July 5, 2004
The long vision of Henry Bourgeois | As he prepares to step down after 20 years, the CEO of Maine Development Foundation assesses his efforts to change Maine's economic development approach
By Sean Donahue
Looking over Henry Bourgeois' career, it's hard to believe he set out after college to become a librarian. For 20 years, as the president and CEO of the Maine Development Foundation, Bourgeois has become known not for filing books and helping researchers, but for creating many of Maine's most influential and innovative economic development programs ˆ from establishing the predecessors to the Maine International Trade Center and the Maine Technology Institute to administering programs like the Maine Economic Growth Council and Leadership Maine.
With that record behind him, Bourgeois is stepping aside in August as MDF's president. After suffering a mild heart attack last year, Bourgeois, 60, and his family decided it was time for him to take on a less demanding job ˆ even though he's still not ready to walk away from economic development. Bourgeois will become executive director of the Maine Compact for Higher Education, a joint program of MDF and the Maine Community Foundation aimed at increasing the number of Mainers who attain college or other advanced degrees.
The link between higher education and economic prosperity is something that Bourgeois says became increasingly apparent to him over a career that began in 1967, when, with his newly awarded master's degree in education from the University of New Hampshire, he took a job as director of the Lewiston Public Library. There, he became involved with the Model Cities Program ˆ part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society initiative ˆ first as a volunteer and then as its Lewiston director. In 1973, he left Lewiston to join the New England Municipal Center, helping train municipal officials and economic development professionals, and later continued that work as well as lobbied for Northeast cities in Washington, D.C. with the Coalition for Northeast Municipalities.
By 1983, though, the Massachusetts native was ready to move back to Maine, and after providing consulting services for MDF applied for and won the CEO's position, which he's held ever since. Mainebiz recently sat down to talk with him about how MDF evolved, the impact it has had during the last 20 years and what he sees as Maine's most stubborn economic challenges.
Mainebiz: How would you describe the Maine Development Foundation's role, especially compared to other economic development organizations like the Department of Economic and Community Development or regional growth councils?
Bourgeois: I think the role we've performed over the last 20 years has principally been that of a catalyst and capacity builder. That makes [MDF] different from most organizations. We never tried to build a large organization in terms of staff, and we stayed away from doing the work that was more appropriate for others to do.
When I began [working here] the Maine Development Foundation had a very traditional economic development portfolio: We loaned money to small businesses, we had helped the governor with a couple of trade missions, we were doing some business attraction work, we had an international trade component. That's because when the Maine Development Foundation was set up in 1978 by Gov. [James] Longley and the Legislature, they really wanted to privatize the economic development functions that were normally done by the state.
After I started, it became evident to me and to other leaders in the state that one of Maine's problems was the lack of an infrastructure for economic development. And over a course of 10 or 15 years, that infrastructure was developed. We created the predecessor to the Maine International Trade Center, the World Trade Association; we created the Maine Science and Technology Board back in the 80s; we created a regional economic development group in Waterville that still functions today.
Now, with that infrastructure in place, it seems like MDF initiatives have become a little more conceptual or longer-term focused.
Exactly. Strategic, long-term thinking has always been one of our core values. It's something where we think we can add value ˆ not because we have all the ideas, but because we're good conveners. We know people with good ideas ˆ they're some of our best friends ˆ and we pull them together to talk with us and others. Then we try to build capacity around it.
Back in the early 90s, the Maine Development Foundation lost the state appropriation we had ˆ we went through a recession and the Legislature took away our money, as it did with several other groups. So that caused us to rethink what the heck we were about, where we were going and should we go out of business. We had the gnashing of teeth and a big strategy process, and we concluded that the catalytic role ˆ the long-term thinker, the long-term planner ˆ was more valuable than ever.
We didn't know how to fund it at that point, but what grew out of that were three foci for MDF going forward. One was this notion of building leadership capacity. After doing some studies and research in the early 90s, our conclusion ˆ and it was pretty common-sensical ˆ was that we were losing a lot of our business leaders as corporate headquarters left and branch facilities moved in. So we looked around at what we could do to either remedy that or build leadership capacity locally, and we set up Leadership Maine, which now has had 11 classes and 500 people go through it. Our vision for Leadership Maine is getting 1,000 people in this state networked and on the same page to promote economic growth.
But building leadership capacity and networking wasn't enough. We felt that leaders, legislators and everybody needed a sort of road map, so we created the [Maine Economic] Growth Council to present a set of benchmarks and performance indicators [the annual Measures of Growth report]. Our thinking was that if we could build a leadership cadre and at the same time provide them some real, honest data that's trended over several years, we will begin to get these leaders on the same page in terms of economic growth ˆ [including] not-so-subtle things like a perspective that economic growth is not just about the cost of doing business, it's about environmental quality and community vitality, too.
The third thing we did back in 1993, though it actually started a little earlier, was commit to education quality as one of the long-term linchpins for economic growth. We just became convinced in the early 90s that long-term, if Maine is going to prosper it will be primarily because it has among the best-educated workers in the country. So with that conclusion reached in the early 90s, the first set of investments made in the next decade were in K-12 education. [See timeline, this page.]
More recently, though, you've shifted your focus to college or post-secondary education. Why?
It became evident to me that MDF had added as much value as we could on K-12 education, and when you look at the data around post-secondary education in Maine, it's pretty stark. So we concluded that maybe there's something we could do there, and we set up an organization that's very similar in scope and purpose to the K-12 group.
If there's one conclusion I've reached as an economic development professional over 35 years, it's that building the education capacity of our workforce is really the most important thing we can do long-term for this state to be competitive.
What did you see in your career that led you to that conclusion?
I've seen a lot of work that I've done and that others have done that didn't change anything, fundamentally. I ran [the Model Cities Program in Lewiston] for four or five years and we poured gobs of money into the inner city in Lewiston. We created social service programs and invested a lot in infrastructure like roads and sewers, as well as public safety offices like police and fire ˆ very important investments. The money wasn't wasted, certainly, but it had a minimal long-term impact. And when I reflect on [other programs that] did have an impact, well, Lewiston-Auburn College is having an impact, an extraordinary impact.
Thirty-five years ago, we never thought about education or the skill level of workers as critically important. Well, that whole paradigm has shifted, so when you think about the next 20 years in Maine ˆ which someone else will lead, thank God ˆ and what kind of businesses we want to locate here and expand, it's knowledge-based businesses. I know it's an overused cliché, but the only way to compete in a knowledge-based economy is with high-knowledge workers. Shame on us if we can't invest in our workers, because we can compete on that playing field as well as anyplace in America or the world.
What about the impact of more established programs like Leadership Maine ˆ have you done any studies showing tangible improvements or other impact on the state's economy?
That's a very good question. I can't give you empirical evidence that life is better because we have Leadership Maine. We have not tried to evaluate it that way at all. All the evidence is anecdotal from people who, several years after going through the program, will often say "But for the Leadership Maine experience, I would not have done X." The mayor of Calais, Judith Alexander, is a Leadership Maine graduate, and she will say very forcefully "I never would have done this without Leadership Maine giving me the confidence." We have an awful lot of that.
But this is a distinctive feature of the Maine Development Foundation: We're very market driven, so one of our measures for success of Leadership Maine is [seeing] who applies, and who actually pays to go. And we work hard at recruitment, [but on top of that] every year we wind up with a dynamite class of 40 men and women. And for us, that's one of the principal measures of its continuing success.
Business managers tend to be more numbers oriented. How supportive have they been of MDF's long-term approach and the potentially long wait to see results from programs?
They've been very supportive of it in two ways: They give us general support as members of MDF ˆ we have about 300 members. And secondly, they send people to Leadership Maine. We have a wonderful cadre of companies that have made deep investments in MDF for years by serving on our board, by serving on the Growth Council, by participating in Leadership Maine, by sponsoring our events. The more people get engaged in what you're doing, the more supportive they are.
I'm sure not everyone in the state shares MDF's philosophy or approach, though. In what ways have businesses or the Legislature been critical of the programs you've created?
Certainly we've been criticized, there's no question, and the Growth Council is probably the place where we get the most questions raised and the most criticism. And frankly, it comes from both sides. We have business people asking us, occasionally, why we have measures in there about the environment or the community ˆ "What does infant mortality have to do with economic growth?" And then we have community activists asking questions about business climate: "Why, Henry, are you asking about cost of doing business? We all know the cost of doing business is fine."
But, you know, it's all grounded in real data, so the conversation moves quickly from the "why?" to what the data says and how it connects with the other data and the other pieces of the measure. So [the criticism] has not been wicked bad.
The good question that we haven't asked, though, is in what way has the Growth Council helped change the way leaders think about economic development? Because our goal was to redefine the debate about economic growth, and to move away from the notion that economic development is just about business climate and numbers. I'd like to know how successful we've been in doing that.
Every year a few benchmarks in Measures of Growth receive red flags, indicating that Maine is a long way from achieving its goals in those areas. What troubles you most about Maine's economy?
I think the biggest problem facing our state is the increasing disparity in income and opportunity amongst sectors of the state ˆ geographically, certainly. That's how it manifests itself most vividly. We have a measure for that in the Growth Council report: the four wealthiest counties and the four poorest counties and how they track. Well, the poor [counties] are getting poorer and the wealthy [counties] are getting wealthier. And though we don't have a lot of data on it, I think the same disparity exists for educated versus non-educated workers.
The extent to which that gap is widening hurts everybody. Though we talk about it in terms of northern Maine versus southern Maine, it's also Munjoy Hill [versus] the West End in Portland ˆ it's neighborhoods within cities. And I just think that's a very troubling, very serious issue.
I think we're in a community here in Maine, and when unemployment is over 10% in Washington County, the impact on the 30,000 residents in that county has got to affect me as a citizen of this state. And one of the things MDF has been trying to do for the last 20 years is get people committed to this idea that we're living in one state, one big community, and we're responsible for each other. When a plant closes in Lincoln, it affects all of us.
It seems like many of the causes behind that gap are worldwide economic factors. What can we do here in Maine to address the problem?
What the governor is doing, to his credit, are traditional economic development efforts. He's trying Pine Tree Zones, which is not a new idea but it's a good idea. I guess one of my conclusions about the importance of education is around this issue of economic income disparity. One way to close that gap is to educate people.
A few years ago, there was a study done by [the Muskie School of Public Service] that shows a baccalaureate degree holder in Presque Isle making about the same as a baccalaureate degree holder in Portland, which is really good news ˆ and they were making a lot more than a high-school degree holder.
Now the downside of that, as many residents in rural areas will tell you, is that if they get an education there's still no work for them. But the flip side is that if they don't get an education, there's no choice.
What about the good news? Looking back over the last 20 years, what economic factor has gotten significantly better?
The quality of K-12 education has dramatically improved. We measure that ˆ we know it's improved. Our scores on national tests, though they're not as high as they were a few years ago, are still very high. [Maine had the ninth-highest scores in national mathematics testing in 2003, the fourth-highest score in Grade 4 reading, and the third-highest score in Grade 8 reading.] To me, that's a testament you can change things, and therefore I think we can change post-secondary education as well.
Is there any one MDF program that you think has been the biggest success?
There's no one of them that stands out as markedly superior than the others. I think the measure for me to answer that is which one, if any, most pushed people's thinking and really changed the way they thought about the economy. I think MDF is at its best when we help people envision a different future.
As you step aside to focus on running one program, how do you think you'll change the way you work or think about these issues?
My wife thinks absolutely nothing is going to change. I just think it's going to be fun to focus my energy on one frenetic area, and look for ways to really make a difference over the next five years. It's something I believe in deeply and it's something where we have metrics for measuring change, so we'll be able to measure how well we're doing.
I think it's very good for MDF, because the other part of my decision was just the feeling that 20 years is enough. Although I think my job is the best job in Maine, I think it's time for some other ideas. I think it's time for somebody new to bring in a new way of looking at things and a new perspective on the issues and a new approach. My approach has been pretty consistent over the last 20 years: Be a catalyst, build capacity, keep it very lean, spin things off. Someone else could reasonably have a different approach ˆ and that would be a good thing.
With that record behind him, Bourgeois is stepping aside in August as MDF's president. After suffering a mild heart attack last year, Bourgeois, 60, and his family decided it was time for him to take on a less demanding job ˆ even though he's still not ready to walk away from economic development. Bourgeois will become executive director of the Maine Compact for Higher Education, a joint program of MDF and the Maine Community Foundation aimed at increasing the number of Mainers who attain college or other advanced degrees.
The link between higher education and economic prosperity is something that Bourgeois says became increasingly apparent to him over a career that began in 1967, when, with his newly awarded master's degree in education from the University of New Hampshire, he took a job as director of the Lewiston Public Library. There, he became involved with the Model Cities Program ˆ part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society initiative ˆ first as a volunteer and then as its Lewiston director. In 1973, he left Lewiston to join the New England Municipal Center, helping train municipal officials and economic development professionals, and later continued that work as well as lobbied for Northeast cities in Washington, D.C. with the Coalition for Northeast Municipalities.
By 1983, though, the Massachusetts native was ready to move back to Maine, and after providing consulting services for MDF applied for and won the CEO's position, which he's held ever since. Mainebiz recently sat down to talk with him about how MDF evolved, the impact it has had during the last 20 years and what he sees as Maine's most stubborn economic challenges.
Mainebiz: How would you describe the Maine Development Foundation's role, especially compared to other economic development organizations like the Department of Economic and Community Development or regional growth councils?
Bourgeois: I think the role we've performed over the last 20 years has principally been that of a catalyst and capacity builder. That makes [MDF] different from most organizations. We never tried to build a large organization in terms of staff, and we stayed away from doing the work that was more appropriate for others to do.
When I began [working here] the Maine Development Foundation had a very traditional economic development portfolio: We loaned money to small businesses, we had helped the governor with a couple of trade missions, we were doing some business attraction work, we had an international trade component. That's because when the Maine Development Foundation was set up in 1978 by Gov. [James] Longley and the Legislature, they really wanted to privatize the economic development functions that were normally done by the state.
After I started, it became evident to me and to other leaders in the state that one of Maine's problems was the lack of an infrastructure for economic development. And over a course of 10 or 15 years, that infrastructure was developed. We created the predecessor to the Maine International Trade Center, the World Trade Association; we created the Maine Science and Technology Board back in the 80s; we created a regional economic development group in Waterville that still functions today.
Now, with that infrastructure in place, it seems like MDF initiatives have become a little more conceptual or longer-term focused.
Exactly. Strategic, long-term thinking has always been one of our core values. It's something where we think we can add value ˆ not because we have all the ideas, but because we're good conveners. We know people with good ideas ˆ they're some of our best friends ˆ and we pull them together to talk with us and others. Then we try to build capacity around it.
Back in the early 90s, the Maine Development Foundation lost the state appropriation we had ˆ we went through a recession and the Legislature took away our money, as it did with several other groups. So that caused us to rethink what the heck we were about, where we were going and should we go out of business. We had the gnashing of teeth and a big strategy process, and we concluded that the catalytic role ˆ the long-term thinker, the long-term planner ˆ was more valuable than ever.
We didn't know how to fund it at that point, but what grew out of that were three foci for MDF going forward. One was this notion of building leadership capacity. After doing some studies and research in the early 90s, our conclusion ˆ and it was pretty common-sensical ˆ was that we were losing a lot of our business leaders as corporate headquarters left and branch facilities moved in. So we looked around at what we could do to either remedy that or build leadership capacity locally, and we set up Leadership Maine, which now has had 11 classes and 500 people go through it. Our vision for Leadership Maine is getting 1,000 people in this state networked and on the same page to promote economic growth.
But building leadership capacity and networking wasn't enough. We felt that leaders, legislators and everybody needed a sort of road map, so we created the [Maine Economic] Growth Council to present a set of benchmarks and performance indicators [the annual Measures of Growth report]. Our thinking was that if we could build a leadership cadre and at the same time provide them some real, honest data that's trended over several years, we will begin to get these leaders on the same page in terms of economic growth ˆ [including] not-so-subtle things like a perspective that economic growth is not just about the cost of doing business, it's about environmental quality and community vitality, too.
The third thing we did back in 1993, though it actually started a little earlier, was commit to education quality as one of the long-term linchpins for economic growth. We just became convinced in the early 90s that long-term, if Maine is going to prosper it will be primarily because it has among the best-educated workers in the country. So with that conclusion reached in the early 90s, the first set of investments made in the next decade were in K-12 education. [See timeline, this page.]
More recently, though, you've shifted your focus to college or post-secondary education. Why?
It became evident to me that MDF had added as much value as we could on K-12 education, and when you look at the data around post-secondary education in Maine, it's pretty stark. So we concluded that maybe there's something we could do there, and we set up an organization that's very similar in scope and purpose to the K-12 group.
If there's one conclusion I've reached as an economic development professional over 35 years, it's that building the education capacity of our workforce is really the most important thing we can do long-term for this state to be competitive.
What did you see in your career that led you to that conclusion?
I've seen a lot of work that I've done and that others have done that didn't change anything, fundamentally. I ran [the Model Cities Program in Lewiston] for four or five years and we poured gobs of money into the inner city in Lewiston. We created social service programs and invested a lot in infrastructure like roads and sewers, as well as public safety offices like police and fire ˆ very important investments. The money wasn't wasted, certainly, but it had a minimal long-term impact. And when I reflect on [other programs that] did have an impact, well, Lewiston-Auburn College is having an impact, an extraordinary impact.
Thirty-five years ago, we never thought about education or the skill level of workers as critically important. Well, that whole paradigm has shifted, so when you think about the next 20 years in Maine ˆ which someone else will lead, thank God ˆ and what kind of businesses we want to locate here and expand, it's knowledge-based businesses. I know it's an overused cliché, but the only way to compete in a knowledge-based economy is with high-knowledge workers. Shame on us if we can't invest in our workers, because we can compete on that playing field as well as anyplace in America or the world.
What about the impact of more established programs like Leadership Maine ˆ have you done any studies showing tangible improvements or other impact on the state's economy?
That's a very good question. I can't give you empirical evidence that life is better because we have Leadership Maine. We have not tried to evaluate it that way at all. All the evidence is anecdotal from people who, several years after going through the program, will often say "But for the Leadership Maine experience, I would not have done X." The mayor of Calais, Judith Alexander, is a Leadership Maine graduate, and she will say very forcefully "I never would have done this without Leadership Maine giving me the confidence." We have an awful lot of that.
But this is a distinctive feature of the Maine Development Foundation: We're very market driven, so one of our measures for success of Leadership Maine is [seeing] who applies, and who actually pays to go. And we work hard at recruitment, [but on top of that] every year we wind up with a dynamite class of 40 men and women. And for us, that's one of the principal measures of its continuing success.
Business managers tend to be more numbers oriented. How supportive have they been of MDF's long-term approach and the potentially long wait to see results from programs?
They've been very supportive of it in two ways: They give us general support as members of MDF ˆ we have about 300 members. And secondly, they send people to Leadership Maine. We have a wonderful cadre of companies that have made deep investments in MDF for years by serving on our board, by serving on the Growth Council, by participating in Leadership Maine, by sponsoring our events. The more people get engaged in what you're doing, the more supportive they are.
I'm sure not everyone in the state shares MDF's philosophy or approach, though. In what ways have businesses or the Legislature been critical of the programs you've created?
Certainly we've been criticized, there's no question, and the Growth Council is probably the place where we get the most questions raised and the most criticism. And frankly, it comes from both sides. We have business people asking us, occasionally, why we have measures in there about the environment or the community ˆ "What does infant mortality have to do with economic growth?" And then we have community activists asking questions about business climate: "Why, Henry, are you asking about cost of doing business? We all know the cost of doing business is fine."
But, you know, it's all grounded in real data, so the conversation moves quickly from the "why?" to what the data says and how it connects with the other data and the other pieces of the measure. So [the criticism] has not been wicked bad.
The good question that we haven't asked, though, is in what way has the Growth Council helped change the way leaders think about economic development? Because our goal was to redefine the debate about economic growth, and to move away from the notion that economic development is just about business climate and numbers. I'd like to know how successful we've been in doing that.
Every year a few benchmarks in Measures of Growth receive red flags, indicating that Maine is a long way from achieving its goals in those areas. What troubles you most about Maine's economy?
I think the biggest problem facing our state is the increasing disparity in income and opportunity amongst sectors of the state ˆ geographically, certainly. That's how it manifests itself most vividly. We have a measure for that in the Growth Council report: the four wealthiest counties and the four poorest counties and how they track. Well, the poor [counties] are getting poorer and the wealthy [counties] are getting wealthier. And though we don't have a lot of data on it, I think the same disparity exists for educated versus non-educated workers.
The extent to which that gap is widening hurts everybody. Though we talk about it in terms of northern Maine versus southern Maine, it's also Munjoy Hill [versus] the West End in Portland ˆ it's neighborhoods within cities. And I just think that's a very troubling, very serious issue.
I think we're in a community here in Maine, and when unemployment is over 10% in Washington County, the impact on the 30,000 residents in that county has got to affect me as a citizen of this state. And one of the things MDF has been trying to do for the last 20 years is get people committed to this idea that we're living in one state, one big community, and we're responsible for each other. When a plant closes in Lincoln, it affects all of us.
It seems like many of the causes behind that gap are worldwide economic factors. What can we do here in Maine to address the problem?
What the governor is doing, to his credit, are traditional economic development efforts. He's trying Pine Tree Zones, which is not a new idea but it's a good idea. I guess one of my conclusions about the importance of education is around this issue of economic income disparity. One way to close that gap is to educate people.
A few years ago, there was a study done by [the Muskie School of Public Service] that shows a baccalaureate degree holder in Presque Isle making about the same as a baccalaureate degree holder in Portland, which is really good news ˆ and they were making a lot more than a high-school degree holder.
Now the downside of that, as many residents in rural areas will tell you, is that if they get an education there's still no work for them. But the flip side is that if they don't get an education, there's no choice.
What about the good news? Looking back over the last 20 years, what economic factor has gotten significantly better?
The quality of K-12 education has dramatically improved. We measure that ˆ we know it's improved. Our scores on national tests, though they're not as high as they were a few years ago, are still very high. [Maine had the ninth-highest scores in national mathematics testing in 2003, the fourth-highest score in Grade 4 reading, and the third-highest score in Grade 8 reading.] To me, that's a testament you can change things, and therefore I think we can change post-secondary education as well.
Is there any one MDF program that you think has been the biggest success?
There's no one of them that stands out as markedly superior than the others. I think the measure for me to answer that is which one, if any, most pushed people's thinking and really changed the way they thought about the economy. I think MDF is at its best when we help people envision a different future.
As you step aside to focus on running one program, how do you think you'll change the way you work or think about these issues?
My wife thinks absolutely nothing is going to change. I just think it's going to be fun to focus my energy on one frenetic area, and look for ways to really make a difference over the next five years. It's something I believe in deeply and it's something where we have metrics for measuring change, so we'll be able to measure how well we're doing.
I think it's very good for MDF, because the other part of my decision was just the feeling that 20 years is enough. Although I think my job is the best job in Maine, I think it's time for some other ideas. I think it's time for somebody new to bring in a new way of looking at things and a new perspective on the issues and a new approach. My approach has been pretty consistent over the last 20 years: Be a catalyst, build capacity, keep it very lean, spin things off. Someone else could reasonably have a different approach ˆ and that would be a good thing.
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