The KC Rising Steering Committee announced a change in leadership with John Murphy, Sandy Price and William Gautreaux jointly chairing the committee effective March 1.
Scott Smith and Doug Girod will leave their posts as co-chairs of the regional business-led initiative, but both men will continue to serve on the committee.
Under Smith and Girod’s leadership, KC Rising launched its initial promise to the greater Kansas City region, developed a distributed implementation model to facilitate the process of identifying the region’s best opportunities for growth, and is making progress on specific initiatives related to globally competitive sectors, innovation and entrepreneurship and human capital.
“I don’t know of another time in our region’s history that the business and civic communities have come together in such strong alignment on ways to move our community forward, accelerate job growth and improve employment opportunities for all of our residents,” said Girod, executive vice president at the University of Kansas Medical Center. “KC Rising is already making an impact on these goals and has a lot of exciting opportunities ahead.”
Gautreaux, the chief marketing officer and president of Crestwood MSL, has served on the KC Rising steering committee since 2014.
Price, a board member with Great Plains Energy and a retired senior human resources executive with Sprint, previously served as the co-chair of the Human Capital Work Group which has launched new initiatives such as the Talent-to-Industry Exchange, KC Degrees, GatewaysKC, GradeForceKC and support for the Kauffman Foundation’s KC Scholars program.
Murphy, the chairman of Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP, has served on the KC Rising Steering Committee since 2014 and as advisory board chair for the KC InvestED initiative, now housed within KC SourceLink.
KC Rising will host its second annual report to the community in its Year Two Update on Feb. 28 from 4 to 6 p.m. at the 1900 Building located at 1900 Shawnee Mission Parkway and State Line Road in Mission Woods, Kan. Registration is required and space is limited.
