Collaboration Underway in Philly Region

The following letter by Bernie Dagenais, Bob Moul, David Ricci, and Steve Wray appeared in the August 13, 2013 edition of the Philadelphia Daily News.

We agree wholeheartedly with the central point of Andrew Swinney's recent letter to the editor ("Our approach to society's ills is too fragmented") - fragmented approaches and siloed leadership are a fundamental barrier to achieving better outcomes for our city and region. No one organization or sector can address the biggest challenges that our community faces alone - it will take sustained, cross-sector collaboration around a shared agenda.

That's why the Economy League and its partners have spent the past several years working to get area business and civic leaders on the same page about what's most important for the Philadelphia area. We've brought together more than 1,500 business, nonprofit, government, community and philanthropic leaders to identify what we as a region must focus on together to drive growth and opportunity over the long run.

Part of the ongoing World Class Greater Philadelphia initiative, this extensive leadership-engagement and strategy-development effort has yielded three Global Positioning Strategies, or GPSes, that lay out shared goals, priority strategies, and key indicators for improving education and workforce outcomes in the greater Philadelphia area, boosting business and job growth, and making our infrastructure more efficient and reliable.

This work has been done in partnership with major regional business and civic-leadership organizations, including United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey, the CEO Council for Growth, and Urban Land Institute's Philadelphia District Council.

We know that together we'll pack more of a punch than we can separately, and we are continuously working to broaden the coalition of organizations and leaders committed to advancing this emerging shared agenda so we can address our most pressing social issues.

Bernie Dagenais is co-chairman of World Class Greater Philadelphia Education & Talent Strategy Team, and the president and chief executive of the Main Line Chamber of Commerce; Bob Moul is co-chairman of World Class Greater Philadelphia Business Growth Strategy Team, and the CEO of Artisan Mobile, Inc.; David M. Ricci is governance chairman of Philadelphia District Council's Urban Land Institute (ULI); Steven T. Wray is executive director of Economy League of Greater Philadelphia.

Read the letter on Philly.com >>