Richard A. Stoff is the senior advisor to the Leadership Now Project, a national organization of 400+ business leaders that is an affiliate of Leadership Now PAC.
Business leaders from across our state and nation have endorsed Dr. Amy Acton as Ohio’s next governor.
I am one of those business leaders and proud to stand with Leadership Now PAC to embrace this remarkable public servant – indeed a doctor – to heal and lead our state.
We also stand with a unique and bipartisan coalition of Ohioans – educators, first responders, labor leaders, clergy and thousands of others – to support Dr. Acton.
Why?
These are the most turbulent times of my lifetime. Read the headlines of The Dispatch day after day. Taking off my “business hat,” I fear for the world we are leaving my grandchildren.
But here on the ground as business leaders, we also look at the numbers – and the numbers do not paint an encouraging picture for Ohio’s economic and job growth and business competitiveness.
How much worse can we do than zero GDP growth?
JobsOhio is under fire in this state. I know JobsOhio.
Back in the Kasich years as Ohio Business Roundtable CEO, we housed JobsOhio. Gov. Kasich and the Roundtable had it right. We needed – and still need – to work at the speed of business, not the laggard speed of statute.
But it is time – and Dr. Acton has pledged – for a top-to-bottom review of JobsOhio to bring greater transparency and accountability to our economic development efforts. Doing so will improve our competitiveness and ensure that Ohio is getting a return on its investment and, above all, good fulfilling jobs for our people.
And we must broaden our reach to include small and medium-sized businesses and regions of our state that feel overlooked by JobsOhio.
Among Ohio’s competitiveness challenges, nothing matters more than “talent.” High-growth states attract and keep their people as a core economic strategy. Ohio has not.
Ohio’s biggest export is our young people, a trend that threatens the long-term viability of every industry in the state. Dr. Acton understands that economic growth is a matter of generating talent and skills. And unless we act decisively, Ohio will lose another 600,000 or more people to other states over these next 30 years. And far too many business opportunities will leave with that unacceptable loss in people.
Amy Acton understands that for businesses to attract – and keep – talent, Ohio must be a place where families want to live. Her advocacy for affordable, accessible health care, addressing the cost of childcare and enhancing public education is not just social policy – it is economic policy that reduces costs for working families and improves the quality of life.
We yearn for great leaders in this great nation of ours. Yet leadership is an elusive thing to define.
If I needed to pick a word, I’d say “courage,” and so appropriately Dr. Amy Acton was the recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award, extolled by The New York Times in their powerful editorial, “The Leader We Wish We All Had.”
I admired Mort Mandel as one of Ohio’s greatest business and philanthropic leaders. Mort had a pristinely simple definition of leadership: “It’s All About Who.”
We need to hire a true leader – Dr. Amy Acton – to move Ohio forward.
Dr. Acton is a once-in-a-generation Ohio governor, and this is the dawn of a new day for business competitiveness and job growth – and just plain decency and kindness – in this state we call “the heart of it all.”
Richard A. Stoff is the senior advisor to the Leadership Now Project, a national organization of 400+ business leaders that is an affiliate of Leadership Now PAC.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Why Ohio business leaders backing Acton for governor | Opinion
Reporting by Richard A. Stoff, Guest Columnist / The Columbus Dispatch
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