City of Kitchener participated in the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative which is a collaboration between Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, and Bloomberg Philanthropies. It aims to equip city leaders and senior city officials to tackle complex challenges in their cities and improve the quality of life by aiding them with research and tools to solve read-world problems.
C.Bluhm provided the following insights regarding program -
- The program was attended by a total of 60 city officials and leaders from 11 cities from the United States, Canada, and Finland.
- The program combines In-person and Virtual sessions.
- The delegation from City of Kitchener included :
- Cory Bluhm(Executive Director, Economic Development)
- Dan Chapman (Chief Administrative Officer (CAO)
- Naudia Banton (Manager - Waterloo Region Small Business Centre)
- Elliot Fung (Executive Director - Medical Innovation Xchange (MIX)
- Moazam Khan (Director of Velocity Health)
- Metroverse - a platform built at Harvard University was used to provide economic data to the City officials.
- Metroverse helps to provide insights about the following :
- The economic composition of a city
- Areas of specialization
- Cities that are similar
- City’s position in the Industry Space
- Growth opportunities
- Kitchener's Economic composition consists of:
- Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services
- Leisure and Hospitality
- Education and health services
- C.Bluhm plans to share further insights from the program to the committee in the upcoming meetings.