Episode 091: How Honesty and Vulnerability Enhance a Team’s Commitment with Steven Jast (Research on Investment & Gazelle AI)

Episode 091: How Honesty and Vulnerability Enhance a Team’s Commitment with Steven Jast (Research on Investment & Gazelle AI) 150 150 America's Jobs Team

“We continue to try to create opportunities for everyone on the team to share, but we make it very clear: if you need time for yourself or speak to senior leadership, it’s a given, don’t even think twice about it.” —Steven Jast

Sometimes we make a decision based on a seemingly small motivation, which launches our life down a completely different trajectory. Steven Jast (President at Research on Investment and Gazelle AI) talks about how a job he took just to make a little money to go travel wound up leading him down his path into the economic development industry.

Welcome to episode 091 of the America’s Jobs Team podcast! Steven shares some really important lessons he learned from  his grandfather, who survived internment at a Polish concentration camp during World War II, as well as his father who always put his family first, knowing that any effort he put in would pay dividends in the future.

Steven also gets really honest about how 2020 affected him, how some days it was all he could do to drag himself out of bed and to his computer, and how that experience and his battle out of it subsequently impacted the way he leads his team.

We are so glad you’re here tuning in for another dose of leadership and economic development insights, and we can’t wait for you to hear from Steven about what he’s seeing in terms of leads and trends, and which industries are gearing up for growth and impact. Click the play button on the audio player below to tune in now!

Bio:

Steven Jast has over 20 years’ experience in all aspects of economic development. He began his career at boutique advisory firm CAI Corporate Affairs International, where he specialized in site selection analysis, jurisdictional marketing, and industrial clustering.

He was appointed Executive Vice President at CAI in 2001, and oversaw the creation of CAI’s ROI Research on Investment company, which he then spun off into an independent company, of which he is now president. Since then, ROI has grown from a staff of two, to an international company of 60 professionals, with offices in four countries.

Steve is a thought leader in the field of modern economic development and investment attraction, and has been published in the prestigious fDi magazine, he’s a regular speaker at international conferences and provides training and coaching to economic development leaders around the world.

America’s Jobs Team is sponsored by Research on Investment / Gazelle.ai