[Markham McIntyre] We're in a very special time right now
where the economy is changing rapidly,
and so the Office of Economic Development
has an opportunity to really kind of help shape the future of Seattle’s economy.
And for us, our kind of core purpose is making sure that we're creating wealth
equitably through the City of Seattle.
I’m Markham McIntyre, I'm the director
of the Office of Economic Development here at the City of Seattle.
Born and raised in Seattle.
For a long time, I was a farmer here in East King County,
and that led me to thinking about the economics
of local agriculture and starting to get involved in some policy issues.
Then I got the policy bug, went off to Washington, D.C., and worked for
then Congressman Jay Inslee.
After that, I got involved in the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce,
where I worked for seven years
and then made my way over here to the City of Seattle under Mayor Bruce Harrell.
[Mayor Bruce Harrell] And under One Seattle, we all could dream together,
but at the end of the day, I want action.
And that's what Markham brings to the table.
- As the director of the Office of Economic Development.
- Congratulations - Thank you.
(clapping)
[Markham McIntyre] So, one of the reasons that
I got interested in this and this career
about economic development was really trying to think about how you mesh
together, kind of high-minded ideals about the positive force of business
with the practical realities of actually making a business function.
In our role trying to reshape the future of downtown.
The core question we're trying to answer is how do we get more people downtown?
We've got to figure out how to rethink who downtown is for
and make sure that that it's an incubator for small and diverse businesses
and that it really is a unique social gathering space
for the city, region, and state.
We're pretty darn excited and think that there's
a huge future for downtown, but also just kind of a city more broadly.
[Mayor Bruce Harrell] Ensuring a true pandemic recovery
is going to be critical to our success.
And this means, quite frankly, supercharging our
Office of Economic Development.
[Markham McIntyre] OED matches the mayor's One Seattle vision because we're
trying to shape the future of Seattle's economy to make it more equitable,
more diverse, more prosperous.
But we also embrace the mayor's idea
that this type of work doesn't exist in single departments,
but that we have to connect the dots across departments to better
serve the people, workers and businesses of Seattle.