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The Greater Portland Partnership for Economic Advancement (GPPEA) is a not-for-profit organization working to improve the economic outcomes of the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area through research, strategy, regional convening, and major initiative coordination.

GPPEA's hands-on approach includes learning best practices of cities across the U.S. and then presenting lessons learned for application to the local economy.

For more than 30 years, GPPEA has united public sector officials, private sector business executives, and higher education leaders to collaboratively accomplish three key categories of work:

• Research and strategic regional planning
• Project management of major economic advancement initiatives
• Best practices education and networking for local government economic developers

Visits to other cities worldwide have proven to be incredibly enlightening, offering valuable lessons about the successes, failures, and obstacles overcome by other major cities addressing public policy challenges. Through these visits, GPPEA has explored business attraction and retention, land use, transportation, public transit, growth limitations, immigration, and the unique culture and challenges of each one of these communities.

Visits have included Brooklyn, Japan, Toronto, Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, Charlotte, Boston, Washington DC, New York City, Philadelphia, Vancouver BC, multiple Scandinavian cities, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Detroit, Madrid and Barcelona, Spain, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Israel, Austin and Houston.

GPI Board Member Randy Miller leads the annual best practices trips and encourages all with an interest in making Greater Portland a better place to attend. Past attendees include public officials, both elected and support managers, business leaders, non-profit leaders, and education professionals. All are welcome, and Greater Portland champions are encouraged to attend. 

A fall 2018 trip to Colombia is being planned now with a focus on the following objectives:

• How Colombia has created social change and civic engagement
• National and local economic development strategies, aiming to identify best practices that can help inform strategies in the Portland-metro
• Innovation in Colombia and the associated role of the public sector
• Colombia’s urban planning and infrastructure investment

For participation availability or more information:

Randy Miller
Chairman, GPI Best Practices
Randy@ProduceRowLLC.com

Linda Arnold
arnoldx2@comcast.net