- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- Memphis Chamber CEO Beverly Robertson tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian, thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Beverly Robertson, President and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber, thanks for being here.

- I'm happy to be here.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

You are here perhaps for the last time as Chamber CEO, but hopefully we'll have you on in other capacities which we'll talk about.

You're leaving the end of this year, it'll be, have been, four years?

- Four years, absolutely.

- Talk about it.

Talk about what it's been like, some of the, maybe some of the biggest, the things you're most proud of, and we'll talk through all things Memphis and so on.

- Yeah, so when I came to the Chamber, I came late 2018.

So I kicked off 2019 at the Chamber.

And had some early on recognitions of things that were important to do.

First of all I came in at a very tragic time.

- Yeah.

- And so I spent the first month really talking to everybody on my team, realizing that they were suffering from trauma.

- And this is, for people who don't know or weren't here, Phil Trenary, who was president of the Chamber, was killed, a murder, and it was awful.

Awful for the Chamber, it was awful for the community.

Like you, Phil was a figure in the community, beyond the Chamber, right?

I mean he had been a business executive, he was involved in a lot of things, and so it was a trauma for so many people, and you've followed that.

- Right and so one of the first things I really wanted to do is get a clear understanding of how everybody felt the work of the Chamber was defined.

In other words, what is the work of the Chamber?

Because many people in the community don't understand chambers, don't know what they do, and so we captured a way to define it in a very easy way, PEW.

Economic development, the epicenter of our work.

Attract new investment and higher wage jobs and help existing business expand and grow.

W, can't do it without a workforce, gotta have a pipeline.

And we can't do any of that unless we have a positive business operating environment, which is steeped in public policy.

So PEW, is the work of the Chamber, that's what we do all day long, and everybody got on board with that.

After I got on board we started having retreats to really get people all on the same page around the goals of the Chamber.

And then we started working on a strategic plan in the organization because we really wanted to define where we were going to go, what were the main areas of focus for the Chamber, what were the industries we're most looking for that are aligned with the assets of the marketplace.

And then guess what happened?

Pandemic hit the next year, so.

I thought that I was through raising money after I left National Civil Rights Museum.

But what people don't know about the Chamber is 89% of our business membership is small business, and they couldn't afford to pay their membership dues.

So I found myself in the middle of another fundraising campaign where we raised about $2.5 million.

- And we'll talk some about, you were at the National Civil Rights Museum, it was the first time you were on the show, and you were there before you went to the Chamber.

The biggest, you know, in this four years, with the pandemic, the Ford plant maybe is the biggest, but in terms of the many, many things you've been involved with, the biggest sort of maybe most positive thing that you feel like you and the Chamber were able to do over the last four years for the community.

- Well I'd have to say that the Ford plant is one of those things that we were able to do.

I think also bringing the voice of the community to the table at the Chamber.

Bringing the community of faith to help us work on various initiatives.

Launching Upskill 901 which is a workforce initiative designed to upskill 10,000 people in the marketplace for future jobs that exist.

Launching the Center for Economic Competitiveness which really is a metrics, a way to define the work of the Chamber in terms of metrics and define the areas of competitiveness that drive success in Memphis.

So we launched that center, we produced a set of metrics, there's a comparison between Memphis and nine other cities, so we know on housing, on job growth, on various aspects, wages, where Memphis sits relative to nine other competitors.

And we will be producing quarterly reports on an ongoing basis to help inform business and then they can structure actions based on this data and this research.

So implementing a data-based approach to evaluate and assess the goals of the Chamber.

- Yeah, Bill.

- Bev, a lot has changed.

Did the pandemic change our trajectory?

Or did what came after, what has come after the pandemic, has it changed our trajectory in terms of a community where you have jobs for that workforce and you have workforce for those jobs?

- Well I think the transformation and the changes came during the pandemic.

When I first started we actually went to the state and sort of reinforced the necessity of getting back on the megasite.

And because some of that energy was across West Tennessee, I think there was great movement around what would be happening with that site and getting that site ready for occupation.

And in comes Ford, and they bring a whole new thought process to the table because really they are really looking for fourth Industrial Revolution kind of skills.

Whether that's artificial intelligence, robotics, you know, digitization, all of those things that are the skills for the new workforce that we've gotta create.

It created both opportunities and also challenges for the marketplace.

So we are working every day and we have many sleepless nights because we know that there will not only be about 6,000 jobs available, but we have legacy companies who have invested in this marketplace for many, many years who are afraid that a sizable group of their population of employees might be leaving them.

So we can't abandon those companies that have invested in Memphis all these years, you know, just because we have a Ford here.

So a lot of this occurred, you know, within the pandemic but a lot of what we're realizing now is the benefits that are accruing because we now have about 50 other projects in our pipeline when we would have had less than half of that if this were.

- And while we look at the physical location of the megasite which is in Haywood County, the impact of this, and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland has talked about possible uses of the Firestone plant site in North Memphis for this, so you're not talking necessarily just about Memphians driving to Haywood County for those jobs, you're talking about jobs here, right?

- We are talking about companies who are interested in locating close, but here in the Memphis marketplace.

So yes we're gonna have people driving to that site but we also have companies that wanna anchor themselves in this marketplace because there's so many assets here that other areas do not have.

So Memphis has a competitive advantage when you start thinking about all of the things that we have in Memphis, Tennessee, that other markets, whether they are smaller markets, whether it's, you know, Jackson, Tennessee, or Brownsville or Stanton, all those other areas just don't have that.

- So what do you say to those legacy businesses who are still trying to wrap their minds around what this transition involves as you've got this transition in the workforce going on because those are gonna be different kind of jobs at the Ford plant as well.

What do you say to those legacy businesses?

- What I say to those legacy businesses that the Greater Memphis Chamber is here working for you.

And what I mean by that, let me just make it plain, we are looking right now at setting up one-stop shops, one particularly to start off with, in South Memphis that allows training partners to work with us in conjunction with us, whether that be, you know, Workforce Mid-South, or Southwest Tennessee, or TCAT, or the MCS, Memphis City Schools, to work with us to bring their training to that site, but the training has got to be in in-demand skills that are necessary.

So we wanna bring them here because we gotta address two entities.

We gotta address existing business needs and we're bringing an accelerated training program to that particular site.

So everybody that's in that site will be training around in-demand skills and the training will be from 8 weeks to 20 weeks.

So you can stand up a job.

So that means that you can scale up a lot quicker because you don't have to go to school for four years but you get a certification.

And if you have multiple certifications, that qualifies you for five jobs.

In-demand jobs that will be existing in the companies that exist today as well as at the Ford plant.

- I don't know if you know.

So 6,000 jobs is the estimate at Ford, but thousands more at all the follow-on suppliers and all that that will come with it.

I mean I've seen estimates in the 20,000-plus jobs just as a result of the Ford thing.

How much of that do you think will be relocation and what do you think that does in terms of people coming to town?

And what's, I don't want to ask you what's the sales pitch, but I don't know, how does relocation work and how does that change the workforce, how does that change Memphis?

- Well I think that there probably will be some relocation because they've gotta close down some places and they've gotta put them somewhere.

But I think that Ford, and Ford doesn't really know.

Let me just say, the answer to that question is unknown right now because they don't know.

But the reality is, is that even when new perspectives come to the marketplace, to me that's not a bad thing.

That's not a bad thing.

I think that we learn a lot when we get new energy, new perspectives, new people coming in, because they bring new ideas and innovation to the table.

We just don't wanna forget that we got a base of people here who need jobs, who need to be upskilled, who need to be trained in these in-demand skills.

So I don't think it's bad.

I think often times we may see it as such, but when you've got new energy, new ideas, you've got innovation, you've got people who can work with the existing companies as well, people who have children, who have families, who live in this marketplace, take advantage of our amenities, go to our museums, you know take advantage of our sports, you know whether that's U of M or the mighty Memphis Grizzlies, they want to take advantage of all of what we offer as a city.

- The city also, we talked about some of these business and economic wins.

The city obviously has lots of challenges, right?

I mean, and one of those, I mean it's hard not to talk about crime in part because we're talking about Phil being killed.

The country's having a massive spike in crime, Memphis had a crime problem before the COVID and our crime problem has gotten worse.

And that is, you know, for some people, that's what makes it difficult to relocate here, right?

Or it makes people want to leave.

I mean, in your four years, what can the business community do?

Not necessarily maybe the Chamber, but the business community do, if anything, about crime?

What is it trying to do?

- Well the business community has been, I meet with the police chief once a month, and we talk about what the business community can do.

One thing that we have had conversations around is if there is crime in the downtown area we have a captive audience of companies located downtown all of whom have security officers.

So we've talked about creating a seamless communication system so if something's going on on one end of Main, that's communicated because it may be traveling.

And so we are trying to make sure that there is communication, not just with the police all the time, but also with security officer to security officer so that they can alert people.

I think the other thing we do is meet regularly with the Downtown Commission to talk to them about things that are going on downtown.

Whether it's Beale Street or it's cars doing donuts in the street, and as a result of those conversations what you now see is traffic bumpers in the street that has stopped a good bit of that.

I think also the business community can, and if there are specific projects or things that need to be done for which resources may not exist, I think if it is positioned properly and we believe it can be effective, I think the business community would invest in that.

- Yeah, and staying on crime just for, I mean, how much do members bring up the issue of crime to you?

I mean is it, it was, back when I, I mean, you know, back in the day I was more involved in the Chamber, we were a member of the Chairman's Circle which was 120 or so companies that are involved, it was a high priority then.

I assume it's only, and on the minds of a lot of business leaders, I assume it remains so or if not more so given the jump in crime.

- Well you know, when you look at the homicide numbers in Memphis versus some other cities, it's, our homicide rate has gone down recently.

Theirs have gone up.

So I think that's certainly a positive aspect.

That doesn't mean that there's not still a lot of focus.

There was a great deal of focus during the pandemic.

You know the tough time during the pandemic when everything was shut down, that's when we saw a real proliferation of crime.

I will say this though, I will say this.

That many businesses, when you talk to them about coming in to Memphis, what they will say is all major urban markets have crime.

We have to make sure that as a company that we provide the necessary measures to secure our facility and our team.

And we wanna work with MPD and other entities to ensure that, but that's our, that's part of our responsibility.

There's nowhere they're gonna go in a major urban market where they're not experiencing it.

And even our friends to the east and middle are experiencing it, it's proliferating, and so they're seeking counsel from Memphis.

And what did we do and how did we manage it?

Because there are some wonderful things that have been done in Memphis to sort of turn that tide, and they are struggling right now.

- Bill.

- When you started at the Chamber in 2018, the idea of jobs that paid a minimum of $15 an hour was, let's say, a novel concept.

There were a group of organizers who came to town with that goal in mind and I think it's fair to say that when they first got here and began talking about that, began organizing around that, there were some people who looked at them as if they had landed in some kind of flying saucer or something.

And now, four years later, fifteen dollars an hour is not a strange concept at all in an economy where there is competition for workers.

What's that journey been like at the Chamber?

- You know it's been a pretty interesting and incredible journey.

I think some of the elevated awareness around wages also came as a direct result of an initiative that we did called Protest to Progress where we brought activists, clergy, and business leaders to the same table and one of the key issues was the whole issue of a living wage.

And what that living wage looked like.

So we had activists who were PhDs who worked with the University of Memphis, University of Memphis came to the table, presented data on what a living wage looks like for a family of four, family of two in Memphis, Tennessee.

And I think that was a number of business leaders worked on plans to address that at that time.

But what exacerbated that was this exodus from corporate jobs that we saw during the pandemic.

And so many companies have realized that in order for them to be competitive, in order for them to attract the workforce that they need to get the job done, they've got to increase wages and benefits.

And many companies now are beyond $15 an hour, it's $17 an hour, it's $20 an hour.

It's sign-on bonuses, it's healthcare when you start, it's college tuition paid.

So businesses have really heeded the call and answered the call for two very good reasons.

Not, number one, it's competitiveness, and it's existence, and it's growth and sustainability.

But it's also addresses some of the concerns that some of the activists raised at the earlier times when you talked about, a year or two ago, and maybe it was three years ago, but it addresses some of those things.

But they were driven by, you know, bottom line by the fact that they've gotta be competitive.

They've gotta be able to sustain and grow their companies.

- So nationally as you know there is talk about does the inflation that we're currently seeing lead to a recession?

And what does that do to the whole conversation about what is a living wage?

- Well I think because in a recession prices typically go up because companies cannot afford to still charge the prices that they charge and still maintain the kind of profit margins that they seek that address their business models.

So I think that with the wages having gone up, I think it actually will help them.

I'm not sure they have to continue to advance those wages at the pace that they've advanced 'em over the last year, but I think companies will be watching to really see what kind of impact the recession, the impending recession would have on their business and what kinds of decisions they really need to make.

- And the Chamber's initiative, meeting with the activists, that was an outgrowth of the bridge protest actually that we saw in 2016 as part of a new wave of activism, a new generation of activism in our city.

- Yeah and it was more directly the result of a march by Black Lives Matter downtown after the death of George Floyd.

And when that window in a retail store was broken I picked up the phone that night and called the mayor and said, "Can we as a Chamber help you?"

And he said yes.

So it came about as a direct result of both of those things because it was a new wave of activism.

Younger activists taking to the streets, shutting down the bridge, yes indeed.

- You've lived here your whole, you're from Memphis?

- I am.

- And you were at the National Civil Rights Museum before the Chamber for how long?

- About 17 years.

- 17 years, yeah.

And I didn't notice until I was looking up, I looked at your LinkedIn.

You were at Holiday Inn before that?

For how long at Holiday Inn?

- For about 19 years.

- About 19.

- So yes by now you think I'm 80 years old don't lie, right?

Okay, right?

- I'm curious about the protest and the store being broken and some cities were really, you know, parts of their downtowns were decimated during that period.

Some have not come back, some are still scarred by it.

We didn't have that level of protest.

And I'm curious your life here, you're first Black CEO of the Chamber, I think the first female CEO of the Chamber, you've been involved obviously in civil rights issues forever.

What is your take that we didn't have the level of mass protest here and the level of violence that some cities had?

Was that, I've heard some people say, "Well people weren't engaged," and they're critical.

"There should have been more protests and more people in the street."

I've heard other people say, "We've had this "conversation about race in Memphis for a longer time, so we were maybe a little bit farther along in it."

What is your take on all that?

- I think the Protest to Progress piece was critical at an important time.

Because what I realized is that, you know, while some business leaders who looked at that might have thought, "Well that's not about economic development," it absolutely is about economic development.

You cannot attract a company to a city that's burning or to a city that is in chaos.

Memphis has a very strong activist community, always has had a very strong activist community.

And for me, it's really about identifying what the issues really are.

And because you had eight or nine activist groups who lead activism here at the table, sitting down talking, advancing their ideas, and their action steps for actions that we were to take, and then the Chamber with business leaders standing it up, being out in front, saying, "We wanna be accountable, "we adopt this as ours, we will execute it working with community-based partners," I think that was a huge reason because the people who are more vocal were at the table.

And they were saying, "I don't really believe anything's gonna happen but I'm gonna stay at the table and see."

So I think that, you know, it's, we had plenty of activists and we had plenty at the table, and so it's not because they were, you know, complacent about acting.

It wasn't because we had been talking about it, because we haven't done anything about some of these things although we talked, so talk is cheap.

Action is what is needed.

And so this initiative had action tied to it, and accountability.

So the first meeting of accountability was six months from when we adopted it.

The activists came to the table again, and the clergy.

And you know what they said to us?

"We never thought anything was gonna happen, but now we see."

So I think that was a huge, and Bill Rhodes says it best.

- AutoZone CEO.

- Yes, "My buildings burned in other places, were looted in other places, but in my hometown it didn't."

And that's because of the work of the Chamber.

- Two minutes, Bill.

- Let's talk a little bit about the Tennessee legislature.

The legislature talking about a living wage, the Shelby County Commission long ago had passed a living wage ordinance for its contracts that it had that was in effect mooted by the Tennessee legislature.

What do you see ahead for the Chamber's relationship with the legislature?

- You know that is a fantastic question.

And what I would simply say to that is the Greater Memphis Chamber, you know, Bobby White has done a super job, and Ted Townsend because he lived in that space for a while, working for the State Department of Economic Development, has great relationships.

So one of the things we have done is we've partnered with the urban chambers all across the state of Tennessee.

So we're more powerful in that partnership.

We also have partnered with our metro chambers right here who are outside of Memphis because we understand that our voices are weak as the lone person talking.

But when we partner with Chattanooga, Knoxville, when you partner all four of us together, Nashville, Memphis, we have power that we didn't really understand.

Because a lot of those legislators come from East Tennessee or they come from Middle Tennessee, those are people that we don't have relationships with but our colleagues do.

And so it makes it more powerful for us and more palatable for us.

- With just, sorry, 30 seconds left, what's next for you?

- Well I'm going back to my business.

Bill has known that we've had Trust Marketing for many, many years and my daughter has joined the business and we're happy.

I've just gotta make sure she's trained in the right way, trained right now we can't leave it to chance.

I gotta make sure she knows how to make it.

- And an unfair question with five seconds left, no run for mayor?

Your name was thrown about that you were gonna run.

- I'm glad it was thrown out.

- Okay, all right.

And you mentioned Ted Townsend, he's your successor at the Chamber, we'll have him on soon.

Beverly thanks so much for being here, I hope to have you on again in some new capacity.

Bill thank you, thank you for joining us.

If you missed any of the show today you can get the full episode at WKNO.org.

You can also download the audio of the show at iTunes, Spotify, The Daily Memphian site, wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much and we'll see you next week.

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