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n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m | S e p t e m b e r / O c t o b e r 2 0 1 9 | n e w h a v e n B I Z 7 and an approach that squared with what they were trying to accomplish and the vision that they saw for this partnership with DECD. So we had a real meeting of the minds. A lot of people in the business community were surprised to see Jim Smith come on board with this effort and step across the line from business advocate to cheerleader for the new administration. Jim is deeply committed to Con- necticut, and I can't think of anyone who's done more to advance the business interests of Connecticut. I'm just thankful he's in our corner. But you're touching on the balanc- ing act that we'll have to do — to be an advocate for the business community, take feedback from the business community and make sure we deliver that feedback in a constructive and thoughtful way back to the Lamont administration. In many ways I think that's more art than science. But I want to be clear: is is going to be a two-way dialogue. But if we're going to have businesses in our corner, we have to occupy that middle ground. The mission of CERC is being recast as less of a marketing arm for DECD and instead playing a more direct role in business retention and recruitment. What exactly will that look like? We're not ready to fully verbalize that yet, but I can assure you that it will be very clear. We're having a very detailed conversation between our respective teams at CERC and DECD so that we come out with Continued on page 44 Peter Denious CEO, Connecticut Economic Resource Center PHOTO/MATT PILLON one very clear message about the [shared mission moving forward]. But as you might imagine the devil's in the details and we want to get it right, so we're going to take a month or two before we really go prime-time on that. You hadn't known [new DECD commissioner] David Lehman before you took this job, although you both move in many of the same Fairfield County circles. Now that you're in the same backfield, what do you make of him so far? He's an incredibly thoughtful and business-savvy professional. While we didn't know each other we were only about one degree separated given our respective backgrounds,