For the past 34 years, the Leadership Greater Bridgeport (LGB) program operated by the Bridgeport Regional Business Council (BRBC) has brought together students from across the region and provided them with the training, the networking and the information they need to succeed in business and within conditions unique to the area. The students have been a mix of representatives from established area institutions, local entrepreneurs looking to develop themselves and new arrivals to the area seeking a deeper understanding of their new home.
LGB students tour the city, attend lectures and have conversations with experts in a wide range of fields and aspects of business. They are encouraged to form bonds with both program members and their instructors. Each class also performs a service project for a local nonprofit.
The program has proven highly successful and many of its graduates have gone on to successful careers, including several current leaders of the BRBC.
Dan Onofrio, the BRBC’s president and CEO, was a member of Class 30 and he viewed the LGB program as core to the Business Council’s continued success.
“Our general mission at the BRBC is really to grow our economy and create jobs, but a big part of that is also attracting and retaining our businesses,” Onofrio said. “In order for them to do that successfully it oftentimes comes down to talent. We hear a lot of discussion around workforce development, especially nowadays and currently in Connecticut if we hired every unemployed person, we still wouldn’t have enough bodies here.”
According to Onofrio, the demand for people who can manage, lead, delegate, and innovate is essential for the local economy.
“We’ve got 170 [manufacturers] right here in Bridgeport,” he said. “A program like Leadership Greater Bridgeport gets you exposed to all of those various industries and sectors.”
John Chamberlain, the grants and fundraising strategist for Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport, is a current member of the LGB board. He is a graduate of LGB Class 29, having signed up for the leadership program after moving to the city to take up his current role. Chamberlain recounted some of the people he met through LGB who are now in prominent positions of authority.
“In that group of classmates I worked with, some were from Bridgeport Hospital, one worked for People’s United ”” now M&T Bank ”” and one of them was the head of the Downtown Merchants Association at the time,” he said. “It connected me with groups around or in Bridgeport.”
Connections that Chamberlain made through the class led to the zoo entering a partnership with the Green Village Initiative to develop programming featuring farm animals.
“We had folks from their organization talking about farming and gardening, growing fresh healthy food and why it’s so important. It also had a nice urban angle of talking about food justice and access to clean food,” he added. “So much of that content was really different than what we may have necessarily offered previously at the zoo. I feel like it really had origins in that leadership year and the connections that put together for me.”
Natalie Pryce, also a graduate of Class 29, is currently a consultant for the BRBC leadership programs, including LGB, the Women’s Leadership Network and the Young Professionals Network. A Bridgeport native, she counts herself among those who have had their entrepreneurial approach and business acumen taken to the next level by LGB.
“Covid has shown us that you never stop learning,” she said. “You always have to be learning, and now this leadership program can leverage this new world of learning to be a catalyst for that.”
The upcoming Class 34 will mark a return to a fully in-person format for LGB, but according to Pryce the future might see smaller sections of the program or additional offerings offered in Zoom or webinar formats to improve access.
“I believe that going through leadership Greater Bridgeport allowed you to have access to the economic development that’s happening in our region, as well as have access to the people that are making those changes,” she said.
