Ron Kitchens
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CEO, Southwest Michigan First
Kalamazoo
In response to the growing need to groom Kalamazoo’s future leaders, Kitchens helped create Catalyst University to pair emerging and existing leaders in noncompetitive, mentoring relationships.
“National election years are always interesting. Uncertainty pushes back investment and commitment because businesses don’t know what they’re committing to. That makes it more imperative that we focus as a state and region on bringing clarity to the marketplace and remove as much of the unknowns as possible. We want to focus on … growing the existing base that we have. We will not see a lot of interstate companies crossing borders unless there’s a specific drive because of a new business relationship. The biggest focus will be working with existing companies and growing them in terms of employment and economic strengths. I think we’ll see Michigan continue to rise in the national standings, which isn’t hard to do because we can’t drop anymore. The results in the last year and all the changes (in state government) will come to fruition. The changes … will be implemented next year. The following year, we’ll see what that resulted in.”