Economic developers are increasingly expected to help communities prepare for, withstand, and recover from economic disruptions. Yet there is a significant gap between that responsibility and what practitioners report doing — and particularly measuring. 

Using IEDC's 2025 State of the Field survey data, Jessica Paolini, Ph.D., and David Gelfand highlight a striking disconnect: only 31.2% of U.S. practitioners report addressing climate resilience and disaster preparedness, and just 14.8% report measuring it.  

This webinar will explore their IEDC Economic Development Journal article, exclusively available to IEDC members, investigating why this gap exists and whether those numbers may actually underestimate the resiliency work economic developers are already doing.  

The presenters argue that economic developers may already be contributing to resilience through activities such as workforce development, industrial diversification, broadband and infrastructure investments, talent attraction, green spaces, and comprehensive planning — without necessarily labeling those activities as "resiliency." They also examine how overlapping responsibilities among economic developers, planners, environmental agencies, and other stakeholders can make ownership and measurement more difficult. 

Drawing on practitioner interviews, state economic development plans, national frameworks, and examples from across the country, this webinar will help to move the discussion from "Are economic developers responsible for resilience?" toward more useful points about what resilience looks like in practice, who owns it, and how we should measure it.  

This is not simply a conversation about disaster recovery. 

It is a conversation about how economic developers define their increasingly complex role in building communities capable of responding to economic shocks. 

Participants will examine questions such as: 

• Are we already doing resilience work without recognizing it as such?  
• How should economic development organizations define their role alongside planners, environmental agencies, emergency management, and other partners? 
• What should we actually measure? 
• What can practitioners learn from communities that are already putting economic resilience into practice? 

The authors also offer concrete examples from Montana, Michigan, Vermont, South Carolina, and New Mexico, as well as measurement approaches and toolkits practitioners can adapt to their own communities.  

Speakers: 

• Jessica Paolini, Ph.D., Director of Economic Development, Somerset County, NJ 
• David Gelfand, Economic Development Specialist, Somerset County, NJ 

This virtual event is supported by IEDC's Economic Development Research Partners. It is offered exclusively to IEDC members free of charge; non-member registration is $99.  

Register