February 3, 2025
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Read MoreForsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit (A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this.)
The Aeneid
Wednesday marks one year since the Associated Industries of Massachusetts Board of Directors entrusted me to lead the commonwealth’s largest business association. The Board promised me on May 20, 2019 that my tenure would be an eventful one for the association.
They were not kidding.
I was busy adjusting to my new role when the global COVID-19 pandemic abruptly reshuffled the entire social, medical, political and economic underpinning of the nation and commonwealth. Thousands of Massachusetts businesses were suddenly forced to shut down, close to a million Massachusetts residents lost their jobs, schools closed, colleges went virtual and AIM shifted into full battle mode to help our 3,500 members through the crisis.
The AIM staff worked around the clock to help members understand a cascade of new governmental orders and regulations that in many cases forced them to suspend their businesses. We spoke with employers reduced to tears because they could no longer keep their employees working. We helped manufacturing companies answer the call to re-orient their production to make much-needed medical equipment. And we are now working with companies on how to re-open.
I keep looking for the CEO manual on pandemics, but so far, no luck. My guess is that Aeneas didn’t have one either when he uttered the line above from the Aeneid.
Crises teach lessons, and this one has provided some profound ones:
It is perhaps a blessing that my second year at the helm of AIM comes just as Governor Charlie Baker initiates a deliberate, four-phase plan to re-open the Massachusetts economy. Both events remind us that our guiding principal moving forward must be that economic growth remains the only effective method of achieving the social equity that makes our commonwealth a great place to live and work.