There’s a new crew in charge of Create West Virginia these days.
A few months ago, CreateWV’s Board of Directors elected digital entrepreneur, new media and local agriculture fan Corey Zinn to serve as the organization’s third president.
He’s building a new team focused on Innovation Economy thinking and doing, and they aren’t skipping a beat. They’ve already designed new initiatives aimed at mentoring students, helping businesses and improving how we connect talent across the state. Get in touch with him and the team, and please, support the work in any way you can. We make it easy to make a tax deductible donation–click here to donate online, and there’s a physical address if you like the feeling of writing out a check.🙂 Please, connect soon.
I am grateful and fortunate to have worked with some of the most innovative, passionate and talented people–the list is long and distinguished, too long for this brief note. Suffice it to say that working with other innovators, and the overall CreateWV family, forever changed my life. It broadened my skill sets as well as my understanding of policy, change management and community and economic development in small towns and rural places.
Over the course of 10 years, this volunteer movement seeded and supported initial conversations in many communities daring to explore transition to what we refer to as the “New Economy,” the “Creative Economy,” and the Innovation Economy.
Our nine conferences helped build common vocabulary and equip motivated folks to move ideas from thought to action. Our focus on entrepreneurship won kudos from the USDA Extension program, the Small Business Administration, local and regional investors, but most importantly, it helped local startups get the resources and coaching they needed to go to market. We collaborated to distribute more than $25,000 in crowd-sourced early seed funding for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Our support of Innovation Zones in 2010 now benefits schools around the state receiving funding for special projects, like community design and makerspace initiatives. And, we collaborated to design programs, services and facilities for a nationally recognized multi-million dollar digital makerspace that set the bar around the nation for community work spaces.
CreateWV set out to connect motivated people interested in sharing vision, knowledge and resources in their local economies, to improve the lives and opportunity of others. Today, volunteers powering Create Huntington and Create Buckhannon continue to develop model community and economic development initiatives that tackle important quality of place, education, technology, business and entrepreneurship issues and diversity issues.
The new team’s vision and energy is just as exciting as that of the founding members’. I invite you to connect with CreateWV today, to see how we can work together to make more good things happen.
Many thanks and here’s to a terrific new year!
Sarah Halstead