1801 Superior Ave. Credit: Sam Allard / Scene
Nearly 200 people were invited to participate in a two-day session at Cleveland.com HQ that aims to imagine and design an “Economic and Collective Well-Being Summit” for the region. The planning session is being facilitated — even as we speak — by a couple of leadership gurus from Case, who’ve pioneered something called the Appreciative Inquiry method.

The stated target of the session is to create an eventual summit that will include all voices and will “more boldly than ever before dare to discover, dream and design our shared visions and actively set in motion our vast potential.”

Those invited were said to have been harvested from Cleveland Leadership Center’s program graduates, recent Crain’s 40 Under 40 honorees, and the networks of the AYUCO15. 

Certain ‘outspoken’ individuals from the local news media were also said to have been invited, a euphemism, evidently, for CEOs and top editors in the local news media. In addition to Cleveland.com editor Chris Quinn, one of the AYUCO15, other media invitees included Micki Byrnes, President of WKYC; Steve Gleydura, editor of Cleveland Magazine; Kevin Martin, President of Ideastream; Elizabeth McIntyre, editor of Crain’s Cleveland Business; Julie Raskind, board chair of Ideastream; Mark Rosenberger, Chief Content Officer at Ideaststream; and Andrew Zelman, CEO at Scene. (Byrnes, Gleydura, Martin, Quinn and Zelman are attending.)

Eighty-four of those invited RSVP’d. The full list, released to the media today, is below. The lack of community representation inspired a rally outside 1801 Superior before the afternoon session began.

This article appears in Dec 13-17, 2018.

Sam Allard is a former senior writer at Scene.

7 replies on “Here’s the Full List of the Leaders Invited to Two-Day Economic Development Session”

  3. These agents of change are those most interested in preserving the status quo.
    Maybe the next meeting will be in Hawaii.
    There is profit in poverty

  5. If any City or County officials are there, they will just complain how the city and county are completely broke, and how we need more and more tax levies in order to provide Basic city and County services!

    Of course, they will not mention the constant financial mismanagement, corruption, and downright tax thievery that goes on by these crooks.

    Taxin Jackson and Budish both need to be recalled now, and thrown in jail for their constant shenanigans!!!

  6. Just more of the same old, same old, dog and pony show!

    The included list of 116 invitees who didn’t bother to attend a year-end Christmas Holiday gathering says more about the idiocy of the process, than the 84 who actually showed up.

  7. “Meet the new boss/same as the old boss”…The preponderance of attendees at this event have been part of our deepening leadership crisis for over two decades(Joe Roman? Carole Hoover? Fred Nance?….Puh-leez!)…You can bet they haven’t been saving up radical new ideas for the past 25 years…Most likely they’re there to make sure they know the names of the “outliers” as they strive to create what the p.r. people call “the veneer of openness” as they figure out the next steps in the rape of the County taxpayers…

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