Stamford Partnership’s Jon Winkel reflects on efforts to help shepherd city through Covid crisis

Stamford Partnership's Jon Winkel reflects on efforts to help shepherd city through Covid crisis

As has been the case for all of us, it has been an uncommon year-plus for Jon Winkel.
The founding father of Stamford Innovation Week promised upon being named govt director of the Stamford Partnership in October 2019 “a queue of cutting-edge initiatives.”
Ultimately that got here to be true; simply not in the way in which that he’d initially thought.
“If there was a small silver lining” to weathering the Covid crisis, Winkel advised the Business Journal, “it was that we’ve been very centered on coaching and workforce improvement — which have been at all times points anyway.”
Jon Winkel, govt director of The Stamford Partnership. Photo by Matthew Brown / Hearst Media.The 501(c)(3) nonprofit describes itself as “devoted to enhancing Stamford’s enterprise atmosphere and the standard of life for all those that stay, work, store, dine and be taught within the city.”
And, through the efforts of Winkel, Partnership Chairperson Jodi Gutierrez, Vice Chair April Condon and the group’s board, it has finished simply that. The group was ready to type relationships with an array of different organizations and people that, Winkel mentioned, additional raised the Stamford Partnership’s profile and underscored how essential it’s to the city and the area.
One such initiative concerned Stamford’s eating places, which — as was true all through the nation — was amongst one of many enterprise sectors hardest hit by the pandemic. The group launched a eating bond initiative that bought reward certificates at 85% of face worth.
“We had been receiving a number of suggestions from the neighborhood” concerning the eating places’ plight, Winkel mentioned. “They have been devastated very early on, so I began racking my mind about what we might do to have essentially the most speedy impression.
“We noticed that bonding applications have been going on in different cities,” he mentioned, “in order that appeared like one of the best factor to do.” The group’s web site presently has about 700 requests for redemptions of these bonds, he famous.
The partnership staff was additionally ready to reclaim from the Fairfield County Business Council — one other early sufferer of the crisis — its Leadership Program.
“A few the Business Council’s alumni obtained in contact with us,” Winkel mentioned. “We all agreed that it had been a disgrace and even a tragedy to lose that program. It was a little bit of a ‘Kumbaya’ second.”
Rebranded as Leadership Fairfield County, this system — restricted to 30 contributors — entails mid- to senior-level professionals and politicians exploring all kinds of points dealing with the city and Fairfield County. The top notch rapidly stuffed up and Winkel mentioned that corporations have been extra supportive of it through the Covid period than ever earlier than.
At the beginning of 2020, the Stamford Partnership launched SWIFI, a high-speed public Wi-Fi system in key areas all through the downtown and central enterprise areas, together with the UConn Stamford campus and Columbus, Veterans and Mill River parks.
Winkel mentioned that, as most banking, schooling, telemedicine and appointment scheduling efforts moved on-line because the pandemic raged, SWIFI grew to become an more and more important service.
“It additionally makes for a greater customer expertise in and round downtown,” he mentioned, with utilization rising on common by 20% from month to month; over 65,000 folks have used SWIFI during the last 12 months.
Winkel mentioned he’d like to see the service develop to the city’s east and west sides — “We’re making use of for grants to do this” — whereas acknowledging that the continued introduction of 5G may also have an impact on SWIFI’s future plans.
The group has additionally launched the Stamford Promise, a scholarship fund for highschool seniors who meet tutorial and neighborhood service necessities, and The Data & Analytics Leaders Network, its working group on information science to pursue large-scale funding in Stamford within the pc and information science industries.
The latter group includes the Stamford Partnership, AdvanceCT, the state of Connecticut and a number of other further stakeholders to help executives to find the forms of info and connections they could not in any other case pay attention to, Winkel mentioned.
The partnership has additionally launched a brand new workforce improvement and digital skill-building program, TechFWD, designed to help people be taught the digital expertise wanted to create or develop small companies. Programs will focus on advertising and marketing automation, internet improvement, digital analytics, social media advertising and marketing, content material advertising and marketing and rather more.
As for Stamford Innovation Week — which Winkel and his associates there thought-about canceling in 2020 — it ended up thriving.
“The query was, ‘What sort of message would we be sending if, within the face of adversity, we simply folded up?’” he mentioned. “We determined unanimously that we wanted to do the occasion in any method, form or type that we might.”
Leaning on digital know-how turned out to be simply the kind of innovation the initiative was shaped to highlight, he mentioned, including that the group expects to be again absolutely in individual in 2021 — although the occasion shall be pushed again from its conventional September to October to “give us a little bit little bit of a cushion” ought to Covid regain its energy.
With the inflow of New York residents into Connecticut basically, and Stamford particularly, Winkel mentioned he believes Stamford Partnership is nicely positioned to acquire much more floor locally.
“They’re the identical causes you at all times hear,” he mentioned. “Quality of life, being shut to each Boston and New York, good transportation — nicely, there’s room for enchancment there,” he laughed. “But it’s all becoming collectively like a puzzle. And we’re going to be proper there to help match it collectively.”

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