In this episode, President and CEO of the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce Nicholas Adcock talks with students from the UC Riverside School of Public Policy about the importance of local economies and their relevance in an increasingly globalized world.
FEATURING Nicholas Adcock
December 29th, 2023
27 MINUTES AND 0 SECONDS
In this episode, President and CEO of the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce Nicholas Adcock talks with students from the UC Riverside School of Public Policy about the importance of local economies and their relevance in an increasingly globalized world.
About Nicholas Adcock:
Nicholas Adcock currently serves on the Board of Directors for Habitat for Humanity, Riverside and previously served as president of the Pick Group of Young Professionals. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Government from the University of California, Riverside. Nicholas Adcock joined the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce in 2009 as the Community Development Coordinator and rose through positions of Communications & Marketing Manager and Governmental Affairs Manager before becoming the organization's Vice President in 2013. During that time, he focused on projects like securing state funding and accreditation for the School of Medicine at the University of California, Riverside, advocating for reform and relief for businesses against predatory litigation, and securing local control of Ontario International Airport. More recently, Nicholas led the effort to transition several of the Chamber’s value and membership programs to virtual settings and provide the latest news, resources, and information to local businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Learn more about Nicholas Adcock via https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-adcock-b5b77b75.
Podcast Highlights:
“We naturally tend to think that with the internet and e-commerce and all the wonderful sort of tools and realms in which people communicate or engage with each other, we tend to think that everything is on a global economy. And there are parts of it where it certainly is. But if you think for the average person so much of their lives is impacted and influenced by local decisions… In a globalized world that we live in, being hyper-local is more important than ever.”
- Nicholas Adcock on the topic of the importance of local economies amid an increasingly globalized world.
“And when you have strong economies, strong communities, it's because usually everybody understands where they bring the most strengths and not trying to be one thing for all people. I'm not trying to replicate government because that's their job. I'm not trying to replicate a corporation because that's their job. I'm trying to replicate what a Chamber of Commerce is set to do. I'm kind of bridging the gaps of what the other entity in a way can't fulfill.”
- Nicholas Adcock on the topic of how a strong local economy is built by different organizations focusing on their specialties.
“The trick of it all is you've got to think about a problem we experience today, can we fix it so that it's not a problem still 10 years from now... To some degree I try to feel like if we can figure out whatever that root problem is then usually it helps us both both in both contexts, both today and tomorrow.”
- Nicholas Adcock on the topic of the necessity of solving local problems so they don’t persist and remain future issues.
Guest:
Nicholas Adcock (President and CEO of the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce)
Interviewers:
Rachel Strausman (UCR Public Policy Major, Dean’s Vice Chief Ambassador)
Naia Pizarro (UCR Public Policy Major, UCR School of Public Policy Student Senator)
This is a production of the UCR School of Public Policy: https://spp.ucr.edu/
Subscribe to this podcast so you don’t miss an episode.
Learn more about the series and other episodes via https://spp.ucr.edu/podcast.
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Transcript
Introduction:
Welcome to Policy Chats, the official podcast of the School of Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside. I'm your host, Rachel Strausman. Join me and my classmates as we learn about potential policy solutions for today's biggest societal challenges.
Joining us today is President and CEO of the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce Nicholas Adcock. My fellow classmate Naia Pizarro and I chatted with him about the challenges facing local economies and their importance amid an increasingly globalized world.
Rachel Strausman:Thank you so much for joining us today, Mr. Adcock. Everything starts with local, be it local businesses, local policies, or local economies. They truly are the foundation of everything that follows and as such local organizations such as the Greater Riverside Chamber of Commerce and other chambers of commerce are so vital to the economy which is why we are so grateful to have the president and CEO of the Greater Riverside Chamber of Commerce Nicholas Adcock here with us today. With that, thank you so much for joining us today.
Nicholas Adcock:Well thank you for having me it's a pleasure to be here with you both.
Rachel Strausman:Thank you, so getting right into it, the Greater Riverside Chamber of Commerce is one of the largest of its kind in Southern California, and it's an important player within the city of Riverside. Can you briefly provide an overview of the role of the Greater Riverside Chamber of Commerce and what it plays in local policymaking?
Nicholas Adcock:
Sure, absolutely. So to start off the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce, we are a business organization made up of approximately 1100 businesses, nonprofit entities, and educational and public sector institutions. That's an important number. We're at about the sixth or seventh largest Chamber of Commerce in the state. But really, to my thinking, the more important number is that we represent over a hundred and ten thousand jobs in the greater inland southern California area. So what it means is that when we work on different issues, when we advocate, when we're speaking with policy leaders. We carry a bit of clout, a bit of influence because we represent such a large and capable business community. So chambers of commerce, people have interacted with them for years and years and years. They may not have always known that they were interacting with a chamber of commerce, but they've been around for decades, if not over a century. And what we do is we work on various different initiatives that help build a stronger local economy. But they're all very much specific to the communities we serve. So for example, if a Chamber of Commerce serves a community that's very big on tourism, let's say, their focus is probably going to be on things that help bring more visitors to that community and make it be a great place where they would want to spend maybe their recreation time or whatever it is. And we certainly have that, but you also have Chambers of Commerce that do other things, we're very focused on advocacy. And so I think that where you get to your second question is, you know, the role we play with policymakers. We are an advocate for the business community, and we help provide an input to policymakers on making sure that they're looking at policy decisions that are going to benefit the economy and benefit businesses and employers, and ultimately the quality of life in our community. So I would call us strong advocates in that we represent a perspective or view that we hope that policy leaders agree with us on.
Naia Pizarro:
Before like knowing about fully what the chambers of commerce was, I did kind of see where the advocacy came into play. Um, I think it's a great way to kind of frame it. Cause it is kind of like you are like speaking on behalf of all these businesses and making sure that you represent the community. And I feel like being in Riverside, which is such a diverse community, I feel like it's really great to kind of have that sort of advocacy and like representation.
Nicholas Adcock:
You know you've heard the term lobbyist, you've heard the term special interest, you've heard all hosts of terms when it comes to policy decisions. I like to think of us as we are a special interest, we're a special interest for the local business community so I kind of look it to us as one of the good ones and we like to use the term advocate because for one I'm not a registered lobbyist but I do advocate on behalf of a group of individuals and entities.
Naia Pizarro:
That's great and now going into the second question which kind of goes into local policies and businesses. In an increasingly globalized world, how can local policies and businesses still make an impact?
Nicholas Adcock:
That is an excellent question. So, you know, we naturally tend to think that with the internet and e-commerce and all the wonderful sort of tools and realms in which people communicate or engage with each other, we tend to think that everything is on a global economy. And there are parts of it where it certainly is. But if you think for the average person so much of their lives is impacted and influenced by local decisions: the kind of community you live in, the housing choices that you have there, where you can shop, where you can go out on a Friday evening, where you can go to school. So many of those things have been directed by local policy decisions, not always necessarily decisions that were made back in Washington DC or even Sacramento, but decisions that were made right downtown or at city hall. So I like to tell people that even though so much attention goes to what's being talked about in Washington DC or argued about or whatever, really the biggest decisions that govern so much of our lives are made just a few miles from us. That if people showed up to a city council meeting, they'd be amazed by what they uncover is being decided right around them. So I have a slightly different view, I kind of think that in a globalized world that we live in, being hyper-local is more important than ever. I always like to think about it in terms of the big decisions, the things that impact our entire country. Those things should be decided in Washington DC or in those circles, but we use a term called local control. We like to think that if a decision is going to impact our local community, it should be made by the people that live here and work here and operate here. And so we like to think that that is naturally going to be a better scenario than somebody making that decision thousands of miles away.
Naia Pizarro:
It's a much more like connected approach I would say.
Rachel Strausman:
And kind of bridging off of that for a moment would you say that in an increasingly globalized world the importance of local policies? It becomes more of a cohesive aspect with the global world instead of like a competing aspect that people assume it is?
Nicholas Adcock:Yeah, well, there's plenty of interconnectedness, right? And I'll go back to the example I was using previously, a decision can get made, federal law can get passed, something is decided in Washington, DC, and that trickles down to the states. And then maybe the states add an element of nuance to it. Maybe it's federal funding that then gets administered by a state program. And then maybe that funding trickles down to a city or county, and then they have to actually spend the money on the street with whatever it is. It does have to be cohesive because obviously if that decision is not made at this level at the federal level of government let's say, then it eliminates the local entity from being able to spend the dollars where it can do the most good. But then conversely if that money is in trickling down to a local jurisdiction (a city or county) and then it's not making the difference. Well, then usually who gets blamed for it? It's federal government - right people will rail against their congressman or something like that. So it does have to be cohesive. These things aren't competing. What you sometimes find is there are differences among jurisdictions and among states, for example. So we happen to live in California, which is a very big state, both by population and size. A ton of different industries, we’re the seventh largest economy if we were a country all to ourselves. So we have a very different experience than somebody that, say, lives in Montana, which is I think the least populous state and we have a very different experience in those that might live in those communities. But then even still the experience that we have here in inland Southern California is vastly different than those that may live in the Bay Area or Los Angeles or the Central Valley. I mean there are those competing interests there because we're all maybe chasing the same jobs But from top to bottom of government, has to very much be cohesive.
Rachel Strausman:
I think that's a very important point that you bring up that amid all of these local economies. It's also important to understand the context on a statewide and a national level as well.
Nicholas Adcock:
Sure.
Rachel Strausman:
That shapes them. Kind of segueing into another topic, what would you say currently are the most pressing challenges that local jurisdictions and municipalities face in building strong local economies?
Nicholas Adcock:
Great question, so many local jurisdictions, and I can obviously speak from what I think Riverside's perspective is, but I think these are common challenges that a lot of local jurisdictions are having. In Riverside, I think a lot of jurisdictions like us are facing issues with the impacts of homelessness, having a homeless community that has needs but also has impacts in figuring out how to deal with those. I mean, that is an impact to our economy. And so I do think that that's something we have to deal with, not just as a city, not just as a city of Riverside, but I think as a state and ultimately as a society, we have to figure out a better way of solving that problem. But I would also say the other challenges that we have is there is, I feel, a disconnectedness that we now have. You talk about a globalized economy, a globalized system. People don't shop the way they used to shop anymore. So our sense of connectedness to each other just in the way we exchange commerce is different now. People don't communicate the way they used to. So you used to have to, you know, you wanted to participate in a conversation, you had to physically be there. Now we don't have to physically be somewhere to be part of a conversation. And so that does create those challenges. I think sometimes people are more bold to say perhaps rude things that they wouldn't quite say to somebody's face, but those sure as heck put it in an email or some other form of communication. So I think we all deal with a sense of disconnectedness now, how we navigate through that is pretty tough.
Rachel Strausman:
You'd think in an increasingly technological world, we'd have all these opportunities to further connect with each other, but still, especially looking post-pandemic, there's more and more distance. Even though we're all still in that same situation, we all kind of lean on technology to distance ourselves from each other a little bit more.
Nicholas Adcock:
Well, then it becomes really a question of quantity versus quality. So I mean, I have one of the most impressive devices you could possibly imagine, my smartphone right here. And with my smartphone in the course of about 30 seconds, I could probably text 100 different people and create some kind of connection. But what's the quality of that connection? Am I exchanging ideas or thoughts with them? Are they understanding me sufficiently? Are we really talking about the same things with the same degree of confidence? You know, our reach is bigger, but it's also more shallow to my thinking and that's that's a thing we have to navigate
Naia Pizarro:
Kind of adding to that I think it's kind of interesting to see how like from a sociology perspective how that kind of ties into how it should be considered into policy, how like you speak on like this connectedness of things and like with COVID how there's a lot of new challenges that kind of come from that that we don't know how to navigate because they didn't exist before like our phones. It did not just appear, air dropping things, like, I feel like they're very small, like nuanced things to consider in policy development. And I think it's really interesting to see how that happens.
Nicholas Adcock:
Well, I think you're hitting on the right note, context is everything. So if you're wanting a broad connection, again, if we're wanting quantity over quality, there are times when that makes total sense, right? So if I needed to communicate information to a large group of people, there are tons of means in order to make that happen. So keeping people aware of the things that are happening and sharing that information. I've got email, I've got text, I've got a whole host of avenues, social media, in order to make that happen. But if I want to have a dialogue about something, you know, if I want to have a conversation with something, if I want to exchange ideas, then these avenues are limited. I can't do that to the same degree, the same capacity, and that's where, you know, a chamber of commerce helps in that. We try to bring people together and have those conversations. Other entities do that, even universities do that, bring people together. So I think it's all about understanding context, right? What kind of communication are we having, and then therefore choosing the platform that best makes that happen.
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Rachel Strausman:
And would you say in this world where it's increasingly easy to share your voice and to voice your concerns that it takes a little bit more to effectively advocate because it's very easy to get a lot of input from a lot of different places?
Nicholas Adcock:
Sure. I mean, you have to separate out the noise, especially in an advocacy sense. So, when I'm communicating to an elected official, I have to make sure that I've articulated why my perspective might be the one they pay attention to amidst the hundred that they've received. And so, maybe I have to establish a little bit more credibility. Maybe I have to do it in the quality of my argument. Maybe I have to provide that X factor, again, because using technology, I could, if I wanted to, I could flood an elected official's inbox with emails from a hundred different people, all robotically saying the same thing, and maybe there are times where that makes sense. But bringing this back to your realm, which is public policy, you know from an advocacy sense, I find more success with articulating directly, maybe in a more narrow path, but articulating more directly the strength of an argument. I don't want to just overwhelm with volume. I want to make sure that my argument makes sense, my position makes sense, my thinking makes sense.
Naia Pizarro:
I think that's a really good way of putting that and I feel like it makes it very easy to kind of understand because I feel like again like commerce feels like such a broad term but it really is just going back to like having these like quality interactions to like be a representative for the good of a community. But segueing into our next question, in your view, how important is collaboration between businesses, government entities, and nonprofit organizations in addressing global challenges?
Nicholas Adcock:
All of them are important. But it's also important to understand the different roles they play. Take for example, a public entity, a government, a public agency. They have a responsibility to a common good. They're supposed to achieve a mission that is to benefit the public at large. Sometimes they can be their own worst enemies. They can get so caught up in the process that they sort of lose sight of the end goal and we commonly refer to that as just sort of a bureaucracy. But they have a role to play in the sense of they are charged with looking at what's going to be the best for the greatest good. You look at business entities, for example, I mean, obviously, if you're a for-profit business, your charge is very simple, very specific. You've got to do what's going to be in the best interest of building your business, making it successful, making it more money for yourself or your employees or whatever it is. But at the same time, that's so much your focus. You know how to get there, but you may have a smaller group that you're responsible to. I may be only responsible to my investors, my owners, my employees, and that's it. My clients, that's it. If you are a nonprofit, obviously, it's kind of a mix of both. You know, you have a responsibility maybe to specific types of groups, maybe certain challenged communities, certain vulnerable communities. You don't quite have the same profit motive that say a for-profit entity has, but you at the same time, you need to function properly. You can't run a deficit or run yourself in the red. So each one of them sort of performs a different function. And when you have strong economies, strong communities, it's because usually everybody understands where they bring the most strengths and not trying to be one thing for all people. And I'm not trying to replicate government because that's their job. I'm not trying to replicate a corporation because that's their job. I'm trying to replicate what a Chamber of Commerce is set to do.
Naia Pizarro:
And then kind of bridging the gaps of what the other entity in a way can't fulfill?
Nicholas Adcock:
Yeah, playing off each other's strengths and weaknesses, absolutely.
Naia Pizarro:
It's kind of like tennis you know
Nicholas Adcock:
I'm gonna take your word for that I don't play much tennis so I'm gonna take your word for it but like most team sports yes
Rachel Strausman:
So kind of going off of that Riverside is very unique in many ways one of which is that it's kind of the birthplace of the California citrus industry, there's a large also logistics industry in Riverside, we have a very interesting economy here in the city. So with that being said, how is Riverside uniquely poised to tackle these increasingly global challenges?
Nicholas Adcock:
So it's interesting that you would describe it that way. Riverside is, it is uniquely positioned, but it's uniquely positioned, for one, it's one of the oldest cities in the region. It's over a century old, so therefore it has, you know, a history, it has a culture, it has a heritage, it has all of these wonderful things. For younger cities that surround us, they may not have that same thing. They may not be burdened by it, but they may not also be blessed by it. So that's one thing to look at. But also the city of Riverside is 330,000 people right now. That's larger than the city of St. Louis. That's larger than the city of Pittsburgh. That's larger about the same size as the cities of Cleveland and Cincinnati. If you took the city of Riverside and put it pretty much anywhere else on map, you know we'd have our own NFL team. We'd be the central point of economic activity for an entire state possibly. We just happen to live in Southern California and we just happen to have neighbors that are the city of Los Angeles or the city of San Diego or city of San Francisco to the north. So you know to some degree we're sort of fighting that big fish little pond, little fish big pond sort of mentality of if you put us anywhere else we might have a different role in the region but the role we have in the region we're currently in is important. So I think we're a player very much in this region and I think we're increasingly becoming a player in the broader Southern California and California landscape. Just to give a little bit of background especially when the city was founded and it was founded largely on a on a citrus industry when citrus was king in California. City of Riverside was the wealthiest city per capita. I believe in the state if not the United States. There were more people that were of affluent means here than anywhere else and that changed over time we grew as a city so that statistics sort of changed and citrus has now a very much a historic and cultural element in us but it's not the most dominant industry. You mentioned logistics right so we are very strategically positioned between the ports of Long Beach in Los Angeles and directions east. So anybody that's shopping online and ordering anything that's you know that comes in the Port of Los Angeles there's a pretty strong likelihood it's coming through our region. Some people like that, some people don't and I understand the reasons why but the important thing to remember is that we have to be a city that thinks about our future as well. So when we think about logistics people see the challenges of logistics, but they maybe perhaps mischaracterize what the issues are caused by logistics. They're focused on the facility itself when, to my thinking, I'm a little bit more focused on the infrastructure leading up to that facility. I want to make sure that we have the roads to handle the capacity. I want to make sure we have the electrical system or the utility system that handles whatever is happening at that facility. I don't necessarily see it as the outright challenge that maybe others do. I see it as it's a part of our economy, it's part of our ecosystem, and we have to think about what is exactly the challenge people are concerned about and how do we address that challenge.
Rachel Strausman:
And going off of that how do you balance as an advocate for local businesses advocating for future problems as well as current issues that might be more immediate on people's minds?
Nicholas Adcock:
Well you know the trick of it all is and to my thinking is you've got to think about a problem we experience today, can we fix it so that it's [not] a problem still 10 years from now? And so that's why I sometimes think we can't think long term. To give you the prime example, I just mentioned infrastructure and roads. So one of my big priorities is let's invest in our infrastructure, let's invest in building roads or building the transportation systems we need for the future. That's going to solve or it's at least going to address a problem today that we have today so that it's not a problem in the future. So I kind of feel like if you do something like that it's going to kill two birds with one stone. I feel like if we think about how we can attract more high-quality high-paying jobs it's going to solve certain challenges today or at least make sure that the challenges we have today are not going to be the challenges of tomorrow. So to some degree I try to feel like if we can figure out whatever that root problem problem is then usually it helps us both both in both contexts, both today and tomorrow.
Naia Pizarro:
You kind of talked about like how it's important to kind of continue to build and like strengthen transportation. And I think that's a really interesting thing coming from university, because I think we can all attest to how important that is. It increases your chances to have a job two cities away by using the free bus system and being able to kind of navigate more things without all of our traffic and things of that nature. So going into our last question, How do you envision fostering a culture of innovation and adaptability among local businesses to address not only current challenges, but also anticipate and further navigate future global disruptions?
Nicholas Adcock:
Well, I mean, and I think you both can attest just as much as I can. We've been through one of the most unprecedented global challenges that we faced in a century coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. It might be a hundred years before we experience anything like that as a society again. We'd like to use the term, you see the term a lot being used right now about resiliency. Adapting for resiliency, being innovative for resiliency, thinking about your business, your entity, whatever it is that you're doing, and such that these outside influences, these outside factors will not shake you to your core the way they once did. So we are an incredibly adaptive species, right humankind. We've figured out how to go from being cave dwellers to building skyscrapers, right? So we figured out how to adapt to situations, but we talk a lot about resiliency right now. So how do I make sure that if I'm running a business my business is protected from certain unknown factors? I may not even know what those factors are I just know that I don't want to be stuck if I'm influenced by them So having multiple streams of revenue, having multiple methods of either delivering my product or services to my client, having multiple ways of reaching my clients, you know, all of those are, I think, important avenues to do that. You know, you talk about businesses, I'll give you a prime example. So, you know, if you're a restaurant, right, and COVID-19 pandemic shut down a lot of dining options. Well, you had businesses that were adapting to delivery and quick pickup and and all these other avenues to adapt to that. Well, now these have all become commonplace, right? We've just internalized them as standard operating practices. And so if we all focus on resiliency, then we become less shaken by the next thing or whatever it is. You know, I'm of the millennial generation and I feel like we've now lived through war on terror, global recession, international pandemic. We've lived through all these things and we figured out ways to adapt to them, hopefully for the better. But you know, we talk about resiliency a lot. I feel like that word is now the go to word for a lot of things.
Naia Pizarro:
Yeah, I feel like it's definitely ingrained in policy too. And we see that like an education as well, like hybrid options, now it's kind of commonplace, like you mentioned, like there's always a zoom accommodation. And it kind of just shows that it is for the better. Now you're able to kind of kind of going back into commerce having a greater reach of like an audience for like restaurants and like clientele and continuing to kind of stimulate the economy in that sense.
Rachel Strausman:
And I think that that's a great place to end in terms of resiliency. And I think organizations such as Chambers of Commerce really help strengthen that by serving as this kind of unifying force between local entities and governments that can seem large and complicated and sometimes out of reach to the individual. I think that the role that these organizations play such as Chamber of Commerce is so valuable and why we're so grateful to have had the opportunity to speak with you today Mr. Adcock. So with that thank you so much for joining us and we really appreciate you.
Nicholas Adcock:
Well thank you both for the time. It was fun. I hope I was able to share a little bit of information about ourselves on what we do.
Outro:
This podcast is a production of the UC Riverside School of Public Policy and our theme music was produced by C Codaine. For the latest updates on the School of Public Policy, be sure to check us out @ucr_spp on Instagram. Or for more episodes and content, visit our YouTube channel. I'm Rachel Strausman. ’Till next time.