By Brooke Thomson
President & CEO

Every once in a while, you get an epiphany about the unique role that employers play in the life of our commonwealth and the people who live here.

One of the great privileges of leading AIM is the opportunity to visit hundreds of companies each year from one end of the commonwealth to another. I recently visited two employers in the span of a few hours who epitomize the conviction that business is a force for positive change.

The companies could not be more different – one is the local owner of 22 restaurants in a global chain while the other is a manufacturing company that uses advanced technologies to make components and materials central to the products we use every single day. But the two share a fundamental belief in the power of providing employees the opportunity to transform first jobs into dream jobs.

I spent the morning at McDonald’s on Iyannough Road in Hyannis talking with Mark McBee, who owns McDonald’s restaurants throughout the state employing more than 1,000 people. Mark began his career with McDonald’s as a teenager in 1980 and has not forgotten the training and mentoring that brought him to where he is today.

He has repaid that generosity by investing nearly $1 million in educational benefits for his employees, some of whom have gone on to other jobs and others who now work in the management ranks of his company.

During the visit, Massachusetts Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Lauren Jones and I met two beneficiaries of McBee’s investment.

Claudia Coelho, a shift supervisor and 12-year employee at the Hyannis restaurant has parlayed her work at McDonald’s and the company’s Archways to Opportunity program into two master’s degrees – one in child psychology and a second in applied behavioral analysis – and a budding career as a psychiatric nurse practitioner. Leandro Neves, an employee of McDonald’s in Carver, just earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering and looks forward to a job in robotics.

“In Massachusetts, we have set our restaurant employees up for success in their next jobs by investing almost $5 million to support more than 1.300 Archways participants. This has enabled educational advancement and skill development by providing a path for new and long-time crew members to earn their high school diplomas, receive college tuition assistance, learn English as a second language, access career advising services or gain a vocational skill,” McBee said.

Sixty-four miles to the northwest in Avon, I spent time with Michael Tamasi, the longtime President and CEO of Accurounds. Michael is a director of AIM and a leader in the manufacturing community both in Massachusetts and nationally.

Accurounds makes everything from components for cell phones and airplanes to precision materials used in medical, defense, robotics and biotechnology companies.

And Michael is the definition of an ‘employer of choice,’ always finding ways to create a culture and a company that believes and invests in employees. From co-op programs and apprenticeships to management training, to health and wellness investments like an onsite exercise space, and performance bonuses, Accurounds knows that investing in the future means investing in people.

Companies like Accurounds and Mark McBee’s McDonald’s franchises need Massachusetts to be competitive economically to grow and succeed. The good news is that the commonwealth has made progress on this front, most recently jumping 18 places in CNBC’s state competitiveness rankings for 2025.

But state government must keep its foot on the gas at a time when every other state wants what Massachusetts has. That means avoiding tax increases and anti-business policies. That means lowering the high cost of energy, health care and child care. It means building more market-rate housing in communities like Avon and Hyannis, so employees can continue to live here, work here and raise the next generation of workers here.

That is the key to our economic success. Mark McBee and Michael Tamasi can do the rest.