Building a relationship with Amazon beyond the fulfillment center | Rick Minor
Like many, I’m excited about the Amazon fulfillment center and the economic impact it will bring to Leon County. The $200 million facility, along with the employment of 1,000 workers, makes this the largest single private sector investment in the history of this community. Even so, that’s only part of the picture. Amazon has indicated they’d like to explore a partnership that goes far beyond the operation of a fulfillment center.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon, provides a broad set of cloud-based products to businesses, nonprofits, and governments. Its annual revenue is $62 billion and with clients like NASA, Toyota, Disney+ and Verizon, AWS leads the cloud services industry with about a third of the global market.
For the past year, Leon County’s Office of Economic Vitality (OEV) has been leading talks with AWS about the prospect of investing in our workforce and business community. There’s a strong mutual benefit in doing so, and AWS is already doing it in other states and localities. Some examples:
Georgia’s Governor Kemp recently launched a new collaboration with AWS in which 5,500 Georgia residents will be trained in cloud computing.
In 2021, the State of Pennsylvania and AWS announced a partnership that expands e-commerce opportunities for Pennsylvania businesses. Small businesses can reach new customers and increase their sales by digitizing their inventory and marketing it via an online storefront, for free or very low cost.
Washington State and AWS formed a first-of-its-kind agreement to train and certify 2,500 high school students in cloud computing by 2024.
Investments like these can change lives for the better. A person certified in cloud computing can earn a high salary, with no college degree required. A small business with a new online presence can increase profits. When these things happen on a large scale and median income rises, a community experiences a multiplier effect that can help alleviate poverty, food insecurity, and affordable housing shortages.
These types of public-private initiatives are possible for Leon County, too. And why wouldn’t they be? Our community is a prime candidate for Big Tech investment. We are the most educated county in Florida. We have 42,000 college students attending a Top 20 public university, the #1 public HBCU, and the #1 community college in the nation for associates degrees.
We have a robust, cohesive network of stakeholders including not just the academic institutions, but also the three Chambers of Commerce, our workforce development organizations like Tallahassee Community College, Lively and CareerSource, and a thriving, highly influential IT sector. On top of all of that, we have a strong record of inclusiveness and working collaboratively to help each other, as demonstrated during the pandemic in 2020-21 and by the All-America City Award in 2015. Leon County / Tallahassee has a lot to boast about.
We’ve been promoting these attributes to Amazon and have made strides in fostering a productive relationship. Last February, AWS and OEV co-hosted a roundtable discussion with 40 local IT, academic, and workforce development leaders to identify new talent pipelines. Soon afterward, AWS sponsored Leon Works, which connected 750 high school students with 100 employers from around the region.
Because of my background in IT, I was invited last year to serve as a panelist at the AWS Summit in Washington DC. My presentation focused on how Leon County is exploring workforce development opportunities with AWS, while other panelists represented communities with projects underway. One talked about how her state’s high school students were learning valuable tech skills, and another discussed how AWS is helping his state increase diversity within its IT sector.
There’s been a lot of talk about the economic boost of Amazon’s fulfillment center, and that’s understandable. However, in the long-term view, collaboration with Amazon Web Services in workforce development might be an even bigger opportunity.
Over time, Leon County should become a model for how a community can partner with Big Tech companies so that they’ll invest heavily in local skills development as a means toward achieving their own business objectives. When we foster this kind of public-private partnership, we’re helping our workforce compete in the digital economy and we’re improving the quality of life for our neighbors here at home.
Rick Minor is the Leon County Commissioner serving District 3. Prior to serving in the public sector, he spent 12 years as a consultant in information technology, business, and public policy.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Building a relationship with Amazon beyond the fulfillment center | Rick Minor
