 Innovative Leadership has developed a close strategic partnership with Kim Didier. This partnership has covered work in her hometown - Newton, Iowa, and more recently with the Iowa Innovation Gateway in its work to develop a statewide regional development network across the state of Iowa.
Kim Didier is the Executive Director for the Iowa Innovation Gateway, a role resulting from an innovative 7-county regional collaborative planning process. The planning process was funded by the U.S. Department of Labor’s first in the nation regional innovation grant (RIG) after the loss of the Maytag Corporation from Newton in the Central Iowa Region.
The announced departure of Maytag and its 1,800 jobs took place just 5 months into Kim’s tenure as the leader of the Newton Development Corporation. Within a year of the Maytag departure, over 1,000 of the jobs lost were reclaimed through the recruitment of several advanced manufacturing and high-tech companies, the development of a model support system for entrepreneurs, and the implementation of a collaborative, transformative regional planning process which incorporated Innovative Leadership’s The Future’s Game.
As a result of the successful transformation, Kim has testified before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, presented at several Department of Labor Conferences and will be speaking at the upcoming International Economic Development Council Leadership Summit on Growing Quality Jobs. The transformation story has also been highlighted in international media including the New York Times and the London Financial Times as well as two recent books, Caught in the Middle and Past Due.
In her current role as Iowa Innovation Gateway Executive Director, Kim leads the implementation of the region’s economic development strategic plan and helps to build a dynamic, vibrant network of business leaders, educators, workforce development specialists, economic developers, and political leaders that works collaboratively to create a globally competitive region in Central Iowa.
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