The RISE of Workforce Development in the Coastal Region

Last year, Georgia population surpassed 11 million people, making Georgia one of the fastest growing states in the country. This surge matched by the state's business growth is sparking a rise in the workforce development programs implemented by economic development partners across the state.

Collaborating with educators, industry, and residents' - communities are finding creative solutions to connect in-demand careers to available and emerging talent. One of those programs is RISE in the Coastal, GA region. Our team recently caught up with Anna Chafin, RISE President & CEO to learn more about the new program.

Anna: Hi there, Heather!

Heather: Good to see you, Anna Chafin. I heard some news that you have a new role. And I wanted to first do a little background because maybe there's somebody that doesn't know you. I doubt it, but if there is, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background in economic development.

Anna: I think I'm like most people, I just fell into economic development. About twenty years ago, I was working at Fort Stewart in a public relations capacity, and I was reading a hard copy of the Coastal Career, the local newspaper in Hinesville. I saw a job posting for a director of marketing and recruitment at the Liberty County Development Authority. It looked kind of cool; it looked interesting. I applied and interviewed and got the position. I worked at the Liberty County Development Authority for about eight years, and then I moved over to the Development Authority of Bryan County. I was there for 10 years, and it was an awesome experience. I was very involved with the creation of the Savannah Harbor Interstate 16 Corridor Joint Development Authority. We'll just call it the JDA from here on out. And that was exciting.

Of course, that group was involved in the recruitment of Hyundai, and that four-county group included Bryan, Bullock, Chatham, and Effingham Counties. After the project kicked off, I really developed a passion for workforce development, because something that was keeping me up at night was the question - 'where are all of our employers going to get the people to work in their facilities'? I really developed a passion for workforce development. When the opportunity opened up for me to lead Rise, I was excited to make the transition to Workforce Development. I started in my new role on January 2nd of this year.

Heather: Congratulations! Can you tell us a little more about that big project that you worked on with the JDA? You know the one.

Anna: Oh, yes. The Hyundai project, I would describe as fast and furious and very exciting. We got the first contact from the Georgia Department of Economic Development in early January of 2022. And the project announced in May of that same year, it moved super-fast! I think one of the biggest takeaways for me about that project was the collaborative spirit that everybody had between the JDA, the four counties. I had my brothers from other mothers, Benji, Brantley, Tripp. We worked very closely together. Of course, Taylor Walden with the Georgia Department of Economic Development, Ashley Varnum with Georgia Power, who I adore. And of course, you, Heather, you were part of our story and helped us tell the story of our region to the executive chairman when he came to visit, so thank you for that.

Professionally, that project was super rewarding for me and my peers throughout the region. And were just so excited about the 8,500 jobs that Hyundai's going to create on site and the $7.6 billion of investment. And then to me, it's super cool that we've got suppliers that have already announced in our region and in our state. I think when you look at it all in now, we're at about $10 billons of investment and over 15,000 jobs. I'm just proud that we were able to pull that together. And while that project moved very fast, it was about eight years in the making, because the JDA had to identify the site, assemble the site, market the site...We had to work to get wetlands permits and acquire the property with the support of the state, and then rezone the property. A lot of work went into making that happen.

We were able to move fast between January and May that year because we had done so much work in advance, and it was certainly a team effort. So, professionally it was very rewarding. And personally, for me, it was rewarding because I had spent so much time and effort on that project that I had sacrificed a good bit personally. I'd spent time away from my son and my husband. It was pretty cool that on the day of the announcement, they joined me at the site to celebrate. They were able to see the fruits of my labor and the team's labor, what all that time and effort we had spent was for. And it was very cool for them to be that day to celebrate with us.

Heather: I always hear everybody says that economic development's a team sport, but actually being down there with you guys and seeing it in action was so cool. Now this workforce initiative has come up. Tell us what RISE is, and what are you working on?

Anna: RISE stands for Regional Industry Support Enterprise, and really, we're a regional workforce development organization. We came to be a team on January 2nd, and we have four people on our team. Justin Farquhar has joined me from the Development Authority of Bryan County. He was there with me for seven and a half years and had worked in a business recruitment and retention capacity. Justin had gotten very involved in workforce development initiatives over the past few years. We also have Jennifer Collins, who has a local economic development background. She worked at SEDA, the Savannah Economic Development Authority, for four and a half years, and she's our project manager with RISE. And then we have Maria Whitfield, who has a very unique background. She worked in human resources and manufacturing for twenty years in our region and brings a lot of great information to our existing industry.

All of this has been the result of workforce study that was conducted last year, which actually started with a meeting that was called by Audrey King with Georgia Power. Shortly after the Hyundai announcement, Audrey brought a small group of people together, and we talked about how to ensure that we best understand what's happening from a workforce standpoint in our region. Now that Hyundai's announced and we know suppliers are coming, we want to make sure all of our existing industries are taken care of.

From that conversation, we hired a consultant through the JDA. The big takeaway there is that if we do nothing, starting next year in 2025, we're going to have more jobs than we have people to fill those jobs in our technical and production roles. And that will continue through 2031. That caught our attention and made us realize that we needed to stand up the Regional Workforce organization. We released that information from the study to the public last November. In December, it was announced that SEDA would fund us in year one, and then we started work in January. We've been actively working to ensure that we've got talent pipelines that are available to all of our industries.

Heather: I'm going to ask what are your goals for RISE? That's a pretty obvious question, but maybe in your own words, what do you hope to see?

Anna: Well, at the end of the day, it's about making sure that all of our industries have access to the talent that they need, and we want to do that through six strategic focus areas. We're going to put a lot of time and attention towards education. This is certainly including our K-12 partners, our public-school systems, and the career opportunities that we have available within our industries. It's partnering better with higher education, our technical colleges and universities, to help strengthen those talent pipelines as well.

We'll also be focusing on underrepresented sectors. This is everybody from second chance hires to minority groups to people with different abilities to senior citizens to opportunity youth. We feel like that these talent pipelines are underutilized, to be quite honest. We want to help better make connections between these groups and our employers in the region.

We also know that military needs to be a priority. We're fortunate that we've got Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield right here in our backyard, and that is producing about 3,500 soldiers separating annually from Fort Stewart and Hunter. We're only retaining about 40% of those people. We want to do a better job of keeping that talent local to work within our industries, so that means making better connections with the transition offices, and hosting hiring events for the service members that are separating. Also, we want to connect with the military spouses. We know we've got about 3,000 spouses actively seeking employment, we want to make the connections between the spouses and the employers as well. Those will be three of our focus areas. We're going to spend some time with housing. We know that's directly related to workforce development.

There's an active study underway with Georgia Tech, and this is a housing needs assessment for our region. We think that the data that we receive from that study will help inform our local governments on what they need to do with housing going forward.

Transportation is also going to be a focus because it's a barrier right now for some people to get to work. We want to look at regional transit within our area. And then finally, marketing. Marketing to our homegrown talent, to our job seekers, and our students that are graduating from our public schools. It's also marketing outside of of our region. We believe that we've got a great value proposition when it comes to our career opportunities, and also our quality of life. So, we want to try to attract talent to move here from outside. We're going to focus on our technical and production roles, but what we hope happens is we have somebody move here for maybe a job as an electrician or an assembler or a mechanic, and they'll bring a trailing spouse or a dependent with them that could work as a teacher, a nurse, or as a public health and safety professional. And that combination will fill in some of the workforce gaps in our region.

Heather: The puzzle is all coming together! What's the response been like so far from the community and the industries?

Anna: Everybody's been very enthusiastic and supportive about what we're doing. We want to properly scale what we do with RISE. The four-county JDA was super effective for almost 10 years, but now we know that our area of impact is bigger than that area. In 2025, we hope to have eight counties to be part of RISE and help financially support our efforts. We could eventually be as large as 20 counties, but we want to scale that appropriately.

I think generally speaking, whether it's the public school systems, the military partners, our underrepresented friends through nonprofits, higher education, our employers - everybody has generally been very receptive to what we're doing, because I think they all agree that we have a responsibility specifically to our employers. They've invested millions and in some cases billions of dollars in our region; they're creating lots of jobs, and we need to make sure that they're taken care of.

I like to say we're going to provide the service after the sale, because we work very hard to get industry here in the state of Georgia, and we're great at it. And I think by focusing on what happens after you cut the ribbon, we're fulfilling the obligations to companies that we make during the recruitment process, that we truly want to be their partner indefinitely.

Heather: That was so good! I know mean they obviously have the right person for the job in this role. I'm happy for you, and I can't wait to see everything that comes out of RISE, and to hear some updates from you soon.

Anna: Thank you! It's great. Always good talking with you, Heather. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

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