Join us for the BIMA's thought leadership panel around AI in the advertising industry and gain insights from Noor Naseer.
09/26/2023
5:30pm - 7:30pm
Hill Holliday
Corean Reynold was recently appointed the Director of Nightlife Economy for the City of Boston, where she brings a wealth of experience and a passion for fostering an equitable and thriving nightlife ecosystem.
10/04/2023
6:00pm - 7:30pm
Roundhead Brewing Company
Don’t miss our upcoming Government Affairs Forum with Massachusetts State Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg. Register now!
10/11/2023
9:45am - 11:00am
Bank of America
Designed for mid-level managers and supervisors, this new certificate program addresses workplace well-being through unique, innovative, and actionable methods.
Join our Transformational DEI Certificate! Our comprehensive learning & development offerings are designed to connect and grow strong leaders who lead both inside and out of the office.
Our Women’s Leadership Program enables you to take your leadership to the next level by arming you with the most in-demand leadership toolkit.
Our Boston’s Future Leaders (BFL) program provides emerging leaders with a socially conscious and civically engaged leadership toolkit, as well as the opportunity to apply their knowledge through experiential assignments.
Our Economic Inclusion Committee provides strategic support around research, policies, and programs that are focused on building equal opportunity.
We are developing an ecosystem of corporations and partners with the influence and buying power to transform economic inclusion for minority business enterprises (MBEs).
The Fierce Urgency of Now Festival brings Boston’s diverse young professionals together with business leaders, organizations and their peers to build connection, advance careers and ignite positive change.
09/12/2023 -
09/16/2023
Greater Boston
City Awake empowers young professionals in a variety of ways that encourages these rising leaders to stay invested in the region’s future success.
BIMA (the Boston Interactive Media Association) serves a vibrant community of like-minded professionals from agencies, brands, publishers, and ad-tech companies with business interests in the New England market.
For nearly 30 years, the Chamber’s Women’s Network has connected female professionals of all background and career levels. Today, our Women’s Network is the largest in New England, strengthening the professional networks of women each year.
The Massachusetts Apprentice Network convenes employers, training providers, and talent sources interested in developing and implementing apprenticeship programs in occupations across industries and statewide in fields such as tech, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, and more.
We support small business through public policy initiatives, events designed to connect small businesses in Greater Boston to their peers and established business leaders, professional development offerings, and free small business advising.
Explore our mission and values to better understand how we are leading the business community forward.
Our member directory is your resource to discover, connect, and engage with Boston’s businesses from every industry and sector.
Can the Boston business community rescue the city’s vanishing middle class?
That’s essentially the challenge that Mayor Marty Walsh put to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday. His annual speeches to the chamber typically include requests of the executives in the room. This ask was a particularly big one.
Walsh called on the business community for help with respect to transportation, schools, and local hiring. But housing was emphasized the most. Boston has had no problem attracting luxury condo developers, and Walsh boasted about the city’s success with income-restricted affordable housing.
Homes that work for the middle class? That’s another story entirely.
First, Walsh urged the roughly 700 people in the room to support Governor Charlie Baker’s “Housing Choice” bill, in part to help the mayor’s colleagues in nearby communities shepherd projects through city council and town meeting votes. This legislation would reduce the voting threshold needed to pass housing-related zoning changes to a simple majority, from a two-thirds majority. Baker and his team have been touring the state to promote the bill. But Baker’s Housing Choice Palooza tour hasn’t yet dislodged it from its State House morass. (Interesting side note: It would apply to all cities and towns except Boston.)
Then, Walsh urged developers to build more middle-income housing. As a former union leader in the construction trades, Walsh knows as much as anyone about the litany of costs that go into building in this city. Walsh said he understands that developers need to make a profit, but it should be balanced with community impact.
Walsh committed his aides to helping anyone who tries to meet the crying need for more middle-income homes. But he didn’t offer much, by way of specifics, in terms of the carrots and sticks to make that happen. He knows the concoction of public subsidies behind one building of mid-priced units, The Beverly — a Related Beal-developed complex near the TD Garden largely devoted to “workforce housing” — could be hard to replicate. Perhaps the private-sector partnerships that are remaking some of the city’s public housing campuses might be good vehicles. But simply asking developers to take a haircut could be a tough sell, particularly when big out-of-town investors often call the shots.
Walsh’s call to action was also aimed at the city’s major employers. While Walsh didn’t provide substantive details about what he wanted from the big companies in the room, possible solutions could resemble the approaches that some West Coast tech companies are taking.
Microsoft, for example, unveiled plans in January to commit $500 million to housing in the Puget Sound region, primarily by making loans to developers. A week later, a group of businesses and philanthropies pledged a similar amount for affordable housing in the San Francisco Bay area.
And Google chief executive Sundar Pichai announced in June that his company will invest $1 billion in housing efforts in the Bay area, mostly through the rezoning of commercial land it owns. While Boston lacks a marquee company equal in size and might to Microsoft and Google, these ideas might be replicated on a smaller scale here.
Walsh says he will work with Greater Boston Chamber chief executive Jim Rooney to bring chamber members together with city officials, to brainstorm potential solutions. Rooney expects those discussions will begin later this fall.
Let’s hope this works out better than the pitch Walsh made to the chamber four years ago for Boston Public Schools. The call to build stronger school-company ties sounded good at the time, but the concept quickly petered out. With new schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius on board, Walsh hopes to revive those discussions. In fact, Rooney and other businesspeople plan to meet with Cassellius on Wednesday to do exactly that.
All this talk about saving the middle class isn’t just altruism.
Income inequality is a perennial issue in Boston’s elections, and the housing dilemma has vexed the business community as employers strain to find the best and brightest to fill open positions. Rooney likes to say that employers shouldn’t just sit around waiting for government to solve their problems. Now, the chamber gets its shot at tackling this one.
Read this story on the Boston Globe.
Popular Resources