For One Valdosta Lowndes, it's back to business

About One Lowndes Valdosta

The One Lowndes Valdosta (OVL) 501 (c)(3) was launched in 2023 as a community-wide initiative to serve as a catalyst for growth. Uniting civic, public, and private institutions to bring about economic development and enhance the quality of life in Lowndes County and surrounding region are at the top of the organization’s goals.

Founding partners include Georgia Power, City of Valdosta, Lowndes County Board of Commissioners, SGMC Health, Valdosta-Lowndes County Development Authority, Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce, and Valdosta State University (VSU).

Partners agreed that to ensure the future of OVL, they would need an experienced Director and support from a member board. Mary Beth Brownlee was the ideal candidate, with a wealth of experience in economic development and community collaborations. She previously worked with the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia (ACCG). Mary Beth was the executive director of the One Sumter Economic Development Foundation in Americus, Georgia and under her leadership, One Sumter helped raise $3.7 million in capital investments.

“I'm their first staff and it's a great opportunity to work with our community partners and focus on key economic development and workforce development priorities,” she shared during our recent interview.

In the eighteen months that Mary Beth has led the organization she has made significant strides in addressing the three key initiatives for OVL: Civic Engagement & Leadership, Pathway to Prosperity, and a Vibrant and Safe Community.

Mary Beth and her steering committee were well on their way, planning a regional college and career academy. Then, on September 26, 2024, Hurricane Helene struck the Southeast, including Valdosta and surrounding region, leaving devastating damage in its path.

Less than a month later, Mary Beth invited Georgia Power Economic Development to discuss the progress of OLV and how Helene had impacted their work.

The first notable difference was our meeting location, a temporary office provided by VSU. The Historic Barber House that was home to the chamber and OLV suffered considerable damage during Helene.

Interview with Mary Beth Brownlee, Director of One Valdosta-Lowndes

Thank you very much for making time to meet with us today. Mary Beth, I know you’re not originally from Valdosta but have been so dedicated to this community these past months. What makes Valdosta-Lowndes special?

There are so many good things about Valdosta and a lot of it is the culture in the community. You hear that a lot, but it's so true. We're fortunate because we work in what we consider the heart of just off downtown.

We are a block off VSU's campus, and you know the high school and VSU football games right down the street, so in the fall you hear that great excitement. In the spring you hear high school graduation.

Then downtown, our businesses are very friendly and open and there's just kind of this sense that we are the best community in South Georgia and that we're going to carry the region.

Whoa, that’s a big statement, the best community…

It takes a little while to wrap your brain around that that's not arrogant. They see this responsibility.

It took me a long time to understand there’s a positive way that carries over to almost everything they do here. They want to be the best at it. They want to grow, and they want to do it with heart and compassion. They see responsibility for their surrounding communities that they know are much smaller and don't have the resources.

I like that they understand their place in the world and want to be a part of making it better.

That is incredibly beautiful, and in economic development we love regionalism! So, what was OVL working on these days?

We began a capital campaign where we started raising private dollars - private sector dollars- on a larger scale to fund the work. Right now, we have a little over $2 million raised. All of that will go into funding our strategic plan and the initiatives in it. If you want to invest in your community's future, we give you a vehicle to do that beyond your tax dollars, right? A lot of times we will partner with our local governments, or we'll match with our local governments, and provide another leg of the stool because we're a 501 (c)(3).

You can’t talk about economic development without workforce development. How is OVL supporting the growth and retention of a talent pipeline for the region?

Pathway to Prosperity focuses on what you would traditionally think of as workforce development priorities in education.

We are so lucky here in this community and South Georgia in general to have a lot of education partners at the table. We have two public school systems here that are strong and very beloved. We have a lot of private school systems here. We have VSU, you know, for your institution and then obviously Wiregrass Georgia Technical College.

One of our basic platforms is to bring those partners together and figure out how we can create opportunity both for our employers, and certainly for our young people in future generations. Anything that is going to focus on talent retention, recruitment, and development, that's where we want to invest those dollars.

Scott Purvis, Regional Economic Development Manager, South Region, told me that Pathway to Prosperity may include a college and career academy. Building a whole new school is a huge undertaking – where do you even begin?

We got lucky because around the time I started, City Schools hired a new school superintendent, Dr. Craig Lockhart, who had experience with college and career academies in the past and other communities, so it worked out nicely.

You've got to have a lot of community buy-in. A lot of input from the business sector about what employers are looking for, where they're seeing skill gaps, whether that's soft skills, essential skills, or is it technical skills that we're not training for. The college and career academy model are about creating a workforce tailored for your community now in the future.

How is that different than taking classes at a high school?

Most schools offer CTAE (career, technical, and agriculture education) programs now, but this is accelerated and there's a lot of flexibility. It marries educators and the business community directly.

The college and career academy board are business driven. It is separate and autonomous from the school board and they usually have a CEO, much like you would in a business setting, that drives decisions and works with those business partners. So, it's got a lot of flexibility, and it's more nimble. It focuses on a smaller group of students, a smaller cohort typically, than you would in a whole high school setting.

This community could certainly support its own, but I learned that this academy will be regional. Can you share more about that?

Dr. Lockhart had the idea- his desire, and ours, is to look regionally. Regionally can mean multi-system or it can certainly be multiple counties and so we're targeting a 10-county footprint for ours, which is pretty ambitious. We probably won't get all ten, you know. I think that's okay to be honest, but we're looking at six counties in South Georgia, four counties in North Florida and really trying to be innovative about it.

Wow! That is ambitious, crossing state lines.

We have to get out of this mentality of thinking only within our county line or only within our system line. We've got that's not the way of the world. It's not the way workforce operates, and so they were excited that this community wanted to lead the way.

It’s only a few weeks since Hurricane Helene hit Valdosta and other southern communities. Did the storm’s impact change the plans to implement Strategy 2030 for OVL?

I can only speak to my perspective with OVL, and I see some positive and some negatives. The negatives are the obvious, the cost it's going to take to rebuild, the impact of businesses and individuals and families in their homes. That's first and foremost and that's not positive of course.

The flip side of that is like you see everywhere across the country and around the world when there is a disaster. We rally together and find our better angels and work together.

More than once people have said this shows why we need OVL, and there are some things that hopefully we'll be able to do in the near future to help with the recovery efforts. We already have that buy-in from the business community, the investments they've already made, that I think that we can help give back. That's what we're all here for- that's what we're designed to do.

So back to work, already?

We were going to reconvene in September, that has been pushed out to October or November, just because of everything. But that's how I first started talking to the home builders, about workforce needs, but it's hard to talk about workforce without talking about housing.

Really the two together are my biggest priorities going into the new year. And I think it's where we'll see a lot of traction for the community that is looking for tangibles.

From what I can tell the communities are even more determined to do these things. It just heightens the awareness of why we're doing it, even if it slows it down in the short term. I think we'll come out stronger on the back end for it.

You mentioned that you already have the industry partners on board to help the regional College & Career Academy. Can you share some of those top employers from the south region of Georgia?

Georgia Power has been a great supporter from day one. We have several members of your team that serves our local community and region that are participating, but SGMC Health comes across as the strongest partner because of the greatest need right now with health care shortages, nursing shortages, and they're growing and expanding.

We're so excited about their new women and infants tower that they're building, and some other expansion to their campus that we believe is going to change South Georgia as a destination for health care.

Did industry come to you or how did you select these needs?

When we look at the research, we've done on our regional workforce needs assessment and asked employers, “What are the projections over five years, where do you think you're going to see the most growth, or where are you seeing the most turnover now?” Above and beyond, it's healthcare. It's close to 2,000 nurses that they're going to need. Right now, we don't have a pipeline big enough for that.

We also held a large stakeholder meeting where over 70 businesses came.

Some of the agricultural community has been involved and Berry Global Manufacturing and ADM/Stratas Foods have been at the table since day one.

Are there any specific industries that are already active in workforce development in Valdosta?

One of our most nuanced employers is ACE Electric in terms of how they work with young people and offering them apprenticeships early. They've been doing that [for a while] so one of the people at the table asked them at that meeting, “Do you think there's really a need [for a regional college and career academy]?” and ACE said, “We need it now, and we need it yesterday, we can't get enough.”

These businesses are seeing the opportunity, and it helps them retain workforce here locally instead of them going off to employment elsewhere.

Valdosta seems to be deep into the industry engagement with workforce development, but I have to ask again, how has Hurricane Helene impacted these specific plans?

We were at that point, so we've had to regroup over the last few weeks, but we'll pick it back up. I've told everybody let's catch our breath and in November we'll start in earnest moving forward again.

We were at the point where we're going to be able to appoint the board by the end of this year and that'll help with momentum because we can start making decisions about site locations and staff.

A lot of the faculty in a college and career academy are not traditional educators, they are industry professionals, and they have credentials, and they are paid as such, and so a lot of that has going to have to be negotiated with all the participating school systems. If we get lucky and get, you know, three or four or more [school systems], each system will have to figure out a situation for them. Whether it's full-time employment for their students, transportation, and again, how to pay the staff that will serve it.

There's a lot that must be figured out from a legal perspective that requires a board in place. And that’s what I've tried to help the steering committee see, that we're building the foundation.

It sounds like you've got a lot in place, like you said, you've got the foundation, taking those next steps, knowing that there is still a lot of work to do if you were to, in five years.

Oh gosh! For me, and this is just Mary Beth talking, for the College and Career Academy specifically, I think we could regionally support five school systems easily.

I would love to see that happen, and the feeling of collaboration and really working together that comes with that and the energy and the hope just in the way those students carry themselves.

I would love to see that for the region. Some of the surrounding school systems that we've talked to absolutely want it. In fact, several of the superintendents have said, "Well, this was already in my queue." There are small systems that are like, ‘it's going to take us longer to get there,’ so they're excited about partnering. I want that kind of energy to spread out into everything we do in the community.

This is a great, unifying way to start by focusing on our young people, but I think everything we do could have that feeling to it. I think it would change the way we operate as a region. I think it would make us more competitive as a region and help us figure out that we can be more successful if we innovate in the way we do our work.

You’ve been incredibly generous with your time today, is there anything else you’d like to share with the SelectGeorgia.com readers?

I've seen a big change in the last six months. And we've been talking about a kind of pre-storm, of course. There’s a new energy and we don't really know what's driving it, but you can feel it and it's exciting. Come back in a year let me tell you the story then... we are just getting started.

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