Developing Economic Developers

Post 4: Find Your People. Then Become One of Them.

I want to tell you a story about a young planner who walked into his first Georgia Economic Developers Association conference and spent most of it wondering if someone was going to figure out he didn’t belong there.

That was me. Early 2000s. Only a couple of years out of college, newly pulled into economic development work, still trying to understand what I was actually doing. And suddenly I was in a room full of seasoned professionals who seemed to know everyone, reference deals I’d never heard of, and move through the crowd with the easy confidence of people who had been doing this long enough to stop pretending.

I had a significant case of imposter syndrome. The kind that makes you want to find a wall to stand near and wait for the whole thing to be over.

What kept me coming back was a man named Rope Roberts.

Rope was my Georgia Power Community Development Manager at the time, which is what the role I now hold was called back then. He made a point to encourage me to attend GEDA, to show up to the monthly luncheons, to sit with people I didn’t know, to stay for the conferences. He didn’t just suggest it once. He kept at it, the way good mentors do, until the habit took hold. Rope became one of the most important influences on my professional development, and I’ll be honest with you: the desire to eventually find my way into the role he held was part of what drew me to Georgia Power years later.

Today, Rope is retired. And today, I get to be someone’s Rope. Though I want to be clear that I can never be as cool as Rope actually is.

That’s the arc this profession offers you, if you’re willing to show up long enough to live it.

What GEDA actually is, and why it matters early

The Georgia Economic Developers Association is the professional home of economic development in this state. Monthly luncheons. A spring conference. A fall conference. Committees, leadership development programs, young professional networking, deal recognition, peer exchange. If you are doing economic development work in Georgia, GEDA is not optional. It is the table where this profession gathers, and you need to be at it.

If you’re reading this from outside Georgia, find your state’s equivalent. Every state has one. Make it a priority before you think you’re ready, because waiting until you feel ready is how you miss the years when showing up would have mattered most.

I just returned from GEDA’s Spring Conference in Savannah. The sessions were strong across the board. We heard from city police leadership on hostage negotiation and crisis de-escalation. The GBI walked us through the expanding landscape of cybercrime and what it means for communities. The World Trade Center of Savannah led a session on working with foreign direct investment prospects through a cultural lens. There were panels on retail recruitment, workforce strategies, and how Gen Z professionals are experiencing this industry from the inside. We had a session on building trust between community partners that was worth the trip by itself.

But here is what I want you to understand about a conference like this: the sessions are not the main event.

The main event is the conversation that happens after the session ends. It’s the drink you grab with someone you just met in the hallway. It’s the dinner table where you end up seated next to a development authority director from a county you’ve driven through but never thought much about, and two hours later you’ve exchanged numbers and a shared understanding of a challenge you both thought you were facing alone. It’s being able to introduce a newer member of your team to a state partner they’ve only ever emailed, and watching that relationship become real in the span of a handshake.

This year I brought a newer team member to Savannah for exactly that reason. Because the network you build in this profession is not a feature of the job. It is the infrastructure of the job.

On feeling like you don’t belong

I want to come back to the imposter syndrome for a moment, because I think we don’t talk about it honestly enough in this profession.

I still get it. Twenty-six years in, two GEDA Deals of the Year, speaker slots at Georgia Tech’s Basic Economic Development Course and the Georgia Academy for Economic Development, and there are still rooms I walk into where some part of my brain is quietly running a background check on whether I’ve earned my seat. I suspect I’m not alone in this.

The secret, as best I can tell, is not to eliminate the feeling. It’s to know your material well enough that you can move forward assuredly anyway. Confidence is not the absence of doubt. It’s the decision to act in spite of it.

And the other secret is this: the room is almost always more welcoming than it looks from the doorway.

Economic development is a small profession with a large heart. People will grab you after a session and say, let’s go get a drink and catch up, in a way that is relaxed and collaborative and genuine. This industry has a remarkable culture of practitioners wanting to give of themselves to help the generation coming after them move faster and stumble less. It is one of the things I love most about it.

The moment that crystallized it this week

During the Gen Z panel in Savannah, one of the panelists, Austin Stacy, a community partner of mine from Burke County, was asked about who had mentored him in his development as an economic developer. Austin didn’t name specific names. But what he said instead was something that made some folks sit up straight.

He looked out at the audience and said that there were a lot of people sitting right there who had been great mentors to him.

He was right. Because that audience was full of them. People who had taken calls, answered questions, shared war stories, made introductions, and shown up for someone newer to the profession because someone had once done the same for them.

These development authority executive roles can feel isolating. You are often the only person in your community doing what you do, carrying the weight of community expectations that are sometimes unrealistic, navigating political relationships that require constant tending, competing against communities with more resources and more experience and more runway. At times it genuinely feels like you are on an island by yourself.

The truth is that a lot of us have stood on that same island. And we don’t have to stay there alone.

The community that exists within GEDA, and within this profession broadly, is one of the most generous professional networks I have encountered anywhere. But you have to show up to access it. You have to sit down next to someone you don’t know. You have to stay for the drink after the session. You have to go back the next time even when the first time felt uncomfortable.

Your story in this profession is still being written. The people who will shape it most are probably already in that room.

Go find them. Then, one day, be one of them for someone else.

That’s how this works.

Next: Post 5 — The Relationship Map: Who Holds the Real Power Here?

Matt Forshee has spent 26 years in economic development across local government, regional organizations, and the utility sector in Georgia. Developing Economic Developers is his ongoing field guide for practitioners at every stage of the profession.