Team NEO merges with NorTech
YOUNGSTOWN
Team Northeast Ohio will change in all but name as it launches into a new organization in early 2015.
The Cleveland-based private-sector organization that markets Northeast Ohio to companies will merge with NorTech, a technology-based economic-development agency.
The merger is part of a strategy by the Regional Competitiveness Council, a 15-member committee created in 2013 by Northeast Ohio’s business and philanthropy leaders to strengthen the region’s economy. The RCC identified three areas of economic development that needed improvement: job creation, gross regional product and per capita income.
The strategy includes making larger commitments to fewer industry clusters, increasing emphasis on business retention and expansion, enhancing support to startup entrepreneurship and addressing workforce issues.
“As the strategy took shape, it became a question of how to implement it,” said Grant Goodrich, regional strategy implementation director for the RCC.
The new Team NEO will include functions from both organizations and more, said Rebecca Bagley, president and CEO of NorTech.
“It’s an enhancement,” she said.
That includes strategy coordination, and workforce integration, along with retention and expansion support, Goodrich said.
Although NorTech would lose its brand, Bagley said keeping the “missions aligned, going forward” was important.
Tom Waltermire, CEO of Team NEO, said local and regional activities will remain important with the new organization.
On the other hand, both Waltermire and Bagley will depart from their positions at the end of the year while moving on to other opportunities within the private sector.
Guy Coviello, vice president of government affairs and media for the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, said the organization is working closely with Team NEO on the transition.
“We’re part of the change,” he said, adding that the new Team NEO will improve the sharing of information within the region’s economic- development system.
Team NEO was founded in 2003 by First Energy Corp., the Greater Akron Chamber, the Stark Development Board, the Lorain County Chamber of Commerce, the YWRC and the Greater Cleveland Partnership. Representing 18 counties in Ohio, it became one of the six regional partners of Jobs-Ohio, the nonprofit created by Gov. John Kasich, in 2011.