Business View Civil and Municipal | Volume 2, Issue 7

12 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 2, ISSUE 7 POWER QUEST ION want to take positive action to make it different, so we don’t go back to our old habits.” Nidhi Turakhia, EVP at Allied Alloys, Houston Texas: “I just came back from an industry tradeshow and all I heard there was “Hey, we got through COVID, we can get through anything.” That was the common mentality. People were just really happy to be able to meet in person again. That was the biggest question I had about coming out of COVID… when can I meet my suppliers and my customers and how is that going to play out? More importantly, how is this going to change how we conduct meetings? Will people want to stay on Zoom or meet in person? Based on the conference I just attended, it was very clear to me that people want to go back to face-to-face meetings. For so many reasons… your eyesight after so many hours online, your mental health. “The other question I had was about women in this industry after the pandemic. Are they going to come back and be career driven or are they going to enjoy staying home with their family and not return to work? At the conference I looked out in the audience and saw way more women than I did five years ago. It was great to see.” Odie Donald, City Administrator, Augusta, Georgia: “My thought is never let a good crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is that the pandemic has changed the way everyone does business globally. For governments, we’re in the business of service delivery. And so when we look at how we recover from the pandemic, the key is how do we best serve our residents and business stakeholders? And I will tell you our early answer is to give our residents and our business community full say in our strategic planning and access to the services they receive. Every aspect of government has to have citizen input and the only way to fully recover from the pandemic is to have a clear understanding of that pandemic’s impact on your citizens. And so the big question is how do we serve better? And the answer is lodged somewhere in the response of our citizens ensuring that we listen to them on how we claw our way out of this together.”