MILWAUKEE — If Dale Kooyenga was looking for a big challenge - he found it as the new leader of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Association of Commerce.
"Our demographics are not favorable. We have a 1% growth in the workforce between now and 2040. So we simply need more people in Milwaukee," said Dale Kooyenga, the new President of MMAC.
The former state lawmaker for a dozen years is a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. He was @TheTable Monday night to talk about his new role promoting Milwaukee and its diverse business community.
"How do we keep marketing Milwaukee as a great place to be, because it is a great place to be. So, it will be a multi-pronged approach," said Kooyenga.
Kooyenga points to the Region on Choice pledge started under predecessor Tim Sheehy as an example of what Milwaukee can do in the area of retention and recruiting more African American and Hispanic/Latino employees.
"It was a huge effort led by MMAC management that said we need to make sure that the leadership of our community looks like our community. They were very successful on that with having just a larger Rolodex of opportunities for people to have positions here, and we far exceeded the pledge," said Kooyenga. "Right now we have a great team working on, what does regional choice. 2.0 look like."
Kooyenga also sees an opportunity for improvement as well in preparing the next generation of workers.
"We have a long way to go on education - we have done a lot on education, we have to do more on education. Our economic development right now is just going gangbusters with the wins with Microsoft and other big companies like that," said Kooyenga.
Watch the full conversation in the video at the top of this article.
Charles Benson and Shannon Sims interview key people in our community during TMJ4's @TheTable segment weeknights at 10 p.m.
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