Tag Archives: thought leadership

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CRE Client on Improving the Region’s Building Permit Process

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Donald F. Smith, Jr., President of AC Client Regional Industrial Development Corporation (RIDC), pens year-end column for the Pittsburgh Business Times about how to improve the region’s building permit process.

For commercial real estate and government in 2021, let’s resolve to improve our permitting practices and work toward making our region one of the best to build in. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel to do it. We can learn from those who do it best.

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Will Political Polarization Stop Companies From Supporting Social Causes?

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Insight from the CEO of Steel City Re, an AC Client, was featured in the Wall Street Journal.

When it comes to taking a stance on either race or politics more generally, authenticity and consistency are key. That means going beyond one-off marketing campaigns and social media posts meant to bolster a brand’s image and signaling a deeper organizational commitment to principles-based causes by investing real time and money, brand and reputation analysts say.

Taking a stance on any social issue should start with a thorough evaluation of the company’s stakeholders, according to Nir Kossovsky, chief executive of Steel City Re LLC, a reputation risk management and insurance company.

Companies traditionally have divided responsibility for different stakeholders among different corporate functions—the human-resources department, for instance, manages employees, while marketing handles customers, general counsel or compliance officers deal with regulators, and so on.

Companies need someone who can gather information about different stakeholders and strategically manage the reputational risks associated with each, Mr. Kossovsky said.

“If you know what they want, you have a choice: make operations conform to their expectations or invest resources in managing their expectations to something you can meaningfully reach,” he said.

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Steel City Re Big Pharma Study Featured in Agenda

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Research conducted by AC client Steel City Re is featured in Agenda’s article on big pharma’s reputation (paywall).

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New Pittsburgh Courier: Tapping Community-Based Organizations to Create Better Job Pipelines

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Dr. Quintin Bullock, President of CCAC, writes about preparing the Greater Pittsburgh region’s workforce for the challenging times ahead and facilitating the economy’s rebound for New Pittsburgh Courier. The article can be read in full here. A version of it was also published in Pittsburgh Business Times.

History will surely recall the first year of this decade as the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the year when large portions of our economy stopped, when institutions that defined our everyday lives – from schools to grocery stores, from offices to playgrounds – changed. Economists will undoubtedly look back and see the business cycle at work, characterized in the broadest sense as recession followed by recovery, unemployment followed by opportunity.

But there are communities within our society that don’t see life in terms of business cycles. They are stuck at the bottom and the only cycle they see is multi-generational poverty, inadequate educational opportunities, and high levels of long-term unemployment.

As our country recovers from the economic devastation wrought by COVID-19, the government and private sector are undoubtedly going to expend enormous amounts of energy and money to train members of the workforce whose jobs no longer exist and whose industries have been forever altered. We need programs to prepare those individuals for new jobs in new industries that are going to be in demand in the future.

But what about the underserved and economically disadvantaged communities that have experienced long-term poverty and unemployment? Over the next decade, as we reach new peaks of economic prosperity in this country, will we demonstrate the same level of commitment to building a path to prosperity for those who have been left behind for decades?

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