On May 8, Karen Mills of the U.S. Small Business Administration visited the Chamber building for a roundtable discussion on young entrepreneurship. She met with representatives of the Chamber’s Denver Metro Small Business Development Center (SBDC) and young entrepreneurs to discuss ways the SBA can better reach and support young business people.

In 2011, the SBA, in collaboration with the White House, introduced the Young Entrepreneurs Series to help educate young people about the resources available for starting a small business. The White House reports that youth unemployment is at a record high, and the SBA is helping address that issue with its young entrepreneur outreach efforts. Yesterday’s meeting, and others like it in various cities, was a continuation of those efforts.

A 2011 survey of 1,635 young people from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) reported that 23 percent of respondents started a business because they were unemployed. Of the survey respondents who were not self-employed, 76 percent reported that lack of resources and/or lack of government/financial support were their top reasons for not starting a business. Only 21 percent reported no interest in starting a business. Thirty-six percent of respondents reported working at a side business, a group of people the YEC calls “sidepreneurs.”

Well-known young entrepreneurs include Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Chad Hurley of YouTube, and the Next Bigger Better Society published a list of the Top 20 Youth Entrepreneurs to Watch in 2012. These young people are proof that age is not a barrier to starting a successful business.

It was also interesting to learn that these young entrepreneurs are eligible to have their student loans aligned with the lower salary that might come in those few first years of business. To learn more about this program, you can visit the federal student loan website.

Our own Denver Metro SBDC supports entrepreneurs of all ages and provides consulting and training services that can help all business owners. We had about 10 local young entrepreneurs in the meeting yesterday, and it was great to hear how valuable our services were to them. Please help ensure every person in Colorado who might be considering starting a new business knows about the FREE (yes, free) consulting and financial support we offer.

The Denver Metro SBDC was recently named the top SBDC in the country by the U.S. SBA, and Executive Director Tameka Montgomery will travel to Washington, D.C., during Small Business Week May 21-25 to accept the honor. She will also receive an honorary doctorate from Johnson & Wales University on May 18. Read more about Tameka, and visit www.denversbdc.org to access valuable small business resources.

A day almost three years in the making is finally upon us. Actually, let’s call that 130 years in the making, because History Colorado (formerly known as the Colorado Historical Society) has been in the business of preserving Colorado’s rich history and artifacts for that long. On Saturday, April 28, the organization unveils its new home to the public: a grand stone museum at 1200 Broadway designed by architect David Owen Tryba.

Opening day will include a ribbon cutting at 10 a.m. and the doors will open at 10:30 a.m. Guests will not only be treated to new, family-friendly exhibits and but can even time travel through history aboard the History Colorado time machine. The opening day festivities will also include guest appearances from astronauts and performances by tight-rope walkers, cowboys and more.

I have had the pleasure of attending several events at the new History Colorado center, and the facility is beautiful. It’s hard to imagine a better place to reflect on our state’s great heritage and to remember our Colorado roots. Purchase tickets for opening day here ($10 for adults, $8 for students and seniors, $6 for children ages 6-12, and free for children 5 and younger).

While you are downtown that day, you can continue your cultural journey by stopping by Denver Pavilions to view the Da Vinci Machines Exhibition, on loan from Florence, Italy. The exhibit features more than 60 machines by the Italian master, from war machines to flying machines, and runs through September 2012. If you are more interested in visual arts, you can check out the new Clyfford Still Museum at 13th and Bannock, just around the corner from the Denver Art Museum. The Still Museum houses a lifetime of the artist’s works – more than 2,400 pieces. Then, while you’re in the neighborhood, be sure to visit the Denver Art Museum for the Yves St. Laurent exhibit. Denver is the only planned stop for the exhibit in the United States, so be sure to take this opportunity to see the fashion collection that spans more than 40 years of St. Laurent’s work.

These are just a few highlights of arts activities going on downtown right now—for more information you can visit www.denver365.org. As you are enjoying yourself, consider this fact: Arts, culture, museums, etc. bring a $1.46 billion annual economic and social impact to the region. These institutions don’t just expand our views on the world, but they also generate real money.

On Sunday April 16, NBC News was in Denver for the beginning of a week-long focus on education and readying our nation’s students for a 21st century workforce.

The network will be here through April 20, beginning its 2012 Education Nation tour and hosting a series of panels and town hall meetings with educators, business leaders and the public to continue robust dialogue started in 2010 about critical issues facing our nation’s school systems.

This is a topic near and dear to us at the Chamber, as we know we must change the current educational outcomes, if we hope to achieve the economic future we all envision. It appears ours efforts in Colorado are being noticed by the nation.

In 2010, the Chamber hosted an education event featuring reform expert Geoffrey Canada, who is nationally recognized for his pioneering work helping children and families in Harlem and as a passionate advocate for education reform. Featured in the documentary Waiting for “Superman,” Canada and the work of the Harlem Children’s Zone Inc. is a national model in education.

A year later, we hosted Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public school system and founder and CEO of StudentsFirst, a non-profit organization dedicated to education reform. She also appeared in Waiting for “Superman.”

Rhee, along with Margaret Spellings, senior advisor to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and president of its forum for policy innovation, answered questions addressing what the business community can and must do to help improve our schools.

As I mentioned, Denver is the first stop on the Education Nation tour this year, and we think it is good to continue to highlight our successes and our weaknesses to ensure we continue to improve our education system. We are always energized by the ideas generated by these types of discussions as they help us hone in what more we can do to further our efforts.

On Sunday, Rehema Ellis, NBC News’ chief education correspondent moderated a discussion on grade-level reading and our state’s future before a town hall discussion with Colorado educators.

Literacy has been a major focus of the Chamber this legislative session with HB-1238, which focuses on creating a value and standard for reading success for students in Colorado in a manner we have never committed to in our history. It recognizes that, if we fail to teach a child to read by third grade, we are likely creating a future of little hope for that child. It says to every adult in the state that we will no longer accept such a future for our children or our state.

It provides for the first literacy expert at the Colorado Department of Education and will source materials to supports teachers and principals to teach the science of reading. We are still working to get this bill passed through the state Senate. If you haven’t yet, you can take action and contact your legislator and encourage him or her to support this important bill.

We must increase the number of students in college by 20 percent in six short years if we are to meet our economy’s educational needs. Our future truly does depend upon our ability to graduate Colorado’s students from high school and prepare them for careers or college.

Monday, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell moderated a panel discussion with area business leaders about the role that education plays in job creation and job readiness. Presenters Linda Alvarado of Alvarado Construction; Bruce Benson, president of the University of Colorado; Dick Monfort, chairman/owner and CEO of the Colorado Rockies; and Kent Thiry, chairman and CEO of DaVita all spoke about how critical it is to show the value education to today’s students and to have a well-educated workforce in many industries.

It is easy to think this is a challenge for parents, teachers or even for the student him or herself. The reality is this challenge belongs to all of us. Preparing our children for the future to meet business needs, and to provide them with the quality of life they envision, is our challenge. There is work for everyone as we first work to set standards (such as ensuring that all Colorado students can read) and then to ensure we meet that challenge. Please consider helping us now. Express your support for such a standard and contact us anytime to find out how you can help many of the organizations in the state to achieve these higher standards.

Henry David Thoreau once said, “Only the traveling is good, which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.”

No organization enables the spirit of that statement better than the Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation, with its year-old Colorado Experience program. Later this month, 150 emerging and established leaders from across the metro Denver region will travel to Fort Collins, led by co-chairs Greg Bante of Jones Lang LaSalle and Landri Taylor of Urban League of Metro Denver, to explore Colorado’s regional issues and to strengthen collective vision and collaboration in our communities.

While in the hometown of Colorado State University, the group will study higher education and its impact on the economy, as well as entrepreneurship, sustainability, technology, renewable and clean energy and agriculture – all important issues affecting not only this part of Colorado, but the state as a whole.

Colorado is a hotspot for innovation in energy and many other industries. The metro area ranks sixth for both fossil energy and cleantech employment concentration out of the 50 largest metros in the country. Meanwhile, the livestock, milk, grain, fruits and vegetables produced on agricultural lands across our state contribute $20 billion to our economy annually and support nearly 110,000 jobs.

The travelers are scheduled to visit labs and schools at the university as well as the New Belgium Brewery – which earlier this month launched its new canning line, capable of filling 360 cans of beer every minute – and OtterBox, a manufacturer of protective cases for handheld electronics. The delegation will also take a walking tour of a number of landmarks in the heart of Fort Collins.

Bringing together the business community, our higher education institutions, civic leaders and others will facilitate the kind of intrastate dialogue that is incredibly important as we work together toward a better future for Colorado.

Last year’s trip to Colorado Springs proved to be a wonderful prototype, with 96 percent of the returning delegates reporting that Colorado Experience inspired them to engage more actively in statewide issues. This feedback makes evident how a trip down the road can be just as valuable as crossing state lines.

If you haven’t yet applied to participate in Colorado Experience, I encourage you to do so. Apply here.

On Friday the 16th, a delegation of 70 metro Denver business leaders joined Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, Lakewood Mayor Bob Murphy and former mayors Wellington Webb and Bill Vidal on a trip to our nation’s capital to talk jobs. I was privileged to be in such great company and represent the business community along with leaders from Wells Fargo, Western Union, Oakwood Homes, Frontier Airlines, Arrow Electronics and others.

We met with a number of federal officials including the Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs, Dr. Rebecca Blank, and Deputy Secretary for the U.S. Department of Transportation John Porcari to discuss job creation, innovation and global competitiveness.

The discussions in Washington provided a strong link to the work we do here at the Chamber:

Our Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation set out in 2004 with a goal to create and attract 100,000 jobs by 2008, a goal it reached by mid-2007. The recession took away many jobs created during that time and so, today, the Metro Denver EDC is working harder than ever to attract new companies and jobs to Colorado. The organization works to market metro Denver to site selectors and other decision-makers nationally and internationally with a focus on eight industry specialties – aerospace, aviation, bioscience, broadcasting and telecom, energy, financial services, healthcare and wellness, and IT–software. Some of these clusters are showing very strong job growth for Colorado. You can track recent relocation and expansion announcements on the website.

The Colorado Competitive Council (C3) was created by the Chamber in 2005 to advocate for sound policies that encourage growth of key industries and the development of a positive business climate in Colorado. Currently, 31 investors and 58 steering committee members that represent businesses, associations and chambers of commerce statewide are continuing that mission.

The Colorado business roundtable in Washington, D.C., last week highlighted some truths that we at the Chamber live and breathe every day: national and international competitiveness is key for economic recovery and job creation; business and community leaders must come together to work toward the common goal of economic development; and elected leaders can support economic recovery through business-friendly legislation and thoughtful regulation.

It was as clear in D.C. as it is here at home – Colorado’s business and community leaders share a passion for our state and we all want to ensure its continued success.

What a month for small business in Colorado!

On the heels of our biggest-ever State of Small Business Breakfast event on March 8, Tameka Montgomery and her staff at the Denver Metro Small Business Development Center (SBDC) wowed us all with a wonderful surprise.

Our SBDC this week was selected by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) for the 2012 Small Business Development Center Excellence & Innovation Award, making it the top center serving small business in the United States.

There are approximately 1,100 small business development centers across the United States eligible for this award, which recognizes hard work, innovative ideas, dedication and impact in their communities.

We have known for years how critical the work of our SBDC is and what it accomplishes each and every year. In 2011, the SBDC delivered training to 3,400 attendees and provided consulting services to 1,199 entrepreneurs. It delivered 9,067 hours of consulting time and helped its clients create 446 jobs, retain 2,572 jobs, secure $16.1 million in capital, obtain $34.6 million in contracts and start 52 new businesses. It is incredible to be recognized as the best in class. Tameka will travel to Washington, D.C., to accept the award at a celebration during National Small Business Week, which runs May 21-25.

The work that Tameka and her team do is more important now than ever before, as Colorado’s numbers of sole proprietorships continue to grow. Our culture of innovation encourages individuals to create and develop their own ideas and companies. Statistics show that more than 90 percent of Coloradans work for those small businesses. We are not only here to support our small businesses, but we are doing it better than anybody else out there.

As I mentioned earlier, three successful small business owners spoke at our State of Small Business event last Thursday. This event focused on how small businesses are being energized, accelerated and inspired through new initiatives and programs right here in Colorado.

Jan Horsfall, founding co-chairman of StartUp Colorado, explained how his organization works to cultivate new business in Colorado. In 2012, Startup Colorado has set goals to increase entrepreneurial opportunities across the Front Range, including engaging larger companies through commitments to help potential business owners.

Daniel Epstein, recognized by Forbes as one of the top 30 most impactful entrepreneurs in his role as the founder and CEO of Unreasonable Adventures, spoke about how he is working to label Colorado as “entrepreneurial by nature.” On his website, Colorado companies can download a logo he has created to stand together to collectively brand the state as the most entrepreneurial in the union.

Vic Ahmed, CEO of Business Genetics, a serial entrepreneur who has built several startup companies from scratch, encouraged listeners to tap into the resources of fellow community members – particularly military veterans – to boost their business’ success. We couldn’t agree more – given our recent announcement of the CU Denver Boots to Suits Program. You can start the process of hiring, mentoring or enlisting a veteran student as an intern at your business by simply clicking the link above.

Don’t forget our Business Awards luncheon coming up on April 27. It celebrates the impact of businesses to our economy across the state. If you haven’t yet, sign up today.

Last week, I attended a reception hosted by the British Consulate-General in Denver to meet recently appointed HM Consul-General Beverley Simpson.

Simpson became our Consul-General in November 2011 after serving as Deputy Consul-General in Erbil, Iraq and Deputy Consul-General in Chongqing, China. She has been a member of the British Diplomatic Service for more than 22 years, working in Australia, the Caribbean, the Falkland Islands, Bosnia, India and at the United Nations in New York.

Her newly acquired position has her working with Coloradans, residents in Wyoming and our neighbors in New Mexico. Her duties in this role are to strengthen and enhance the existing ties between the UK and those states, while working to further develop and deepen our diplomatic and economic relationships.

The ties are strong between the UK and Colorado. English investment in bonds that financed the Union Pacific Railroad to Cheyenne was key to keeping Denver on the map more than a century ago.

The connection between these two parts of the world continues even stronger today with a non-stop flight between London and Denver – operated by British Airways. Tom Clark, CEO of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation, will tell you that this flight is the number one busiest non-stop flight at Denver International Airport. There’s good reason for that: Once our businesses arrive in London, they’re finding success.

Chamber member CH2M HILL, a Fortune 500 company, is one of the lead contractors on the 2012 Summer Olympics project in London.

Not only is London a wonderful location for our Colorado businesses, but it is a gateway city to the rest of northern Europe, where businesses like Vestas Wind Systems, SMA Solar and Siemens have ties.

In July, Toby Churchill Ltd., a British company that manufactures communications aids for people with voice impairments, will open its first sales office in the United States, based in Commerce City. Earlier this month, the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) announced the opening of an Honorary European Trade and Investment Office in Ireland, which will increase ties and business opportunities between Europe and Colorado.

In 2011, the UK was the seventh largest export market for Colorado commodities, totaling $247 million. Conversely, that same year, Colorado imported $224 million in commodities from the UK, making it the 11th largest import market for our state.

Simpson’s work is vitally important – especially as our businesses grow ever more global in their reach. We know that operations small and large are no longer bound by geography and time.

That is why the Chamber has taken the stance it has on several recent pieces of legislation aimed at favoring Colorado workers and companies. While the Chamber works every day to help grow Colorado businesses and put Coloradans back to work, this type of legislation sends the wrong message to our national and international partners in an increasingly global economy.

The Chamber’s overarching concern on preference legislation focuses on the big picture (the global picture) and the long term. In today’s global economy, added regulations on types of companies that can do business in Colorado is not conducive to expansion of our economy. Further, we know our businesses are some of the most competitive in the world, and we want to give them every chance to win business at home and afar.

We get so much out of our strong working relationships with peers around the world. We extend our warmest welcome to Consul-General Simpson and look forward to continuing our work together.

Original publish date: January 19, 2012

According to national data, 8 to 10 percent of Colorado third graders cannot read a basic children’s book, such as Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat, because they are functionally illiterate. As part of the business community in Colorado, we must take the initiative to change these statistics.

The Colorado business community is broad and diverse, but there are constants for all of us. As business professionals, we bring the best talent we can find to forward our initiatives, ideas and projects and provide the best service we can to our customers. We use rigorously tested, research-based methodologies, and we don’t take new concepts to our customers until we know that they work. That is how business is done in Colorado.

In Colorado, we know that we have one of the best educated workforces in the nation, but we also know that we are not succeeding with our students: Our homegrown children are not being academically prepared. At the rate we are moving, in 20 years, we will not have enough educated kids to keep up with the business demands of a knowledge-based economy. We need a workforce that can meet our needs.

Colorado must take immediate steps to bring our literacy rates up. Students who can’t read in the fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school, and high-school dropouts from the class of 2008 alone will cost Colorado $4.3 billion in lost wages over the course of their lifetimes. Colorado can’t afford to not teach our children to read.

We are focused on literacy in the primary grades because we know that children learn to read through third grade and, after third grade, they read to learn . Those children who haven’t learned to read by third grade will miss the critical transition into reading to learn in fourth grade and beyond. We cannot expect students to graduate from high school, much less succeed in college when they can’t read the class schedule they are given in sixth grade. Colorado has had a focused literacy program since 1997, and it is clearly not working.

It’s time to make a change. We are proposing a strengthened early literacy program and we are asking the legislature to approve it.

This program will contain the following key points:

• Beginning in Kindergarten, students who are at risk of being functionally illiterate in third grade will be identified and they will receive targeted literacy instruction to assist them in working toward basic literacy.
• The parents of children who are identified as having significant reading deficiencies will be notified early in their children’s educational career. They will have an opportunity to be involved and will be encouraged to participate in their child’s reading instruction. If the student has a significant reading deficiency at the end of the school year in grades K-2, it will be recommend that the student should not advance to the next grade level. The teacher and parent will participate in making this decision.
• If the student is identified in the third grade as having continued reading deficiencies, the school districts must consider investing an additional year in a student. If the student is finishing third grade, and the parent and teacher decide the student will advance to fourth grade even though the student has a significant reading deficiency, the decision is subject to approval by the superintendent of the school district.
• A student who does not advance to the next grade level will receive increased reading interventions and supports to improve his or her reading competency and address his or her specific reading skill deficiencies.
• School districts will track data on these students that will enable us to determine the success of these interventions. This data will be directly related to the accreditation of school districts and public schools.
• Teachers and administrators will have access to the resources they need, based on the science of reading, to effectively assess students’ achievement and implement reading intervention plans.
We are asking you to sign on to this plan with us. We need to improve on our current literacy program that is failing many Colorado students. This improved program will provide incentive for parents, teachers, districts and the students to be engaged a students learning. This program will hold all of these stakeholders accountable to making progress.

Early literacy is a cornerstone to a well-educated workforce. As the business community, we have a responsibility to make sure that our workforce is best in class. We are not giving our children the education they deserve and in doing so, we are in turn are hurting our ability to compete globally. We ask you to stand with Colorado’s children and stand with us. Join us in this effort.

Simply go to our website at www.denverchamber.org/coalition, read our message and add your name and organization to the list.

Original publish date: January 11, 2012

Colorado legislators convened today for the second regular session of the 68th General Assembly, and we members of the business community will be keeping a close eye on their work over the next 120 days.

The decisions made at the State Capitol this session have the potential to either support and enhance a healthy economic climate, or hinder it, and the Chamber has a vested interest in ensuring the former.

The Chamber hosted a business policy briefing on Monday in the Old Supreme Court Chambers at the Capitol, where 100 business and civic leaders gathered to discuss policy priorities for the coming year. We presented issues of importance to the business community and released the Policy 2012 document that outlines the Chamber’s current areas of focus. Several legislators attended, including Senate President Pro Tempore Betty Boyd and Speaker of the House Frank McNulty, who each presented key issues for the upcoming session and fielded questions from the group.

We were joined at the briefing by Governor John Hickenlooper, who noted Colorado’s reputation as being a center of collaboration and encouraged legislators to “push people toward compromise” as they work together to solve some of the state’s policy challenges.

Bob Moody, vice president of public affairs and communications for the Chamber, noted during the briefing that “the Chamber will support efforts that ultimately lead to job creation, critical capital infrastructure investment, promote efforts that support our ability to compete globally and those that protect or enhance the business climate. We will oppose measures that slow, derail or otherwise impede our economic recovery.”
That is our charge, and it is one we take seriously.

Job creation and economic stability continue to be our top goals as an organization. We will continue to focus on the three pillars of economic development – transportation, health care and education – with special attention this year on education issues. Today’s students are tomorrow’s workforce, and our future and our economy depend on students leaving school and entering the workforce with the knowledge and tools they need to succeed.

During the session, our Legislative Policy Committee, chaired by Lori Fox of United Airlines, will review the bills introduced and will take a position on bills that impact the business community. In addition, our public affairs team will once again be tracking legislator votes on those bills and we will release the fourth annual Legislative Scorecard after the session adjourns.

Throughout the session, we will update you in this publication about our positions and any policy news that affects business in Colorado. Please also visit the Policy tab on our website for background information and updates.

We look forward to working together with our elected leaders to move Colorado toward a stronger economic future.