As BCLC kicked off our 2009 Corporate Community Investment Conference in Chicago, Michael Gallis, Founder, Gallis and Associates spoke to the crowd of over 300 businesses, nonprofits and governments about the future of strategic development domestically and globally.

BCLC has placed its three programmatic focuses on the following: Global Development, Community Investment and Disaster Assistance and Recovery. One might think these three areas of have divergent priorities and unaligned focus. As Michael Gallis presented to the conference this is not the case. The strategic planning that is necessary inside disaster prevention, community and global development are more aligned than one might think.

Questions he posed to the crowd were: How do we develop community infrastructure systems that we will help to lessen the amount of post disaster reconstruction and rebuilding?  Would it not make sense to spend a little more on the front end of economic planning projects in the gulf coast to avoid the billions spent on rebuilding them once they have been disseminated by natural disasters?

The importance of systems thinking through strategic frameworks will help communities domestically and globally to think about prevention verses quick tactic reactions. Going from reactive to proactive system approaches inside these areas of development will lead us to change our traditional thinking and move towards a framework that complies with the changes that has been brought on by the 21st century.  

Michael Gallis is a senior advisor for BCLC and will be working on addressing these exact questions. If you are interested in more information please visit our website for more information.