Paths to Renewed Prosperity for Great Lakes Communities
Despite lingering popular misconceptions, the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest region is not an economic monolith of struggling older industrial cities and rural hinterlands. Many communities have shed their agricultural and industrial shells and found new economic success in a globalized, knowledge and technology-driven economy. Austin will share findings from A Vital Midwest: The Path to New Prosperity, https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/publication/vital-midwest-path-new-prosperity his 2020 report from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. It provides a fresh analysis of the Great Lakes economy and the varied paths by which the region's older industrial communities, similarly situated to Erie, have turned an economic corner. Austin will also discuss the new challenges and opportunities for economic growth in a Covid-19 reshaped economy.
John Austin, MPA, recently completed 16 years of elected service on the Michigan State Board of Education, serving 6 years as President. Austin directs the Michigan Economic Center a center for ideas and network-building to advance Michigan’s economic transformation. He also serves as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow with the Brookings Institution, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and the Upjohn Institute where he leads these organizations efforts to support economic transformation in the American Midwest and in the industrial heartlands of Western democracies. Mr. Austin also Lectures on the Economy at the University of Michigan. Austin received his Master’s in Public Administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and a Bachelor's from Swarthmore College in Economics & Political Science, with High Honors and Phi Beta Kappa.
