Speaker 1: I'm Henry Cisneros.

Speaker 2: Welcome to business of business, San Antonio.

Over the next hour, we'll explore the world of business here in our city.

What's behind the success of our economy and how do we move forward in what we hope will soon be a post COVID 19 world.

Numerous businesses built our city over the years from cattle ranching to oil, to tourism, to bio-sciences to the military, to technology.

The business has been booming over the years.

We're one of the fastest growing cities in America.

But then in spring, the pandemic came to San Antonio, the doors of business shut businesses, and employees went home life.

As we know it changed, but at the heart of San Antonio's business community is the economic development foundation and they've pivoted their mission to adjust to the impact of COVID 19.

Let's hear from Jenna, president and CEO of the San Antonio economic development foundation.

Speaker 1: Right now, our COVID reality means that we are hyper-focused on presenting economic mobility opportunities for all San Antonians that want a chance.

Right now, we actually have a pretty exciting campaign on the street, our career pathways campaign, and we're, we're working to remove misconceptions about our in demand, occupations, manufacturing, skilled trades, et cetera.

Uh, and Texas mutual has been at the table helping to drive those strategies and opportunities with our EDF and essay works team for some time now.

So HEB USA, Valera water burger, you name it.

Those are all of our anchor brands and San Antonio.

And I say that because they keep a stable, but they also allow us to look ahead, uh, and be creative.

And if you think just purely based off of the number of San Antonio and say, Oh, employ our top 10 employers in San Antonio employ over 150,000 San Antonio.

And that's a massive industry in and of itself.

2020 I think was a crazy year, but also a year of forced innovation, right?

We were all forced to think differently, operate differently.

And EDF has a lot of different new initiatives underway.

And that includes basically two significant recommendations.

One is that we needed to operate more formally with our regional allies in new Braunfels shirts, again, et cetera, to grow the toolbox, but also to deepen the value proposition that we are marketing out to the world about the San Antonio region and what we have to offer.

Um, but the second was streamlining further our approach to jobs, people in place.

And what I mean by that is we've always been in the business of jobs, but we realized that if we truly want to secure quality employers and quality investments, that we need to invest in our people and our place.

So invest in the product that we're selling so that we can secure those higher quality, higher wage jobs that we believe San Antonians deserve.

And so we are set to launch and scale that strategy in January of next year.

What I would say is use this opportunity to reflect and also to invest in yourself.

There are so many different programs and opportunities out there that both the public and private sectors in San Antonio are promoting the city is promoting a work for tomorrow program where you can actually go and receive stipends to educate up within our target demand industries, right?

So you can pursue a career pathway in manufacturing, or you can pursue a career pathway in technology.

And so you have transferable skillsets, but dig deep think within, and then identify opportunities for you again, to get back into the workforce or to scale and climb the corporate ladder within the workforce.

I think now's the opportunity to really lean in and invest in, count on yourself.

Speaker 3: Joining us now are Richard pedis, president and CEO of the San Antonio chamber of commerce and Thomas ton stall research director with the Institute for economic development at UTS.

A gentlemen, thank you for joining us.

I can't think of two people better qualified to assess the state of play of San Antonio businesses today.

Richard you're heading the organization that is frequently regarded as the voice of business for our city.

Give us just a snapshot from your experience, where were we, how did we make it through the pandemic period and where do things stand today?

Sure.

Well, thanks for the opportunity Henry, to be here on this show and appreciate you, uh, you know, your continued focus on this great city.

So where were we?

We were in the midst of just an amazing year that it was going great.

People were optimistic.

Uh, business was moving, you know, it's the spring, you know, rejuvenation of life, pandemic hits.

Everybody goes home.

I mean, almost from day tonight, did we stop?

People had to stay home.

People were working from home and it devastated our economy, particularly the hospitality and tourism industry, which, you know, we're located downtown.

So we see it.

Uh, I actually stayed home for a week, but came in, uh, and worked from the office and had been working since, but it was a ghost town, you know, no people walking around, no tourists, nothing.

It was shocking almost, uh, fast forward to now November.

And we're starting to see things moving again, people, uh, on the weekends, downtown walking, uh, our, our retail industries are beginning to see some movement restaurants.

Uh, and our business in, in particular have figured out a lot of them how to work from home.

So they are continuing to generate opportunities and revenue and business in this time of COVID.

So we've, uh, we've kind of gone through the worst, uh, and we're hopeful that the future continues to look good, right, Speaker 2: Richard, from your experience.

And you've been not only a voice of business, but a city council member as well, how would you characterize the, the, the intensity of this shot on our city?

Is this what you would call a body blow that's really, really damaged as, and we're going to be disabled for a long time, or is this something that we can deal with and fight through or something we will easily handle?

How would you character?

Speaker 3: I would say it was definitely a gut shot and it sat us down on her, on her haunches.

Uh, but we are back up and we are looking to the future.

We believe, I think, uh, and I teach, speak to business people every single day.

They're optimistic.

There are many businesses that really hardly slowed down, you know, the construction industry, um, financial services of all working from home, but they're just as robust as they have been, you know, when the federal money came in, they were just as busy as you can imagine.

So I think, uh, you know, you know, we w what we really need is a vaccine w that will really give us the confidence necessary.

All the news Speaker 2: A few days suggest that's just around the corner.

So let's hope that that's the case and that it works in San Antonio, as you've suggested dr.

Tunstall, uh, give us some sense of the metrics so that we can understand what was, what is sure.

Speaker 4: And, uh, and again, thanks Henry for, uh, having me here, the, a lot of times I'll get asked about this pandemic and the economic impact relative to the great recession in 2008 or, or there abouts.

And, uh, this is far worse.

You have to go all the way back to the great depression in the 1920s to see something comparable happily.

It's not as bad as the great depression, but we've seen unemployment rates, uh, edge at one point close to 20%.

They've obviously come down since then.

And, uh, GDP, particularly for the second quarter, April, may, uh, 25, 30%, uh, decrease, which is just, uh, literally unprecedented, except perhaps for the, for the great recession.

So, you know, the good news is, is that we are starting to see a rebound.

If you look at the numbers, either in terms of state tax, what Speaker 2: Are the numbers today?

What do they tell you today Speaker 4: That we're, we're getting actually, we're getting back on track.

In fact, the big uncertainty going forward really has to do with how will the fall typical flu season affect, uh, you know, re-infection rates, which are currently going up, right?

So there's concern about that.

We, we are, uh, up to now at least on a rebound.

Speaker 2: So professor, um, we know we have many businesses in San Antonio and some of them can handle a pandemic better than others.

I think the military payroll continued obviously, and the bio-sciences may have even seen a boom in services and activity, but we also have a big sector of hotels, tourism, conventions, and restaurants.

Uh, what is your, what is your best take on the state of play?

There?

I, it is hard to imagine how we rebound from the empty rooms in the hotels for weeks and months at a time restaurants that not only have closed, but some of them have closed their doors permanently.

What gives me a picture of that?

Speaker 4: Okay.

There's a couple of things to take away.

Uh, one, especially with regard to restaurants, small restaurants are being hit disproportionately hard to say major chains.

They've had an easier time pivoting to either delivery or take out or pickup that sort of thing.

Uh, smaller restaurants.

A lot of them struggled with that.

Um, uh, the hotel industry, uh, convention industry have definitely been hit hard, uh, and other things that you may not necessarily think about this is, are we going to lose hotels?

Do you think?

Well, I hope not.

Uh, I think that, uh, they've hunkered down and, uh, depending on how long it takes to turn things around, a lot, Speaker 2: Lot of it will depend on whether the convention industry comes back in the same way.

I mean, there's people who don't want to be around 10,000, 20,000 people for any reason.

Speaker 4: That's true.

In fact, everybody, a lot of people talk about the new normal, whatever that might be.

Actually the best phrase I've heard is the new abnormal.

I think that behaviors are likely permanently to have, have changed.

And, and, uh, as far as the impact on conventions in the future, we'll have to kind of wait and see Speaker 2: Richard, give me your final take here, uh, on what you see, uh, head, how are you as the person who speaks for business in San Antonio?

Uh, what are you saying to people?

Speaker 3: Well, I'm saying that things are getting better.

I'm saying that there's hope in the community.

You know, all you've got to do is look Henry that we pass the pre-K for essay.

We pass the M move essay, which is the via initiative.

And we pass the, uh, essay to work, essay works, uh, se to work initiative, which is the workforce development.

People want to invest in themselves for the betterment of this community.

And the business community is feeling good.

They're, they're feeling better.

Yeah.

And they've figured out how to work from home and be productive.

So I think there's a lot of good things happening and those businesses that can't work from home, the construction industry, for example, they figured out how to do it safely and they're doing it well.

And there's a lot of industry, uh, movement going on right now.

And a lot of focus on wanting to come to San Antonio in spite of the pending.

Speaker 2: I think you're right, that that vote, uh, was a positive indication of confidence in the community company, confidence in his leadership.

And most importantly, that San Antonio quality of getting up off the canvas and keeping on fighting and investing and growing and going forward.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for giving us the business sense and view of how this period is unfolded in our city.

And one of the biggest industries in San Antonio is certainly tourism it's benefit for the local economy can be counted in the billions of dollars each year, heading up the organization that promotes tourism here is Cassandra latte of visit San Antonio, but COVID-19 has almost stopped tourism in its tracks.

Cassandra explains how her organization plans to come back.

Speaker 1: We have an amazing role of visit San Antonio.

Our mission is to bring the world to San Antonio.

So all things travel and tourism, whether it's events, conventions, leisure, travel, as you go around the city that we love San Antonio, it's very apparent.

You know, there were hotels that closed.

There were restaurants that closed museums are wonderful attractions that it closed.

It was a big impact.

Um, we saw major conventions canceling better, still canceling their convention.

So at the end of the day, we're still in COVID.

And so there's still a lot of real uncertainties.

And so, um, I don't know what to compare it to.

Um, in fact, I don't think there is anything to compare it to, how can we help the tourism economy locally, but then also really globally, um, because it is hit the United States and the world very severely.

Right.

Um, so one of the things that we're doing is we're working with us travel association, uh, to see and work with Congress about extending the relief program.

So we've been doing a lot at advocating, um, for additional and extended relief for businesses in our industry, as well as to adopt PPP program for five Oh one people want outdoor activities.

So we're here standing in the beautiful San Antonio botanical gardens.

And this is just one example that San Antonio can offer and that we're highlighting.

So I think that it's great because people can experience our culture indoors and outdoors, as well as we're that familiar place in Texas.

We have a very strong regional market.

And in fact, over 70% of our visitation normally comes in and around from Texas.

Um, so I think we're in a really good place and the let's go there.

Campaign certainly tells the consumer that when the time is right for you, San Antonio is here for all of us.

We're on a variety of the spectrum of our comfort of safety.

And some people are ready to travel now.

And San Antonio is open for business today, whether you're local and want to do a staycation or where, whether you're an out-of-towner and want to stay for a week a weekend or even a month, because we also are talking about how San Antonio is a great place.

Now that we're all virtually working somewhere.

Why not work from here?

It's imperative for the entire Speaker 5: San Antonio economy that the travel and tourism sector not only survives, but thrives my role as president and CEO of visit San Antonio.

And our mission is to bring the world to San Antonio.

Speaker 2: Joining us now is Richard Oliver, director of partner and community relations with visit San Antonio and Maggie Thompson, executive director of the San Antonio Riverwalk association.

And these two folks, we have the folks who are best qualified to describe the way the hospitality and tourism industry continues in San Antonio and the impact that it's had, but also our number one asset, which is the Riverwalk.

Richard, let's start with you and kind of get a sense of the, of the state of play.

Uh, we are been a major touristic center, one of the major ones in the United States, uh, the year started with every indication.

This would be another great year for San Antonio and then the pandemic in the spring just stopped everything in its tracks.

No industry has been more impacted than hospitality and perhaps restaurants, uh, than yours.

Uh, give us a sense of where we stand today and what you see going forward.

Speaker 6: Yeah, it's, it's been a difficult time.

I mean, obviously it's very complicated and what's happening when you look at the tourism industry in 2019, to your point, we came off a very good year.

I mean, we had a $50 billion impact on San Antonio, one out of every seven employees, San Antonio owns it.

San Antonians worked in the tourism industry.

And now of course we have lost more than $360 million of economic impact this year alone, just on meetings that we've lost.

And also that employment factor that we talked about 140,000 people worked in the tourism hospitality industry as of June.

Uh, we were down to about 115.

So, you know, one thing that we've recognized again, to your point is that without a robust tourism and hospitality industry, which has been a great economic generator for San Antonio, it's been, it's been difficult.

And the COVID pandemic has really worked pretty hard on us.

Speaker 2: Richard, tell us how difficult, I mean, just in the sense of the permanent impact, is this something that you could say, well, we took a hit and as soon as we get back, we're going to be right back on our feet and continue full tilt.

Or is this something that's gonna slide for a long time and then take a long time to ramp up?

How do you see it?

Yep.

Um, and conventions, uh, the classic case.

I mean, how long is it before people will say, I'm comfortable going to San Antonio flying there, uh, for a hundred, uh, for a 40,000 person convention that fills the convention center and all the hotels.

Right.

Speaker 6: I hope, you know what I liked what you just said.

We'd like to take that and we're going to use that in our pitching.

Uh, it's going to take some time and everyone, by every indication it's going to take a long time.

And the number one thing that's very interesting is it's changed the landscape.

I mean, moving forward, a lot of things are going to change.

As far as meetings go, they're going to be hybrid.

They're going to be virtual.

And the one thing that we're pitching and we're, we're marketing, it's so hard is safety and the welfare of not only the people that are coming in, but your employees around you, all the different kind of things.

It's a, it's a different landscape now.

And I think that's, what's going to change.

So moving forward, I think even in 2021, we're already being impacted a little bit, uh, maybe a lot as we move forward, but we know that we've got to change the way we're doing things.

We've got to let people know that listen, San Antonio is a safe, generational, safe, warm, welcoming destination.

It's always been, please come back and visit us.

And re-experience San Antonio all over again, but we know the things are going to be a lot different.

It's going to take time to get back to any sense of normalcy.

Speaker 2: If we start to come back.

Um, is it possible that the first to come back will be sent Antonio of rather Texas travelers who will come to San Antonio because it's short and they love San Antonio before we see the international and national Speaker 6: Conventions coming.

They don't think there's any doubt.

I think, you know, one thing even before the pandemic really hit us, uh, 70% of our travelers, our leisure travelers came from inside the state of Texas.

Right.

And again, you go back to the fact that they've seen San Antonio for years, they know exactly what San Antonio stands for.

And they know that when they come here, travelers know they're treated like family.

Yeah.

This is something that you obviously, when you work so hard on bringing the Alamo dome here, you know, the spotlight that comes to San Antonio and what it means, the seismic impact of having those visitors come to San Antonio, we'll be, we'll be trying to reach out to those visitors.

Speaker 2: Those visitors come back, especially the Alamodome, uh, Alamo, uh, uh, bowl event.

They're on the Riverwalk.

It's one of their great memories of San Antonio is when I always stayed or Oklahoma state or somebody is out on the Riverwalk in great numbers.

Maggie.

Um, the river walk is of course the heart of the city in many ways.

And the river itself from the Pearl all the way down to the mission's reach.

Uh, tell us about the impact of the last months for Riverwalk activity.

Speaker 5: Well, it definitely started out bleak and was looked like a desert.

And then slowly over the summer, it came back on the weekends.

They would have a lot of the, the travel from Houston and Dallas that state-wide travel that you talked about, not nearly what it normally is in the summer, but it, but it did come back a little bit at night and on the weekends Speaker 2: And, and who is impacted the businesses on the river.

Yeah, Speaker 5: Absolutely.

The businesses are impacted.

And so tell us a story, give us a sense of that.

So we, we run a little tight rope walk, um, they say, please promote us.

And then the city says, please be careful.

We don't want lots of crowds.

And with that, we just recently had a spike.

And so we're having to back off Speaker 2: Some restaurants and business, we Speaker 5: Have lost a few, some have taken the opportunity to remodel their businesses.

Uh, we have one that has four businesses in two of his, which are restaurants were classified as bars, and he's had to pay about $85,000 a month in rent.

So he's been creative and brought caricaturists out in his space.

He has margarita machines that he can do grab and go.

So he's really the best he can.

That's a great example Speaker 2: After the pandemic.

And let's hope that after come sooner than later, maybe the vaccine is the turning point.

Do you see completely new people coming onto the Riverwalk and taking some of that space or some of these businesses coming back?

What do you see?

Speaker 5: Well, I know the one I just mentioned, he would love to take over some additional space.

So that's true, but, but I would think new people are going to come back and occupy those spaces since some of those restaurants they've gone out of business for.

Good.

Speaker 2: And how about the hotels on the river?

What, what can you say about that?

Speaker 5: Well, they're occupancy on the weekend and it's just, um, instant, uh, occupancy on the, they don't have long-term reservations, so they have to staff up and that's been really difficult, not knowing what numbers to expect.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Um, uh, are any of those hotels in jeopardy on the Riverwalk?

Speaker 5: Um, th that, I don't know.

I know a lot of let go and they've delayed their openings.

A lot of them had done that in order to not have to pay and they lose money.

If they're not at a certain occupancy, Speaker 2: Richard, you, you, uh, are a long time San Antonio and you have a good perspective on this community.

Are you fundamentally optimistic about tourism coming back to full tilt?

Speaker 6: I think, uh, I, I am cautiously optimistic that tourism is going to come back.

It's going to take time, as you talked about just a little while ago, Henry it's, uh, it's going to be a process and it's going to be different the way we, the way we pitch it.

The travelers who come in will be coming in probably a little bit different as far as air travel and everything else, it's going to be an evolution.

Speaker 2: Well, let's hope and pray that this comes turns as quickly as possible, because it is a critical industry, as you say, 140,000 of our workers means families are tied to it.

Uh, so we want to do all we can to hopefully end this period, uh, of, of danger and then urge, uh, a full return to normalcy.

Speaker 6: It's a, it's a seismic impact, that's for sure.

Speaker 2: Thank you both very much for sharing your insights on this Speaker 7: Critical industry with our audience.

Thank you, San Antonio, Speaker 2: We've been very successful in nurturing the trifecta of new business.

High-tech cybersecurity and medical research.

We've seen all three industries thrive here.

And in part due to the efforts of individuals who are helping usher in new ideas and new technologies, let's have a look.

Speaker 7: We feel very fortunate being in the technology industry.

We've still seen quite a bit of growth this year.

Uh, I think we would have seen a lot more had there not been COVID, but we've still seen a lot of growth.

I think you'll see some companies revert back to, uh, office only, but I think more forward thinking, companies are going to focus more on a mix where you will have some people in the office, but you'll also have some people that work from home, probably giving their employees options.

I'd say maybe five years ago, shifting a large amount of your workforce to offsite would have been extremely challenging, but there's been such a migration to the cloud over the years.

There's less of a reliance on physical servers.

A lot of our clients rely heavily on the internet and, you know, the point of sale system and either online reservations, uh, you know, of course their website, their VoIP systems, credit card machines, all that relies on the internet.

So technology becomes more and more critical to day-to-day business operations.

And I think they've started to understand that so many clients have had to rely on us, Hey, we're gonna, you know, send half our workforce home.

We need to set up laptops for them needing to get, you know, phones working off site.

So they can call from the office number and have calls transferred to them.

And all those sorts of things set up VPNs, et cetera, et cetera.

I think us being able to weather the storm, uh, with our clients and to be there by, by their scientists system is just one less thing they had to worry about.

And they see the value now and all the technology and having us there to support them.

There's a lot of benefits to living in San Antonio, lower costs of living means, uh, you don't have to pay your employees as much.

You also don't have to pay as much for office space.

Utilities are lower.

I mean, everything is just less expensive.

Uh, we don't have a whole lot of national disasters here.

We get, you know, outer bands of storms, hurricanes that come to the Gulf and rain, and that's about it.

You know, you don't see a lot of tornadoes here.

Earthquakes are non-existent down here, wildfires.

You have to worry about any of that.

You know, some of the companies that have been founded here and have grown over the years, uh, one of our clients massage Heights is a prime example.

Um, they've continued to grow in their corporate offices here.

It's a great place to have a corporate office, Texas overall as a state has seen a huge growth.

You know, I think Austin was kind of the, the start for that very tech friendly, the necessary infrastructure, the educated workforce, all that kind of stuff for that business to choose from Dallas leapfrogged.

A couple other cities in the U S is one of the fastest growing tech cities in the country.

And I think it's starting to create that, that tech epicenter here in, in Texas and San Antonio is just a natural part of that Speaker 2: Here with us now, or Jim perse, Bach president and CEO of port San Antonio and dr.

Robert Chromos Dean of the long school of medicine at the university of Texas health science center, San Antonio, dr.

Ramirez, thank you for joining us, Jim, thank you very much for being here.

Thank you.

Um, obviously the biomedical sector is hugely important in San Antonio.

It's something like 160,000 people employed in the sector here.

And some would say the leading industry in San Antonio by employment, by GDP measurements, by prospects for the future.

Uh, but the bio-sciences sector has had a dual role here, not just a strong sector of the economy, but lifesaving services during the COVID, uh, uh, emergency.

Can you describe in your sense from your vantage point, how San Antonio has performed as a provider of, uh, COVID related services?

How are we doing state of play today?

Speaker 8: We're doing fantastic.

San Antonio has been a leader in this entire region, in the COVID-19 response, not just in public health, but also you might know that our city, a university hospital was the largest accruer to disappear FDA registration trial.

We are also the third largest accruer to the disappeared dexamethazone trial.

We have started a Novavax vaccine trial here.

So we are introducing new medications even before they're FDA approved right here in San Antonio.

Speaker 2: And these are in collaboration with, for example, Texas biomed, uh, the university hospital system, uh, individual, uh, researchers here in the community.

So you're playing the role of convener in some sense, as well as providing services to individuals.

Would that be correct?

Speaker 8: That's exactly right.

Texas biomed, as you know, is one of the world's leading testers of COVID-19 medications before they are tested on patients Speaker 2: And as a Dean of a medical school, but more importantly, a physician yourself, how do you see the state of play with respect to COVID-19?

Uh, we all know that there's talk of a second surge.

This may be it, uh, we don't know, uh, the effect of the vaccine.

Exactly, but we're hopeful that this ends sometime as soon as the vaccine is takes hold.

Um, give us your best sense of just from your experience.

What's the, what's the sense of this?

Where are we, where are we going to be?

Speaker 8: Well, it's a race between the virus and the vaccine, as you know, and the Pfizer vaccine, recent data announcement was very promising.

90% of patients were protected, uh, if they took that vaccine, that vaccine as you and I spoke earlier is very hard to store and distribute.

It has to be stored in liquid nitrogen, which is very hard to keep around and actually toxic to the skin.

If it just touches your skin, it can freeze your skin off.

So it's going to be very tricky to store and distribute that vaccine.

However, it works, we have something that works Speaker 2: And there are other approaches to vaccines that were just behind.

It presents some of which may not be as difficult.

Speaker 8: So the advantage of this vaccine is it is easy to manufacture, hard to store, hard to distribute.

The vaccines falling afterwards are harder to manufacture, easier to store, easier to distribute.

There are a couple of months behind, but the good news is we're making enormous progress, but the bad news is the virus is exploding all around Speaker 2: Us.

Let me ask you one final question about the longer picture.

Uh, obviously we're going to come through this and we hope we come through it strongly.

Uh, I'd like to ask you a kind of a two-part question first.

Do you see this as a continuing part of the ramp up of the bio-sciences in San Antonio?

Will we be stronger as an industry going forward?

And then secondly, you've been in Albuquerque and medical school in Florida and in medical school, uh, w w how, how realistic are we when we talk about San Antonio being thought of principally as a city that heals for the overall significance of our biomedical medical sector here?

Speaker 8: Well, as you know, I am a big proponent of the vision you cast two decades ago, Henry, where you said we can be right here in San Antonio, a leading research industrial hub for the entire world.

And I think we're now in an inflection point where we have all the pieces in place.

We have Southwest research Institute, we have U T S a university of Texas at San Antonio.

We have us UT health, San Antonio, and then we have Texas biomed to test the medications we can design and test and put in clinical trials, a new COVID-19 medication right here in San Antonio.

We have all the pieces in play, and I think COVID-19 has pushed us all to work harder together.

So, Speaker 2: So the subject, uh, Jim of San Antonio's assets for economic future, obviously port essay is one of those.

And you've done a unusually great job of envisioning something that doesn't exist today, but, but steadily marching it there, uh, cybersecurity technology firms there, but also in the community at large.

These are, these are important industries that go beyond the port.

Just share with us a sense of your vision of San Antonio's future.

With respect to these new sunrise industries, Speaker 9: The, the vision is convergence.

It's connecting, it's connecting people and opportunities, buyers, and sellers, education, and demand.

And what that means is as we move into a digital world, as we move into an automated world, you need to have people with different expertise, all working together, San Antonio's unique capability is that we have so many deep silos of skills, so many deep silos of talent here.

And you put those together and amazing things.

Speaker 2: Talk about specifically what some of those silos are, Speaker 9: Can be brought to you.

The two, we focused on their passion of mine, our aviation and technology.

And when you look at airplane maintenance, for example, which is something we've done in San Antonio for over a hundred years, right now, it became commoditized because airplanes went in for maintenance.

When you needed on a cycle, we're moving into predictive maintenance, data analytics, knowing when the airplane is going to break before it breaks on supply chains.

When you talk about supply chains, being able to send the resources there before they're needed to be ahead of where you're going to pay.

Speaker 2: If you were characterizing port essay as an asset.

And I know you've thought this through many times, give us your most succinct sense of why this asset is so important, Speaker 9: Because it is one of the few places on the planet where you can converge digital and automation skills with industry skills, with hard skills.

So take an airplane.

For example, if you're going to put predictive analytics into an airplane, you need not only the people who understand the predictive analytics, you need the people who understand the airplane.

You don't have both of them, the technologies aren't going to, Speaker 2: And of course, there's the physical space, the industrial plant, the nearby workforce, all of those elements come together.

Speaker 9: That's exactly right.

What we're tremendously excited about is the medical potential here in San Antonio.

We've got folks who are building medical pods that can take health care anywhere on the planet.

Yeah.

With 3d printing, with remote manufacturing, you can send medical skills.

You can take telemedicine from just consultation to actually providing care with companies like plus one robotics and reckoned point.

You can move robots out of a controlled environment into an uncontrolled environment.

And the ability to manage supply chains, manage healthcare, managed technology is just exponential Speaker 2: Well between the two of you.

We may have the people here who are going to be intricately involved, intimately involved in building San Antonio's economic future, taking us from what we have today, to what we want to be and doing it in a way that creates enough jobs, enough incomes to raise the overall status of our city.

Thank you very much for your professional work and thank you very much for being with us here today.

Thanks so much.

no successful city can thrive without the generosity of its own citizens.

And that's especially true here in San Antonio where caring and helping and giving seem to be almost second nature.

But what has the impact of COVID been on philanthropy here to discuss what nonprofits are seeing locally is Chris Martin CEO of the United way of San Antonio and bear County and Patricia Mahir vice president for community engagement and impact with the San Antonio area foundation.

Thank you both for being here, let's begin with Chris and United way.

People think of United way and instantly have a sense of credibility of trust in the both collection of resources and then the distribution of the resources to the neediest.

Uh, what has been precisely for your operations, the impact of COVID-19?

Speaker 10: Well, it's certainly first thank you for having us and thank you for the opportunity to share.

Uh, it certainly has forced us as a community and as an organization to think differently about the way we go about our work.

It's, uh, you know, what, what it really did for our way, was it, it really brought about flexibility and innovation, uh, to, to think, to be very flexible in the way we address our community's issues, uh, to think differently about the way we go about them, Speaker 2: An example of how that occurred.

Just so folks can understand that.

Sure, Speaker 10: Sure.

If you think about the populations that were impacted as a result of COVID, you know, one of the things right away that we knew we needed to do was we needed to support the nonprofit sectors, especially our, our agency partners.

And so we became very flexible with our funding number, job.

Number one was to make sure that they had their doors open, Speaker 2: You, uh, pivot to the most emergency relief kinds of activities.

Is that what you did?

Speaker 10: Absolutely.

We, number one was to make sure that the doors were open.

And then as we started to learn what the needs in our community were, you know, in our partnership with the area foundation to raise, uh, funding for services in this community.

One of the things that we did was we supported an emergency childcare assistance program, which was utilized for our, our, our, you know, essential workers here in this community.

That was just one example.

Speaker 2: And when you, how would you characterize the total impact for the United way and the community?

Would you say this was a seismic blow or a glancing blow or something we could easily sustain?

How would you characterize it?

Speaker 10: Great.

It's a great question.

I would, what I would say is that, um, first and foremost, the issues that we face as a community are so large, um, this w we've got to get through this and we've, we will be stronger as a result of it, but it certainly took us off track a little bit.

We needed to think differently about what, what it was that we were doing and how we would go about that.

And I think that's where the end, Speaker 2: Chris, we'll come back to that because that's a really important point, Patricia you're, uh, we're fortunate to have you in a position at an institution that has become more important in our community in recent years, um, under, uh, Dennis knows leadership, and now ms.

French, uh, the area foundation is an integral part of philanthropy in San Antonio.

It was always important, but never core and central until some of those massive gifts and increases in endowment that have come about in recent years.

Tell us about the positioning of the area foundation with respect to COVID in particular.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Thank you for that question.

You know, really all of this is about collaboration while we're so appreciative of the role that we're playing.

We couldn't do it with partners without partners like United way.

We followed the lead of other community foundations across the country who had experienced COVID a little bit quicker than we did like Seattle.

And we realized that they stood up a COVID response fund right away.

And we partnered and asked to reach out to Chris to say, is this something you would be willing to do very quickly?

We use seed money from the Santigos gift, uh, to help us to see the initiative, but then very quickly we're able to raise up to 6.4 million and we're able to get those dollars out very rapidly for public that may not understand Speaker 2: The workings of the area and give us a quick primmer, uh, people who would like to make gifts themselves, but don't want to set up a family office.

Maybe their gift is of moderate size, but not so massive that they have a philanthropic machinery themselves can give to the foundation and the foundation then helps make the allocational distributions.

But talk about that just the system in ordinary times, that's, anti-coal the size of that.

Speaker 1: Sure, absolutely.

That is a great explanation.

Many times as you spoke in the introduction, so many of our community members want to be able to give and not always know the best way to do that or understand the real intricacies of the nonprofit sector.

And so rely on our community foundations to really pull all of those investments together and then entrust us with the responsibility of finding what are the, the highest community needs and distribute those dollars tequilas was what size, um, it was actually over 600, 600, hundred million dollars.

Speaker 2: You're you're flush with the ability to distribute, right?

Speaker 1: We're at a, we're at over a billion dollars in financial assets, under management, one of the larger community focus, or one of the top 20 in the country.

Yeah.

Speaker 2: Uh, Chris, uh, your entity has made news in recent years for innovating.

I think it's on your watch by bringing people into more collaborative giving, uh, in the sense that you've identified problems and said rather than piecemeal leaving every organization on its own to deal with that problem, we're going to coordinate the impact.

Tell us just a little bit about what including COVID presently in your mind is like the focal point of need in San Antonio.

Where's the gray, Speaker 10: You know, it, um, well, certainly as you think about co one of the things that COVID did, I, I should probably say is, um, COVID began to highlight and really brought the spotlight to the inequities that exist in our community.

So Speaker 2: You know about them, right?

But that photograph of people lining up for food 10,000 strong, really focused the fine line there is between prosperity, sustainability and going off.

Speaker 10: Yeah, certainly it certainly brought a spotlight to the issues that we face as a community.

And, and frankly, one of the things that our United way had done and worked on over the last several years was to identify what those core issues were.

And much of it is about educational opportunity and economic opportunity for those people in our community, to bring them to a level where they become self-service Speaker 2: Is this is this what's called collective impact.

Is this, is that what we're talking about?

Speaker 10: Absolutely.

Bringing our entire community must work together.

If we're going to move past these issues, Speaker 2: Gotta to focus on specific goals.

And as you say, training is one of those.

We just had a great victory last week as a community.

And I used those words advisedly as a community because up to 70% of the people of the community and a massive vote voted for pre-K for ready to work training.

And then for transportation of workers to the workplace, really surprised us all.

I think by the strength of that, but Patricia, what does that say about San Antonio?

And what does it say about the problems that you see us needing to address?

Speaker 1: Well, you know, I think we have done an incredible job as community leaders to really emphasize on the issue of equity and recognizing that it wasn't just overnight that, that there was a line of, as you describe at food bank, there are systemic issues, historical issues that have created some of these challenges.

And I think the messaging over several years that we need to address those inequities really allow the public to understand.

We've got to figure out more systemic policy solutions for some of these issues.

Speaker 2: There's a great deal about the people of our community.

I've I've I've I love San Antonio as if it was a member of my family, and I'm just overjoyed and overflowing with really respect for what the people of San Antonio did.

And for philanthropy, as I said, at the outset, no city can function, no modern American city without an active, focused, intelligent philanthropic sector.

And thanks to United way and thanks to the community area foundation in San Antonio, we have that at work.

We look forward to great work solving these critical problems as we go forward.

Thank you both for joining us for the second.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you.

how can San Antonio secure its future?

Most experts would tell us the foundation is a trained and educated workforce, and it looks like voters agree earlier this month, passing a proposition to help fund training for those affected by the pandemic.

Joining me now is Adrian Lopez, the CEO of workforce solutions, San Antonio, Adrian.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Um, I learned years ago that there's a kind of an iron law about urban economics and poverty, and it goes something like this high skills equals high wages, low skills equals low wages.

Uh, would you agree that that that is intrinsically and fundamentally a part of our efforts to try to address poverty incentives?

Yes, absolutely.

Uh, and not that San Antonio has not attempted to actually try to do that.

One of the great things about the leadership as far back as when you were the mayor, uh, was very progressive about sort of continuing the trajectory to have San Antonio grow, um, and to economically, you know, land some really big sort of economic development projects, whether it's Toyota or whether it was the Alamodome or many other types of things what's been unfortunate is that, um, our population or segments, the population have actually been left behind him that had, uh, taken advantage of those opportunities effectively being on the outside, looking in, And you had Alamo works for solutions to what is, what is it exactly.

Just so people know where it fits in the larger panoply of training?

Sure.

Uh, we are one of the 28 workforce boards in the state.

Yes.

Uh, we were, uh, allowed to be created in the mid nineties, uh, by the legislature.

Um, we are governed by a board of about 25 folks.

You oversee, I'd understand 13 counties And 13 counties.

And so chief elected officials in those counties, uh, allowed, uh, this workforce board to actually be created.

So, And you received money from the department of labor through the state that then you allocate to training institutions, correct.

Roughly how many people, how many lives in a course of a year do you touch?

Sure.

So we run, uh, 16 centers throughout the 13 County region fiber, which are located here in San Antonio bear County.

Um, we see on an average, uh, an annual basis about 200,000 now that got affected a little bit, uh, this year because of a pandemic and a circumstance that we're living under.

Um, not all of those enrolled into our programs.

Some are simply coming to us to do job search, uh, or to do resume writing or those types of things to take advantage of our infrastructure and, you know, some minor classes, but there are many of those that actually do actually get enrolled into our program.

Was the pandemic taught you, what did you see with your own eyes?

Uh, w w w people lost their jobs, small business, people had to close their businesses, have they come through your system to get training, to qualify for other positions?

Tell me about the, The sense of that.

Yeah.

So what we've seen and w we were tracking, um, since early March, uh, if, uh, you may or may or not re recalled, uh, we had, uh, a press conference with the County judge and with the mayor, and we'd said that we would, uh, monitor the situation and provide data, uh, in order to kind of make sure that elected officials were informed.

Uh, so what we saw since then is, uh, no less than 312,000 folks who file for unemployment and the 13 County region, uh, which is unprecedented given the one, the, that number of, of unemployment claims and two of them that, the timeframe for those to actually happen, um, to give you some perspective, um, probably the last week of February and the first week of March, we probably saw about 800 claims throughout the whole region that shot up to about 32,000 and like the third or fourth week where things now, things are continuing to sort of, in terms of a weekly unemployment claims are much lower, however, we're still seeing around the 30,000 or so on a monthly basis.

Wow.

So, uh, it is true that the voters recently passed a, uh, San Antonio w ready to work initiative.

Um, tell me a little bit about how you think that's going to work, how it fits into the big picture.

Are you hopeful that this is a major part of the answer going forward?

Yes.

So going back to the, I think your original question about, um, making sure that people are trained and, and have this skillset, uh, in order to, uh, uh, you know, be part of the equation, the solution to poverty, um, I'll give you this kind of perspective, um, back in the seventies, uh, about 80% of, uh, what we would call mid skill, uh, made wage wage jobs, uh, required things like, uh, cognitive and manual sort of functions.

So precise, repeating, uh, functions, right?

Uh, today, uh, the, those types of mid skill and mid wage jobs require certifications.

Uh, more technical skills requires problem solving requires people to be a little bit more educated than that.

And so you could probably say 80% of the jobs back in the 1770s didn't require it, but 80% The jobs do require.

So you make a very good point.

And it seems to be that we can never go wrong investing in human capital and human beings and their skills.

If what we want to do is raise the overall economy of the region.

Thank goodness.

You're on the job at Alamo workforce, and I'm a part of the solution going forward.

Thank you very much also for being here today, take care of in this hour, we've talked about technology and tourism, philanthropy, medical research, and workforce training in San Antonio.

We'll wrap up our time together, talking about how we move forward from here.

How will the city handle what we hope will soon be the post COVID era?

What do statistics say about what our city will look like?

We're fortunate to have Eric wash the city manager who perhaps more than any other San Antonio, but perhaps the mayor has his finger on where our city stands today.

And Steve Nivon associate director of economics at st.

Mary's university who can talk to us about the metrics, the numbers, I know both and no of their expertise in these respective areas.

Eric, uh, you lived through a situation that I described to the mayor as maybe the worst, any San Antonio mayor has confronted.

There've been crises in the past, but nothing that resembled the life and death realities for hundreds, if not a thousand people.

Now, as we know now, uh, it, that this pandemic has posed as city manager.

What did you see?

And when did you know that this was a truly serious situation?

What were your senses of where it would go in terms of direct impact of the city on budget and emergency services and so forth, and then where are we now in comparison?

Yeah.

Thanks Henry.

Um, Speaker 3: So, you know, I, let me talk about the, about when we, when we realized that it was, um, serious more, yeah.

More than, more than just something you watch on TV that happens in another part of the world.

Um, early on in, in February when the federal government started, um, sending, um, us Americans, American citizens from China and from the cruise ships to Lackland, um, you know, our Metro health department, our fire department, the local hospital systems really had to get aligned quickly.

Um, and, and it was very, it, it, it gave us the chance to want, establish the relationships, uh, especially with the hospital systems and coordinate and looking back, um, that happened, you know, a month and a half before the NBA shut off their season.

And so, um, although it didn't feel like it at the time, it was a good time for us to get together.

Speaker 2: We had a little bit of a preparatory look at what was happening in other places before it actually hit here.

Speaker 3: We did, we did.

And so I Speaker 2: Remember the scare of the lady who was released at Lachlan and went to the mall.

Right.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Right.

And, and, and so, so from that aspect, I think, I think it gave us a little bit of, uh, a little bit more of a runway than, than maybe some of our other, what was the Speaker 2: Worst of the times June?

Speaker 3: You know, um, I would say I, I would say, um, end of March, April in terms of uncertainty, right.

And, and, uh, Speaker 2: We're at a danger point where our hospital capability was stressed.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Stress, we got stressed in July.

Yeah.

We got stressed in July and going through, um, not as serious as what El Paso is going through right now.

Um, but we had the state and the federal government sending in a nursing staff, uh, to help with the staffing Speaker 2: City manager.

What were the implications to you in the organization?

You had fire police, emergency medical services, health department.

What did you see there?

Speaker 3: Uh, we, we needed to, we needed to align quickly, and that was the March, April timeframe, where there was a lot of uncertainty.

And, and, and I shared it with the council.

At that time, we were going to do three things, only three things.

We were going to focus on response.

We were going to prepare for recovery and we were going to do basic operations.

Everything else was fine.

Speaker 2: And you had to budget during this time.

We did, we did budget in the context of lowered sales tax revenues, and, uh, Speaker 3: Et cetera.

Well, we saw, we saw hotel motel tax proceeds, uh, revenue at the airport sales tax, just fall off the cliff and in working with, with Steve, um, and his associates early on in April, we made a pivot and recommended our entire organizational budget, uh, and it needed, and, and looking back, Henry, it made, even though the summer was difficult for us as we prepare for the 20, 21 budget.

Yeah.

Those early decisions that we made, uh, made it Speaker 2: Well, you, you, you were very firm and, and the mayor and the council back you, uh, and made some very foresighted decisions.

I want to come back to you in a second on your assessment of where we are now, professor Nevin, I have, uh, admired your work for a long time in the statistical metrics, economic projections, give us a sense with metrics, with numbers of what we have been through.

Speaker 4: Wow.

It's been, uh, quite an event.

And, and, uh, uh, I remember when, when we were working with, with Eric and his team on, on the projections and going through those numbers and sitting at my desk and looking at the charts for my projections and that the, and the Speaker 2: What's the most, uh, impactful, dramatic number that, that drove home to you.

The significance of this, Speaker 4: The, the unemployment rate is really just jumps.

I mean, at the, at the time I was projecting, and this is, you know, March, so you're got around all this uncertainty, but looking at, at unemployment that, that might get up towards 20% levels.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And so I'm looking at these charts and just shaking my head and just in disbelief, Speaker 2: Did you look ahead and say, this can only get worse.

Businesses are failing.

Doors are being closed at establishment.

Hotels are in trouble.

Um, Hey, Speaker 4: In a sense, it was hard to imagine anything worse than 20%, uh, unemployment, but the big question then, and the question still persists now, um, is the, how permanent is this going to be?

Speaker 2: We're very limited on time today.

And, uh, but I appreciate so much your being here.

Let me close by asking each of you to tell me, where are we today?

And what's ahead in the immediate future.

As you see it, you, you, you have better vantage points than most people in town.

If this is a program about the business of business for San Antonio, and people want to look ahead a little bit, what should they hear from leaders like you Speaker 3: Henry?

I think that where we're at right now, where we're, where we think we're moving towards is, um, um, cautiously optimistic and using science and data to help guide what policies, uh, decisions, uh, the mayor may make, or the County judge may make, uh, to protect the community.

But, uh, regarding the pandemic, number one, number two, it is about, and it falls into our recovery resiliency program.

The support that, that folks in our community need, whether they're small business, right, or it's housing assistance, or more importantly, workforce development, because recovery will happen.

It's making sure that the city is put in a position where we're on the starting line and we're ready to go.

Speaker 2: That was a great statement of confidence that the voters gave you with those 68, 70 and 70% margins for investment in workforce and, and the economy going forward.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Yeah.

We, you know, if for, for, for, for so many different reasons, um, the pandemic shifted and cracked, um, parts of our employment base.

And, and I don't think any of us want to be in that position again, and we've got to take the opportunity we have to, to raise that level of education and opportunity for, for people in San Antonio Speaker 2: Nevin, let me ask you to just in a sentence, your show capsulize, where you think we are and where w where we'll be Speaker 3: Right now.

I, I we're, we're at we've come back nicely, but we are, we are, I think it's important to realize not to be too dismal, but we are basically at the levels of the worst part of the great recession right now that said, I, I, I do think, you know, with programs like Eric just talked about with the workforce programs, the voters just approved them.

That that is a huge, And the vaccine and better treatments and hopefully greater care on the part of right masking and so forth.

Right.

That's the road ahead.

Well, thank you for that note of caution.

Thank you for both your leadership during the worst of this, and thank you for staying the course and sort of pointing to a future that gets San Antonio back on our normal course.

Your leadership is very important.

Thank you.

Thank you to all of our participants tonight, and thank you for joining us.

Look for a podcast of this show on K lrn.org, and thank you to Texas mutual insurance for sponsoring this program, please stay safe and have a good evening.