Delaware Economic Development Office Director Bernice Whaley admits the pace of change has been exhausting at the agency.
Whaley has headed DEO for less than a year but has already faced 1,700 job losses at DuPont and proposed Dow merger that followed. The agency scored a victory with a surprise decision to locate an agricultural spin-off of the two companies in Delaware.
Whaley spoke at a meeting of Great Dames as the organization kicked off its Remarkable Ideas II competition. The competition will award one winner $25,000 in cash and services.
Great Dames Founder Sharon Hake says applications for the competition are pouring in as the March 21 deadline nears. Click here to view the application.
“We’re such crazy optimists,” Whaley said of the DEDO staff, after what many viewed as a long-shot effort to land the agriculture headquarters. The company will be for one of the three spin-off businesses that will come after the planned merger of Dow and DuPont.
Delaware will also be the home of a specialty products business spin-off from the merged companies.
Whaley said DEDO was part of a broad-based effort to land that headquarters that included the business community and the state’s congressional delegation.
While acknowledging that the state faces many challenges arising out of the DuPont decision, she was quick to many inquiries that came into the office about tapping the talent that is coming out of DuPont
Delaware has already launched an initiative aimed at aiding former DuPonters thinking about starting a business.
Also, in the works is a seed capital program that would provide a combination of private and public funding for early stage ventures that cannot get other types of funding. The lack of seed capital has been cited by Gov. Jack Markell, who Whaley described as the “state’s best salesman.”
Whaley is a former vice president with Happy Harry’s, She joined DEDO when Allen Levin,, long-time CEO of Happy Harry’s became director of the office. Gov. Jack Markell nominated Whaley to succeed Levin.
While the agency has been in the news, largely due to the incentive package offered to DuPont, Whaley says much of DEDO’s work is not widely known by public and even segments of the business community.
Most of the work of the agency centers on companies with fewer than 200 employees, she said.
The Great Dames event also featured an Ideation session that took blank sheets of newsprint, with participants generating fresh ideas and new ways of solving problems. The process included people moving between tables, along the way adding and refining ideas.
