Business & Tech

REDI in Retrospect: Growing Roots

Rockville Economic Development Inc.'s model grows and retains programs in the city.

Editor’s Note: This is the third part of during the tenure of former executive director Sally Sternbach. . Before her departure, Rockville Patch sat down for an interview with Sternbach and associate director Lynne Benzion, who took over as REDI’s acting executive director this month.

In 2003, the first year of Sally Sternbach’s nine-year tenure as executive director of , which ended last week, then-Mayor Larry Giammo asked REDI to hold roundtables with Asian-American, Latino and African-American business communities.

Out of the Asian-American business roundtable emerged a specific “ask,” Sternbach said. Asian-American business owners wanted help with marketing to other Asian nationalities.

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“'We seem to be very limited within our country of origin market,'” Sternbach said business owners told REDI. “'So it’s very hard for a Korean to figure out how to market to a Filipino, to market to a Japanese company, etc. We would like some help in creating a Pan-Asian dialogue and larger business community.'”

That led to a half-day conference that has grown to an all-day summit. Four years ago it spun off to be run by the Governor’s Commission of Asian Pacific American Affairs.

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It’s been a successful model for REDI and its small staff, said Lynne Benzion, REDI's acting executive director.

“We’ve tried to take a good idea, test it, make sure it still is a good idea. If it is, make it grow and then find the appropriate people to take it [over],” she said.

So how does REDI keep programs born in Rockville benefitting Rockville when many partners are located outside of the city limits?

“What we try to do is root it here,” Sternbach said.

REDI has found that once it fosters a program and sets it free, it often returns to Rockville.

That was the case of the Asian-American business conference, which after relocating to the several years ago and having a year of poor attendance, returned to Rockville at the .

“We had developed the audience here,” Sternbach said.

REDI builds an audience by providing facilities, staff support, sponsors, vendors, customers and other resources rooted in Rockville.

“When you start doing that and they start to have their circle here, this becomes the ideal place to locate when they’re finally ready to move out of their house,” Benzion said.

There aren’t many operations like REDI that can provide such resources, Sternbach said.

Annapolis, Bowie and Frederick city have economic development departments. Gaithersburg recently began a $2 million fund and spun off its economic development efforts from its city manager’s office, .

“There are certainly realities that you understand pretty quickly—particularly when the public sector is now really feeling the delayed results of the recession through the tax revenues—that you simply don’t have the resources to do it all yourself,” Sternbach said. “You have to leverage the resources up the food chain, as I refer to it—the economic development food chain. And we’ve gotten very adept at that.”

For REDI, leveraging resources includes having representatives from county and state government on the organization’s board of directors.

Sternbach's move to the county side will only strengthen REDI's tie to its partners.

“We’ve been good friends with the county for years,” Benzion said. “We’re just about to be a lot better friends.”

Tomorrow: Buy Rockville.


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