In an article in the Marin Independent Journal, written by Richard Halstead wrote, “The CEO of the San Rafael Chamber of Commerce has been selected to head the North Bay Leadership Council, a regional business advocacy organization.

The council’s longtime president and CEO, Cynthia Murray, is retiring. Joanne Webster, president and CEO of the chamber has been named to take her place.

“I had planned to retire in 2020,” Murray said, “but then the pandemic hit, and I decided that I should stay with the organization and see them through it. I have seen them through it, and I’m now 73, and I think it’s a perfect time to retire.”

Webster said, “It took a very special position for me to leave the chamber because I love San Rafael, and I love the San Rafael Chamber of Commerce. I’m going to be able to advocate for businesses on a larger platform and on a regional level. I’m very excited.”

Murray has headed the 33-year-old council for the last 17 years. She doubled the organization’s membership after serving only a few years in the position. The nonprofit, employer-led public policy advocacy organization has a little over 50 dues-paying members.

“We’re the voice of employers, not just the voice of business,” Murray said, “because we do have many nonprofits and public members. We look for the leaders in their sectors.”

Collectively, the council’s members have over 25,000 employees.

Murray’s tenure with the council has been eventful. Two years after she arrived, the nation lapsed into the Great Recession. The recession was followed by major wildfires in the North Bay fueled by climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s becoming more and more apparent,” Murray said, “that having organizations that represent employers at the table when you’re trying to formulate public policy in a time of uncertainty and change is really important.

She added, “I’ve really seen an increased need for business, government and nonprofits to all work together to achieve goals.”

Murray said her experience as a Marin County supervisor from 1999 to 2006 prepared her well for leading the council.

“It gave me an advantage in understanding how decisions are made,” she said, “what works and doesn’t work when you’re trying to present new ideas.”

Webster began her career in business before being introduced to local government.

After growing up in Swampscott, Massachusetts, and earning her bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science at Boston College, Webster moved to California to operate a Double Rainbow Cafe franchise together with her husband Charlie Garfink, whom she met in college.

“I was really excited about coming to the Golden State,” Webster said. “When you’re a little girl and you grow up in New England, you have visions of what that means.”

Webster and her husband opened their first Double Rainbow Cafe in Los Gatos and then a second one in San Rafael in 1988. They sold the Los Gatos franchise after the cafe suffered damage during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. They bought a house in Fairfax and focused on the San Rafael cafe, which they would jointly operate for 23 years.

“One of the hardest things you can do is meet a payroll,” Webster said. “You can be a business with 10 employees or a business with 100. You have similar challenges. It’s just on a different scale.”

From 2001 to 2011, she also served as director of San Rafael’s business improvement district. The city devoted revenue derived from a portion of its business license fee to promotion of the downtown business district, and Webster helped guide how the money was spent.

“I really got to understand how the city was run and had the opportunity of creating very strong relationships with elected officials and city staff,” Webster said. “I got them to understand how challenging it is to run a business.”

When Webster and her husband sold the Double Rainbow franchise to a former employee in 2011, Webster became director of marketing for the San Rafael Chamber of Commerce, and in 2014 she was named president and CEO of the chamber.

Webster said her biggest challenge as chamber CEO was responding to the pandemic. She is proud of the fact that San Rafael was the first chamber of commerce in Marin to create a disaster relief fund for local businesses.

“We were able to solicit a quarter of a million dollars in donations so we could give out over 75 grants to small businesses,” Webster said. “I still have a lot of those businesses thank me for that because they were able to pay rent or pay their employees and keep their doors open.”

Webster said the pandemic took a heavy toll on sole proprietorships in San Rafael, due to difficulties they experienced getting Paycheck Protection Program loans.

“We kept as many businesses open as we possibly could,” Webster said, “whether they were chamber members or not.”

Webster said the biggest challenge North Bay Leadership Council members face is finding employees.

“What we’re hearing from employers is that the cost of living in the North Bay is making it really difficult to recruit,” Webster said. “We’re seeing a lot of positions remaining unfilled. It’s having an impact on the efficiency of companies’ operations. A lack of housing at all price levels is driving the problem.”

Beginning in November, Webster will work alongside Murray, until Murray departs at the end of the year.

“Joanne leaves the chamber on solid footing,” said Carol Parks, who heads the chamber board. “Our membership is strong with over 500 member businesses, representing over 26,000 employees across 25 different industry sectors.”

In a statement, Murray said, “There is no one more capable of leading NBLC into its next iteration than Joanne.”

Affirmative action in college admissions has been a mainstay in most states with the noble intent to level the playing field for marginalized students and recognize the significance of race in providing equal opportunity.

The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to end affirmative action admissions by colleges and universities will have far reaching affects, with impacts on businesses who recognize that diversity within their workforce is imperative, and on the workforce facing greater obstacles to getting the education and training needed to meet the skill requirements of employers.

The Supreme Court ruling disrupts the fifty years of progress made that provided more people with accessibility and opportunity to participate fully in American economic and civic life.  The Court supplants its judgment over that of the most prestigious educational institutions in the country, as well as 82 corporations and business groups who signed three amicus briefs to the court, including Google, Salesforce, Microsoft, Verizon, Starbucks, and American Express.

The amicus brief filed by International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and Aeris Communications, Inc. (Aeris) along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University “underscore[s] the importance of diversity not just within higher education or the corporate world at large, but in the particular cross-section of academia and industry within the intensely collaborative, and increasingly global, STEM industries.” As IBM, Aeris, MIT, and Stanford explain, “Not only does diversity promote better outcomes for students in STEM, it contributes to better science.  As such, American businesses at the forefront of innovation in STEM depend on the availability of a diverse cross-section of talented graduates from the nation’s most rigorous and elite institutions.”

Demographic changes demand that employers attract diverse employees and ensure that these diverse employees have the skills needed in the workplace.  Brookings’s Joseph Kane says, “The overall labor force will grow from 161 million workers to 169 million (an additional 4.8%) over the next decade, largely driven by women and people of color. From 2021 to 2031, the number of women in the U.S. labor force will increase by 6.1%, while the number of men will only increase 3.5%. At the same time, the number of Black and Latino or Hispanic workers will increase 8.2% and 23.6%, respectively, while the number of white workers will only increase 1.6%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not separately report other racial groups—including Asian American and Native American workers—but groups in the “all other” category will grow the fastest (24.1%).”

These statistics show that the workforce will be increasingly diverse. America’s economic future depends on that workforce being educated and skilled. Without affirmative action, the pipeline to educate diverse students will be reduced as has been proven in states like California that don’t have affirmative action in admissions.  In California, which stopped affirmative action after the passage of Prop 209 in 1996, other methods to improve diversity have not been able to match the positive results of affirmative action, especially in the more selective campuses of University of California. California’s diversity is not reflected in the student bodies of our public higher education institutions, and this means our changing demographics will exacerbate this situation. This ruling also means that the private universities in California must also end race-conscious admissions which will further limit diversity on those campuses and ultimately, in our workforce.

Given that the workforce will be more diverse, employers need to redouble efforts to build a stronger long-term talent pipeline, which crucially depends on reaching and supporting more diverse workers. It is expected that groups opposing affirmative action will now be focusing on employers’ hiring and promotion practices.  However, it is important that employers maintain their commitment to their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs as companies that are more diverse will do better at attracting more diverse employees in the competition for talent.

To make their DEI programs less of a target for litigation, employers should remove quota systems for hiring and instead improve their recruiting practices to cast a wider net of potential employees.  This can include recruiting from higher education institutions that serve more diverse student bodies, offering apprenticeships and more collaboration with their local universities and colleges.

And all of us can do more to support local college and career readiness programs, universal preschool, greater funding of educational institutions, mentoring programs, internships and other mechanisms to help level the playing field before a student gets to college.  Let’s make the disappointment in the Court’s decision a driver for us to do more to ensure that students get the education they need so our economic and civic lives prosper.

North Bay Leadership Council is an employer-led public policy advocacy organization committed to providing leadership in ways to make the North Bay sustainable, prosperous and innovative. As business and civic leaders, our goal is to ensure economic health by building more housing, improving mobility, promoting better education, and creating jobs to make our region a better place to live and work. Collectively, our members have over 25,000 employees.

For more information, contact:

Cynthia Murray

(415) 246-0593

cmurray@northbayleadership.org

In looking at the struggle for California to compete for the big federal Infrastructure pot of money, there are other areas of concern. Perhaps the most compelling is that even if California can get its act together, it may not be able to muster up the workforce needed to build the improvements.  In The incredible shrinking infrastructure workforce — and what to do about it, by Joseph W. Kane, (Brookings, Link), we learn the U.S. infrastructure workforce is rapidly losing talent.

Kane describes how the billions of dollars the Feds unleashed for infrastructure projects “has the enormous potential to support up to 15 million new jobs over the next decade, according to the most ambitious estimates. Many state and local entities eligible to receive this funding—think transportation departments, water utilities, and more—are scrambling to secure new pots of money and get workers ready for all the projects to come.”

But the problem with all those news jobs, is that we are hemorrhaging current infrastructure workers and having a hard time finding new workers.  Kane says, “The U.S. infrastructure workforce is rapidly losing talent. As recent Brookings research shows, nearly 17 million infrastructure workers are projected to permanently leave their jobs over the next decade due to a wave of retirements, job transfers, and other labor market shifts. Infrastructure workers are not just construction workers—they are plumbers, electricians, civil engineering technicians, or dozens of other occupations, primarily involved in the skilled trades. And they are responsible for operating and maintaining our roads, rails, pipes, power plants, and other facilities over many decades. Filling these shoes is not simply about patching a pothole or building a bridge—it represents a generational challenge affecting many industries nationally.”

“Yet filling these new infrastructure jobs also represents a generational opportunity,” says Kane. “Infrastructure jobs pay 30% more to lower-income workers and those just starting their careers relative to all jobs nationally, while also posing lower formal educational barriers to entry. But too many workers—especially younger workers, women, and people of color—continue to be sidelined from these careers. The infrastructure workforce is aging, male, and white; only 11% are 24 years old or younger, 18.5% are women, and under a third are people of color. Many prospective job seekers not only lack awareness these positions exist, but they also lack flexible and accessible pathways to fill them, including struggles to gain needed on-the-job training and limited supportive services (e.g., child care, transportation).”

Kane points out, “Difficulties in hiring, training, and retaining a younger, more diverse workforce limit economic opportunity, slow down projects, and pose the very real possibility of mission failure for infrastructure employers, including the owners and operators of these systems. These difficulties are also likely to get worse given the country’s declining—and diversifying—labor force participation. The BLS estimates that the U.S. labor force participation rate—the percentage of the population that is working or actively looking for work—has gone up since the pandemic, to 62.6% last month. However, this rate is still lower than the pre-pandemic level (63.3%), and further declines are projected over the next decade (down to 60.1%)—continuing a longer-term trend as more baby boomers exit the labor force.”

There are big demographic changes in workforce participation, too.  Kane says, “Amid these broader declines, an even more significant change may soon impact the infrastructure workforce: The overall labor force will grow from 161 million workers to 169 million (an additional 4.8%) over the next decade, largely driven by women and people of color—the groups traditionally overlooked and marginalized across the infrastructure sector. From 2021 to 2031, the number of women in the U.S. labor force will increase by 6.1%, while the number of men will only increase 3.5%. At the same time, the number of Black and Latino or Hispanic workers will increase 8.2% and 23.6%, respectively, while the number of white workers will only increase 1.6%. The BLS does not separately report other racial groups—including Asian American and Native American workers—but groups in the “all other” category will grow the fastest (24.1%).

Action is required to produce the needed workforce.  Kane says, “Bridging the infrastructure sector’s talent gaps in the short term needs to coincide with building a stronger long-term talent pipeline, which crucially depends on reaching and supporting more diverse workers. That means conducting more extensive community outreach to reach new and different workers, including additional demonstration projects. That means collaborating with workforce development boards, educational institutions, community-based organizations, and other partners to define hiring and training priorities, expand work-based learning options, and provide more supportive services. That means changing how infrastructure projects are done, including new local hiring standards, procurement strategies, and contracting practices to reach women- and minority-owned businesses.”

In conclusion, Kane says, “The key is for infrastructure and workforce leaders to both recognize the urgency of this challenge and the need to start experimenting with a different approach. Time is fleeting, and the federal money is already flowing.”

Another challenge is the feeling some people have that all is lost.  We’ve past the point of no return and we are doomed.  That kind of thinking makes people less likely to make change and to avoid taking the steps that will help address climate change.  In We May Not Stop The Climate Crisis. That Doesn’t Mean We Shouldn’t Try, by Brian Kateman (Link) the author says we have more reason for hope now and we need to dispel the doomsayers. Kateman says, “If your personal anxiety about the climate has softened a bit in recent times, you’re not alone. After decades of increasingly alarming reporting on climate change and the environment, fatalistic headlines are beginning to give way to ones that express a different kind of feeling, one that many of us haven’t felt in a long time: hope.”

“The recent shift in the media narrative has been shaped by two ongoing conversations,” says Kateman. “First, scientists and reporters are trying to fine-tune a message that most accurately represents the evidence. Second, some reporters are wondering about the impact of their message on public attitudes towards change. Luckily, it seems to me that the most realistic interpretation of the evidence and the optimal message to motivate change are one and the same: We can make a difference, but there’s a significant chance that we won’t.”

He says, “To observe the shifting media narrative, take last month’s report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for example: Some outlets reported on it in the usual, panic-stricken way; The Guardian, for example, titled its article, ‘Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis: act now or it’s too late.’ But Time Magazine took a more positive tone: ‘The New U.N. Climate Report Has Arrived. Resist the Urge to Despair.’ The author describes his own newfound hope. “’Like many scientists,’ he writes, ‘was disheartened for decades, but today’s report makes me feel more inspired than ever.’”

“Indeed, there’s been a rising tide of ‘climate optimism’ as journalists attempt to walk back some of the most alarmist warnings from recent decades” says Kateman. “In an opinion piece for CNN, Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln relays the success story of how ‘humanity and all life on Earth dodged a bullet’ by phasing out chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting substances with the UN’s Montreal Protocol passed in 1987.”

“As a result of the Montreal Protocol, Lincoln reports, the ozone layer is now ‘on track to recover in the coming decades.’ This, he says, offers hope that society may be able to intervene in some of the other causes of climate change. More recently, Reuters published an op-ed by strategists Johan Falk and Owen Gaffney of the Exponential Roadmap Initiative. They describe the latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the same one The Guardian called a ‘final warning’ — as ‘remarkably positive’ because it indicates that it’s still technically possible for global society to stabilize the rise in climate at 1.5oC, despite the caveat that governments are ‘way, way off target’ in their efforts to meet this goal. Writing for Vox’s ‘Against Doomerism’ project, Hannah Ritchie carefully advocates for a certain kind of climate optimism, one that leads to action rather than complacency,” says Kateman.

“’Climate optimism’ is a notable shift, and it may be a sensible response to the wave of climate ‘doomerism’ we’ve been experiencing in recent years,” says Kateman. “As environmental journalist Elizabeth Kolbert pointed out in an extensive feature for New York Magazine late last year, ‘a diet of bad news leads to paralysis, which yields yet more bad news.’ She’s not wrong; many self-identified climate doomers lament that activism feels futile in the face of certain catastrophe. If we truly don’t believe there’s anything we can do, either as individuals or collectively, we’re unlikely to try.”

Kateman warns, “Of course, optimism carries its own set of risks. By this point it’s clear that denying global warming altogether, or even downplaying its severity, has only allowed the problem to grow. Meanwhile, we’ve seen climate denying politicians elected to the highest offices as planet-threatening human activities continue to expand. An overly positive outlook, just like an overly negative one, could halt our progress.”

“In addition to reducing our much-needed sense of urgency, an over-optimistic view could lead us to make some pretty dangerous gambles, all because we gravely misunderstood the odds. In addition to avoiding both over-optimistic complacency and over-pessimistic defeatism, we need to be realistic. Accurately understanding the most likely future of our planet is essential for both institutional and individual decision-making. Should we, as Elon Musk believes, have lots of children to avoid a purported ‘underpopulation crisis?’ It seems to me that this hinges on whether there will be a planet for them and others to comfortably live on in fifty years.”

Kateman points out, “Unwarranted, unqualified optimism feels like a form of toxic positivity. Scary feelings are met with empty assurances, rather than addressing the problem directly. In my work, I often speak to food and environmental advocates who feel like they’re surrounded by cheerleaders while the world literally burns around them. They’re told to keep a positive outlook, sometimes by the very same governments that are actively making choices that endanger the planet. This unrelenting feel-goodism denies reality and undermines the importance and urgency of their work. Unrealistic positivity about the state of the climate, as some have pointed out, is essentially a form of gaslighting.”

“The fight against climate change isn’t an all-or-nothing battle. There are at least some ways we can make meaningful changes that positively affect the lives of humans and other animals,” says Kateman. “Some progress is always better than none, and if we can delay or reduce coming disasters, we absolutely should. We can’t give up, but we don’t need to kid ourselves into believing we’ve already won. Few activists have ever proclaimed that their respective causes—racism, sexism, and so on—would ever completely resolve. But even problems that initially seem overwhelming and insurmountable may be able to be managed until better solutions emerge.”

Kateman ends with this observation. “An estimated 3,664,292 babies were born in the U.S. in 2021 alone. We owe it to them to do everything in our power to keep the planet comfortably habitable for the duration of their natural lives, at the very least. Humans and many other species may eventually go extinct as a result of industrial activity. But that’s no excuse not to do everything we can to make life a little more livable for future generations. No matter what happens, we will be glad that we tried.”