CA State Labor Secretary Visits the Inland Empire for Workforce Conference, Blended Impact Joins the Panel
September 2022 - On September 30th, RCCD Workforce and Economic Development and the County of Riverside hosted the Growing a Future Regional Workforce for the Inland Empire Conference with Natalie Palugyai, Secretary of the California Labor & Workforce Development Agency.
Held at the Riverside Convention Center, the conference included a keynote by Secretary Palugyai, three featured panels, lunch, and break out sessions for deeper discussions. Stacy Cumberbatch from Blended Impact joined the second panel with leaders from our local universities on the panel to discuss "Diversifying the IE Economy Through Innovation & Entrepreneurship".
Quoting the IE Innovation Ecosystem 2021 data supplement we recently completed with the Center for Social Innovation, UCR we spoke to the diversification already occuring in the healthcare/biotech, agritech, and cleantech space evidenced by the companies that have recently raised significant private and public capital investment funds in these industries in the past few years. Additional industries such as sustainable logistics, advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity, and lithium mining and the partnerships forming around them to catalyze these industries were also featured in the recently released dataset.
Investment capital for businesses was highlighted as lacking and a challenge in the region on the panel. The growth of crowdfunding and opportunity zone funds provides a unique opportunity for the region if embraced. Data provided by KingsCrowd shows fundraising via online crowdfunding platforms for early stage companies growing at over 128% in the past 3 years and in typically underinvested cities. The Inland Empire dataset was recently featured at the Cal Cities Annual Conference in September as a crowdfunding success story. Additionally, this year we have personally started to see more business owners create their own QOF and roll their own capital gains into a fund to be invested back into their new business to gain traction before raising from other investors at a later stage. With the launch of the CA State Venture Capital Fund, we expect to see even increased funding for seed stage ventures at launch.
With this diversity of industries supported and innovation in the funding structures to accommodate naturally occurring, we remain highly optimistic for the future of the region.