I am joined by our Senior Vice President of Inclusive Growth, Honora Spillane, and our Senior Vice President of Membership and Business Experience, Jess Abbott. We are talking about the CenterState CEO Network and all of its new features and why we did it. Thank you both for being here today.

Thank you.

Excited.

Having an engaged membership is something that we're really lucky to have, and it also enables us to do different, larger projects and take on complex issues. Can you guys expand on that a little bit, and how it's helped us recently, even to enter some of these arenas of thought?

Sure. I mean, obviously, from just the traditional kind of chamber aspect, you need an engaged membership so that folks can find business opportunities within our community, but we have just such a different membership than anything I've ever experienced. And because of the depth and breadth that we have in the industries that we represent, we're able to bring folks together. I always say in a little coopetition, I'm always surprised by the way that our leaders in similar industries are willing to come to the table to look at a complex issue that our region has to tackle and say, how can we do this together, where historically or in other markets, they might be only competitors and not sit at the same table. The best instance of this locally and recently is the Housing Fund. This was something where one of our affinity groups had been coming together and identifying where they could lean in to really kind of help move the needle on some of Central New York's needs and issues.

And it was really that a lot of the housing projects were stuck and there was a need for this MESDAT and how could we attack that? And so in working with not only just our membership, but also in our colleagues working in policy and planning, working with other folks in our organization, working with our partners at the state, we're able to launch a pretty historic and unprecedented $150 million housing fund that is the partnership of a lot of our local financial institutions, our state partners, and it's going to have a huge impact on our biggest need right now, which is bringing more housing to market.

Yeah. I think that's a terrific example of where we bring together the policy chops, the work on the ground, and then the membership just expertise onto something like this. Another thing is the tech hub. We knew we were going to have a challenge around pulling and building the supply chain for Micron, not just here, but across the microelectronic supply chain across New York State. We were able to take the expertise that we've developed in policy work and advocacy in Albany and DC, leverage that with partners in Rochester and Buffalo. And we rewarded the Tech Hub thing, which I know we have talked about on the podcast before, but that wouldn't have been possible without the expertise of our members, the ability to go seek out those opportunities for CenterState to have the resources to apply and manage something like that. And then it really enables us to activate across not only Syracuse and Central New York, but across all of the Thruway corridor eventually.

Yeah. I mean, all of this work is complex, like we said before, but we are one organization kind of taking it on from all of these different angles. How unique is that? I mean, even just looking to our immediate peers, what sets us apart?

One of the things that is very unique is that, especially for a city of our size and a region of our size, we are, I believe, one of the largest membership organizations of our kind in the state of New York. And we represent membership in counties across the state of New York in other states. We have several members in Manhattan. And so I think just the sheer size of us and the depth and breadth of industry. There are no industries that we don't have some representation in. And often we have many layers of industry representation, which is so important so that we hear more than one voice as we're moving forward.

Yeah. CenterState 15 years ago was brought together 14 different organizations under one umbrella, which is an insane thing to say. When I travel not only across New York State or with my peers from other economic development organizations, but really across the country over the past year or two, nobody has, they're like, "Oh, you do that? Oh, you do. "

What about workforce? And people are both impressed and it's something that came up in our meeting at the economic forecast breakfast that Amy Liu said was just people look at you, CenterState, as kind of the ideal. Now, not every day is super easy. When you have that much complexity, that brings some complications and organizational growth pains, but we're working through it and it's happening.
Yeah. And I think too, the unique aspect of it is intended so that we can be successful in achieving outcomes faster, but also for ease of experience for our members and clients. A lot of the work that we are doing is being done very well in other communities in multiple organizations, which is not a bad thing. It just means there's multiple stops to make, or sometimes you might be working on the same project and not know it, or kind of be adjacent and not parallel. And so by doing this all in one network and by combining a lot of what were previously different organizations, we're able to provide our members and our clients kind of a one-stop shop. You come to your account manager and membership, and you say, "These are the things I need." And we go find the expert internally or the business externally or the state partner locally to connect you to.
And it's for ease of execution. And it allows us a much greater understanding of people's business operations because we're able to hear all of the things they need instead of just the piece that they come to us for.

Just shout out to Jess's team. Honestly, they really have to tackle a lot across this organization and make it digestible for folks who are interested, who want to look at it. And they do a really amazing job of that.

So why was CenterState CEO so well positioned to take on these roles and to engage in some of these larger regional projects and both now and into the future?

I think some of the work that has been done prior to me joining has set us up to continue to execute on some larger projects. And so as we continue to execute on these larger projects, more come our way. We also have been able to grow our membership, which does help provide us an infrastructure that can continue to pursue those things because we know we will be capable of executing on them. But the real bottom line is the people. We are a large organization. We are over 70 employees at this point across all of our different pieces. We operate a chamber of commerce in Oswego County. I mean, we have so many people who are either born and raised here, have worked here for their career, come from the city government, come from different policy work. And so we have our own network internally that just really allows us to kind of hit the ground running in a way that I think is pretty special.

Yeah. I think it's something that's come out of a project that folks will be hearing more about soon, but as we continue to work towards attracting the supply chain we need for Micron to be successful, one of the things that came out during that process, and it's something we've talked about internally, but never really kind of put the right kind of brand around is the expertise. One thing that when I was getting hired, Rob said to me in the last interview was like, "The thing we have is people. We have really good, well-intentioned, smart, hardworking people. " And I think more than anything else that comes through on my team and the care that they have for clients, the care that they have for the programs they're developing, the joy I see on people's faces when they go to a business and they see it being open for the first time and the ambassadors come and it's just that whole thing is just so unique to us, but that people element, but it's the people who are here to help you in what you need. I think that's the other piece. It's you know we can identify, we listen and are be able to be really responsive to the needs, unique needs across businesses.

And it's a bunch of people who believe in where we live. Part of the reason I left the career I had, I had a great job. I worked for a great company, but I loved Syracuse, and I loved Central New York, and I was traveling, and I saw this group of people who were like running through the wall for CNY every day. I'm like, "Yeah, I kind of want to be a part of that. " And I think we downplay our expertise. I mean, Nora's a lawyer, and we don't even talk about it.

Who would've known.

We don't even talk about it.

Thanks though for that. I appreciate you making sure everybody hears that.

So-

Non-practicing status.

Just to set the record straight.

Yeah. I am a lawyer. All right.

And a notary.

It comes with the lawyer thing.

It comes with the lawyer thing. So we have just started first phases of the network in like full force, but we'll see this thing grow for years and years to come. So I want to ask both of you, if you're looking into a crystal ball five years from now, what do you hope to see the network look like? What do you hope it has accomplished? Who do you hope is a part of it? And how does that differ from right now?

It's a great question, Katie.

It's like you're a professional.

I'm excited to see the continued integration of the clients and the hands-on programmatic work we do and how that aligns with the broader business community and the membership engagement. The GENIUS example you brought up before is like, I want to see that happen every week. I want something like that to happen every week. And when we think about the volume of opportunity coming to this region, this space, we're in INSPYRE right now, and I appreciate that. The space, I want this to be full and active with clients and members and people taking advantage of the coworking space and the free coffee and really feel as though this is one seamless opportunity. This building is a front door, but it's not just a front door to CenterState, it's a front door to opportunities here.

That's a really good vision. Mine was a little bit more specific to my body of work. I would like to see our membership grow outside of the density that we have in the immediate surrounding counties. I think for a lot of companies that recognize the work that we do that have a presence in other states, we do have membership with them and they have their eye on us and we're starting to see it more and more, but the world is only getting smaller. We have a lot of folks whose operations are going to be based in one place, but might have staff in another or partnerships and opportunities in another. And I would really like us to start to tie the thread between upstate and downstate. This is a smaller state than people would lead you to believe. And a lot of the policy work that we do is not just specific to Central New York, it's specific to our broader state opportunities.

And we're starting to see it. You might see Kevin Schwab and I down in Manhattan a little more than you would expect, but I would like that contingent of strong supporters that we work with downstate to start to be broader, and I would like it to expand up.

So if someone's thinking about joining the network, they've made it through this episode, what if- Congratulations. Yeah. Congratulations. Good

On you, you earned it.

What is one sentence you would say to them that you think would convince them to join the network? 

And then how do they do it?

What are you waiting for? And how you do it is go to our expertly maintained website, which has all the different ways that you can get engaged with us. There is a Join Us tab and you can see all the different tiers of membership, you can see the benefits that are there, you can see how to engage as a client. If you're interested in Network Associate, you fill out a form, but you can also just put in a general request. What are you waiting for? Go to the Join Us tab and figure out where you fit in.

I can't really top that. So we're going to end with Jess. Yeah.

This is why she does what she does.

Jess Abbott, Senior Vice President of Membership and Business Experience and Honora Spillane, Senior Vice President of Inclusive Growth. Thank you both for joining us today.

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

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