Coolidge Chamber of Commerce

The 4th Annual Pinal County Business and Education Summit was held on Friday, April 28, 2017 and was hosted by the Artisan Village in Coolidge, Arizona. Every year the Pinal County School Office and Pinal Partnership work hard to connect business, industry, local government , and community organizations with K-12 and higher education. The purpose of this committee is to work collectively to provide Pinal County students a rigorous and relevant education to prepare them for the 21st century workforce demands. This year’s summit served as a showcase of programs that contribute to the development of this pipeline.

The host of the event, Artisan Village, opened the summit by sharing some of the partnership and collaborations that helped form this innovative Art Makerspace. The morning key-note Alfiya Bhatia, CEO of Mad-Learn, gave an inspiring message of “Be Your Own Preneur.” Her story of growing up in a different country and coming here to be an entrepreneur and edupreneur spotlighted the purpose of everyone being convened in the room. She featured the work teacher and students in Pinal County have been doing with Mobile App Development and STEM learning.

In addition, twelve presenters from local schools, local government, industry, community organizations, K-12 and community college showcased programs they offer that contribute to the development of competent, prepared students that are the future workforce of Pinal County. After the rapid fire presentations, participants were able to network with each other to find out more about these programs and to gather implementation ideas for local needs.

Dr. Jacquelyn Elliott, President of Central Arizona College, was the closing keynote. She shared her vision of how partnerships and collaboration between industry, local workforce boards, and community college can help develop flexible certification programs that are focused on industry workforce demands.