The story of Marietta native Bill Sams sounds all too familiar to people in the Mid-Ohio Valley. He was born and raised in Washington County, went to school at Ohio University and learned the strong work ethic typically found in this area.
And then, like so many others, he left.
In Sams' case, he found 25 years of business and financial success in California's Silicon Valley.
And now, he's back - trying to convince the area's budding business minds to stay and grow at home.
"My tag line has become that I'm returning to my roots in the Ohio Valley to share my work experience from the Silicon Valley," Sams said Thursday at a Knowledge Economy Community Leaders' Forum at the Lafayette Hotel. The forum attracted 138 local leaders to brainstorm how the Mid-Ohio Valley can create and retain local businesses to fuel the future economy.
The local effort is part of a statewide push to shift Ohio's traditional manufacturing economy to one grounded in knowledge and technology. Knowing that education will be a major component of the initiative, Ohio's Board of Regents has selected Washington State Community College to gather the ideas and form a local plan of action.
"There's a connection between earning and learning," Washington State Community College President Charlotte Hatfield said Thursday. Higher education leads to higher paying jobs, but in Ohio the U.S. Census says Ohio ranks 39th with only 21.1 percent of population with a bachelor's degree, a figure that has not changed since 1990. At the same time, the average pay of an Ohio worker continues to decline at $27,914, compared to the national average of $29,451.
For 3½ hours Thursday, local leaders discussed how they can increase those education numbers and then keep the educated workforce in the Mid-Ohio Valley. The leaders were separated into groups of eight where they wrote ideas on postcards and then prioritized those ideas.
Some popular suggestions included: Building a better technological structure, promoting mentoring between local businesses and schools, building more public and private business and school partnerships, offering more career guidance and attracting better leadership to the area. The forum also listed the barriers to progress in the area, which included complacency, a resistance to change, a lack of communication and plans with fuzzy ideas.
Sams said the local area needs to find leaders who are willing to move forward.
"They say in the business world you either lead, follow or get out of the way," Sams said. "When I was growing up in Belpre we needed a football field and so 100 people came out with shovels and the community built it. Somewhere, we've lost that community commitment." He said that many Americans have become too individualized or they worried about finding a consensus rather than finding those who will help get things done.
"My approach is to find people who have the passion to be successful," Sams said. Sams believes those people exist in the Mid-Ohio Valley and the objective is to keep them here or bring those who left back.
"Our job is to give them an environment where they have the encouragement to dream," Sams said.
Local leadership and communication consultant Glenn Ray attended Thursday's meeting and said one way to bring people back is to do a better job in advertising the area's natural positives, while at the same time, build a better technological base.
"This is one of the most beautiful areas in the country where there's low crime and little traffic," Ray said. "If we create a better technological infrastructure, I think we can do a lot to attract e-commerce companies."
Hatfield said the ideas gathered Thursday will be used to develop an action plan and then seek more people in the community to be involved.
"It'll be those folks who can make it happen that we want to reach out to and involve," Hatfield said.