Ripple Effect with Anna Buckalew

In the inaugural episode of The Ripple Effect, guest host Megan Carlisle sits down with Anna Buckalew, President & CEO of the Montgomery Regional Chamber, to discuss the ideas and motivations behind the new platform. The conversation explores how meaningful change rarely happens in isolation and how investments in workforce, economic development, tourism, education, military partnerships, innovation, and quality of life are all interconnected.

Anna shares why now is a pivotal moment for Montgomery and the River Region, highlighting the importance of telling the region's story, shaping perceptions, and creating opportunities through collaboration. She discusses how growth is intentionally built through partnerships, leadership, and long-term vision rather than individual projects or ribbon-cuttings alone.

The episode also establishes what listeners can expect from future conversations: authentic discussions with leaders, innovators, educators, military partners, entrepreneurs, and community builders who are helping to shape the region's future. Throughout the discussion, a central theme emerges - that every investment, relationship, and strategic decision has the potential to create ripple effects that extend far beyond their original purpose.

Listeners will come away with a deeper understanding of the Chamber's role as a regional convener, why Montgomery is at an important inflection point, and how connected efforts across sectors are positioning the Capital River Region for future growth and opportunity.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to The Ripple Effect, a platform focused on the people, partnerships, ideas, and investment shaping the future of the river region. This is not just a podcast about business or economic development. It's about impact, how leadership, collaboration, innovation, and vision create ripple effects that extend far beyond a single project, announcement, or moment. To begin this journey, there was no better person to start with than Anna Buckley, president and CEO of the Montgomery Regional Chamber. I'm Megan Carlisle, Director of Marketing for Experienced Montgomery, and I'll be your host today. Anna, before we talk about where the Montgomery Capital Region is going, let's start with why. Why did you feel now is the right time to create a platform like Tripple Effect?

SPEAKER_00 0:46

I really do think it's a pivotal time for Montgomery for the Capitol City. Chamber is such a privilege to work with this team at our chamber because we have the privilege every day of waking up being focused on Montgomery and the Capitol River region and how we drive growth, how we bring leaders together. And so the team started talking about a name with the ripple effect. It was just perfect because I think we're at that moment in time. We're literally physically drawn to the river. We have the Alabama River coming right through our capital city. It unites our river region communities, which defines our metropolitan urban area. But that river is so symbolic of so much of history, of movement, of energy, of literally ripples, a difference that one impact in a body of water can make and how that ripple can transform and it has effects long after that first pebble goes into that water. And so that was just this great metaphor. And when the team came up with it, I thought, oh my gosh, that is just who we are as a chamber. But that's who this capital city is. This capital city has things happening here that are driving change and momentum throughout this state, political conversations, issue conversations, policy conversations. But I think sometimes, and here's to your question of now, I think sometimes in all of that, the what's happening here in this region gets lost. The fact that this central Alabama River capital region is a strong driver. And there is some pretty darn important and impressive stuff happening here right now. It's good growth and good momentum and developments that are coming we can't necessarily share yet that are transformative to the area, but also to the state that we have in these dates. We love every day waking up at the time and working on these things, but it's the fact that we have leaders engaged in every aspect of so that the first couple of those bottom is leaders.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Bringing those leaders together, how we do storytelling, so you've said many times that work doesn't just happen. It's left. So how many conversations and storytelling actually?

SPEAKER_00 2:59

So work that happens in so many ways, any community, but particularly in hours, when you're driving as an economy kind of person, as an elected leader, you're very committed to the area and it becomes actually. And so you're still involved in the work, doing the work, moving the nail, running the football, whatever nail you. And only we can actually play the story. And so telling the story is actually because it will be everywhere. Somebody has a trip. Somebody have a lazy. Somebody has a lazy. Somebody have a trip. Somebody have a hand. In this city, and in this region. And so there's so many people that have a connection, an emotional personal connection. We need to start making sure that little those little pebbles, those little ripples of blood come to my so there's a tendency for people to always be as announcement for things.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

But behind the scenes are so much.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

We have stakeholders that we will need us to do this working is the way to put it down. But it's having leaders convening and communicating. They make it in a room and they make disagree, whether that be one local body or a regional body. But when those leaders leave that room and decide, you know what, the relationship is more important than today's issue that we're discussing. The big win is more important than the small issue that we're discussing. And everybody walks away committed to the region. That is when magic happens. And we have seen it in other communities that have really kind of hit that real pivot point, that inflection point of where they got over, I guess you call it the tipping point, right? They broke through that ceiling. And Montgomery's there. We have a ceiling that we need to get through. And I believe firmly this is going to come through regional collaboration and cooperation. And it's just, if you talk to single leaders around this community, around the region, they all have a similar level of passion and love for Montgomery, for Prattville, for Elmore County with Tum Cup, you name it. And so when you put that together, you have something so strong that there's just no limit to the progress you can achieve. And I think our sister city, Huntsville, is a great example of what happens when a region really aligns and comes together because they are committed to a really big strategic vision of what Huntsville could be. And you see what has resulted in over time. And that's the same kind of effect that we need to have with our ripple effect here in the Capitol River region.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

I love all the collaboration you're talking about. It's so important and the relationship building. Why can't organizations operate in silos? How do you see even beyond the organization of the region operating not in silos?

SPEAKER_00 6:39

I would say silos are like the biggest obstacle to growth that there is, right? People are in a silo and you just don't get out of that silo because for whatever reason, maybe you just don't know the big picture, maybe you haven't had enough conversations. And I do feel like it's incumbent on our organization, the chamber. That's part of our biggest responsibility is to convene those leaders to make sure people are having conversations and then we're communicating the vision that is shared among those leaders. So when you break down the silo, then that is when, again, it's like I'm a horse person. And when you take the blinders off the horse, that's then they see where they can run. That's right. It's you gotta have the ability to see the big vision and to be committed. And again, we won't all agree on everything all the time. And I think too, I want to make a point about this podcast. Again, why I'm so excited about it. There'll be many threads that we'll pull on as we go through this process. Leadership, it comes back to leaders, comes back to who makes the first pebble and the first wave and the first ripple. And it's the leader that steps up, the leader that gets outside their comfort zone and gets out of that silo and thinks bigger than beyond themselves and their agenda or their personal viewpoint. But they hear the other viewpoints, they hear the regional direction and they're willing to collaborate around it. And I think we have that spirit in Montgomery, in Otaga, in Elmore, Lacon, Bullock County, a lot of our surrounding counties, Dallas County. We have wonderful leaders that are right around our contiguous borders of our county. And so all of those voices need to be at the table so that we aren't in silos and we're pulling together.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

There are a lot of conversations nationally right now around preparing our workforce for now and for the future. The next generation of talent, investments, and relevance. So where do you believe Montgomery has a real opportunity to stand apart?

SPEAKER_00 8:28

There's three pillars really to our core work here at the chamber. And I guess I keep thinking of, oh, we need a session on this and we need a conversation about this, right? So we need to talk about really what does this organization do specifically? And so, because you mentioned economic development early on when we started, economic development is a lot of things to a lot of people. For us, it is fully integrated commitment around job creation and quality of place and advancement. And for us, there's three cornerstones of that. There is tourism, there is talent, and there is targeted economic development. And by targeted, I mean that you know the assets you have and then you leverage those assets to create jobs and investment. The talent piece, one of the cornerstones, right? So your workforce, your ability to attract that talent, retain that talent, but also educate and groom the talent that you have that's innate and natural to your own community and turn those, that body of talent, and particularly our young people in our K through 12 systems, show them that they have opportunities with the investment they're bringing. If we're bringing investment and international interest and impact to our city, which we are, but we aren't aligning those local young people into those opportunities, then we haven't done our job. And so we've got to pull these universities together. We've got a lot of great universities, we've got a lot of great school systems, but are we really working together? Are we funneling our efforts to our industries and know that we're meeting their needs? Have we looked at the sectors, and this is what we're doing right now? We're making sure that we are filling the needs and that our career and technical programs in our school systems, particularly K-12, are turning out opportunities and paths for kids that let them go right into an opportunity so that they see what they can be. And this really, particularly for school systems, Mobile, Montgomery, Birmingham, you take there are a lot of districts that have larger districts in urban areas. And you have unfortunately too many kids living in poverty. So what are we doing to show those children that they have an opportunity to change their life? That changes the course of a community. That's another one of those ripples, right? When you change that and you show a path to a new life and a way to raise a family and grow a life for yourselves that changes your whole generational impact of your family, uh that changes the generational steps of a community. And so talent, I cannot tell you how important talent is and how committed we are, how big a portfolio of work that we have at the chamber around talent.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about this platform and your expectations. What kind of conversations are you hoping are going to happen on this platform?

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Oh, I just I see unlimited opportunities for us to pull in partners to give and as we have talked about doing this and creating this platform, we really didn't even understand the need that was out there until we started talking about it and building out how we would do this. And we realized everywhere we went, everyone we talked to, oh my gosh, I want to be in the studio. I want to tell our story. City council people, can we come? Can we bring our constituents in? Can we use it as a platform to bring our community together? This should be a resource for our chamber members, our partners, our elected leadership to come in and talk about what kind of ripples are they creating, right? And by doing this, then we start to connect those ripples. Then we actually start making sure that we are on the same page. We won't always agree. As I said, it's not about agreement. It's about alignment. It's about unity in thought and purpose, not necessarily in political philosophy. It's not about politics. It's about loving this area so much that you want to grow it. And when you come and tell the story, you just see people's eyes light up. So I see us really dwelling into not only issues, current events, regional activities, so that people are coming in and have a platform that maybe they don't have these resources in their community to tell their stories, to use the kind of facilities we have here with our studio. But then also talking about the importance of leadership itself, bringing in some real experts to talk about leadership development. And with the investment we're bringing in terms of economic development into our community, for instance, Meta's investment here is tremendous. You've got Hyundai Power Transformers. This made a major announcement. They have worldwide global executives coming in about in and out of our community all the time. That's right. We have global leadership from the Air Force that come in and out of Maxwell, Air Force Base and Gunnar all the time. We're going to pull those people in. And so this studio gave us a physical way to capture all the impact that's happening in the Capitol City that we somehow just, we haven't been able to corral it, right? We haven't been able to harness it. It's leading. It's like these wonderful shooting stars, but you can't get your hands around it. This studio lets us capture leadership around the table. And at the same time we do that, we show the impact of the Capitol River region. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

What can listeners, I know you've gone into this, expect from the ripple effects that may feel different from traditional business and leadership podcasts?

SPEAKER_00 13:35

So I would like to think that we are breaking new ground with on what we're doing, in that it's this integration of community development, economic development, leadership development, the impact of one person, one person's commitment, one person's leadership, business leadership, business philosophy. I see us touching all those things. We talked a lot yesterday about the truly generational, different environment that is happening right now in the Department of War and Department of the Air and Space Force. And where is Montgomery's role in that? And how do these technology companies, again, they're here, they're serving the needs of the warfighter, they're literally writing programs and developing new ways to meet the needs of the warfighter right here in the Capitol City and nobody knows about this. So are we telling that story? Once we are up and really operational with our podcast studio, we'll have some of those executives. I heard of yesterday, a briefing from one of the top executives of OpenAI. Fascinating, right? That can be game-changing for all of our manufacturers here. Uh, they talked about how a trucking company, logistics company, Montgomery, is really now becoming a cornerstone of the logistics industry in the Southeast. We call it the Golden Triangle or the Capital City Logistics Triangle because of our inland port and our partnership with the Alabama Port Authority. So how can we take the OpenAI executive that was here this week, who did a fabulous job, and bring her in and pair her with maybe Mark Colson from the Trucking Association, right? That's another untapped resource. We have all these state associations in our back door, literally in the Capitol City. Again, another wonderful virtue of being the capital city, the Business Council of Alabama, the Trucking Association, the Forestry Association, the list goes on and on. What's happening in their groups? How are they driving change? How does it impact us here in the Montgomery River region? What are they doing that's changing business? How does it impact our economy? So all that's connected. And we have never had a way to connect the dots. And I just think the ripple effect is going to be the way to do that.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

And that goes back to the storytelling and making sure that we're capturing those stories of those influencers that are in our city.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Absolutely. And I know you, particularly with our experience team, Megan, you work so much with what's going on with we have people coming in and out of Montgomery. And again, no one realizes Steven Spielberg was here and walking our streets and he's getting a Chris's hot dog. And it's like, Wait a minute. So are we telling that story? Look at what Brian Stevenson has done with his work and the legacy sites, just incredibly powerful. And the people that are coming to have tough conversations in Montgomery, Alabama. So we need to have some of those tough conversations here in this studio. Absolutely. We haven't had the platform to do that. And so again, the silos thing, I think those wonderful good things in Montgomery and the River Region have been happening, but they've been happening in silos. This gives us the opportunity to tell the story. This is exciting. It is. It's powerful and it's exciting, and we can't wait.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Absolutely. So one more thing I think people will quickly realize is the platform isn't just about Montgomery. Oh, yeah. It's about ideas shaping communities everywhere. How important is it for this region to learn from each other right now?

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Oh, so glad you asked me that because I get as you my ADD kicks in and I get distracted. My Metro counterparts, for instance, in the state of Alabama, Mobile, Birmingham, Huntsville, we typically try to have conversations just to keep up with what each other's doing, best practices. I'd love to have them around this table. Oh, yeah. Wouldn't that be great? You've got to learn from others. I would love to bring in some of our regional chambers that are best best practices from a Greenville, South Carolina, an Austin, Texas, a Nashville, Tennessee. How did you transform your public school system? How did you finally move the needle on career technical education or on your crime issue? What did it for you? And how do we learn from that? Again, we really haven't had that opportunity to have it when that happens in the media at large, the news gets out, the word gets out, but it's not connected to a person or the people working on that within a community. And so now we have the opportunity that we can connect the people that are working with these issues with people that have impacted these issues in their own communities. So it's not just a media story, it's an ongoing conversation. And then we become part of the solution.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Absolutely. If someone listens to this platform six months or a year from now, what do you hope they feel?

SPEAKER_00 18:08

Oh gosh. Okay. So I want them to feel, I guess, first and foremost, uplifted by the momentum happening in their capital city, right? So again, I'm I'm thinking of it through the lens of someone that lives in our state. We're gonna have an audience that's global. No better place in Montgomery, Alabama to tell a global story. So once again, I see this almost as the destiny of Montgomery, right? We have been at the center of world-changing events, things that changed human rights forever across this globe. And it happens in this city. And so I see people being uplifted by what's happening in Montgomery, Alabama, again, on that global stage. Our leadership coming together, our alignment around issues, our tackling of the tough problems. Every community has issues, every community has crime and public safety concerns. Every community wants to do better in public education. But are we getting after it? We got to get after some things. How are we doing that? And let us inspire others like Montgomery has for centuries. I see that we have the opportunity to once again be that inspiration. And so I guess that would be my greatest takeaway from this would be we have uplifted not only others, but our own community. And we make sure that people in this region feel connected to something that's really great and progress that's happening right in their backyard.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Absolutely. And more people need to know about the world-changing history that's happened here and is still happening here. What kind of ripple effect? We'll go back to the name of the podcast, do you hope this platform creates?

SPEAKER_00 19:36

So again, I just love the whole water metaphor because sometimes we forget we're river city, right? We do refer to ourselves as Montgomery in the River region because our own local community is very aware that we have the Coosa, the Talapusa, and they converge into the Alabama River, which heads south to the Gulf of America, Mobile, Gulf of Mexico, whatever it is now. But we don't really think about that water in terms of a recreational attraction. We're drawn to water as people, drawn to water. And so just the fact that we coined this phrase that Montgomery in the river region and our own people just have latched onto it. What are we doing to really develop the river? So I think this again, good platform to talk about the ripple of what's going to be happening from Maxwell Air Force Base all the way down to the amphitheater in the riverfront in downtown Montgomery. What our elected leadership is working on, what we're working on in partnership with the United States Air Force to develop the Maxwell Capitol Gateway. And that's another project. Again, this is one of those ripples, right? So the Maxwell Capitol Gateway, which we really should have a dedicated conversation to that. Absolutely. That is symbolic of tying in this entire river region community physically into the gateway into Alabama's Capitol. It's the interchange that you come through in Montgomery on I-65, major artery, through through Montgomery, North and South. And it actually is the exit to Maxwell Gunnar. Maxwell is the home of Air University, the center of educational and thought leadership for the entire United States Air Force. Very important. It's the history of doctrine, the whole doctrine of World War II that changed the course of the world. Again, there's that world-changing element that we're so proud of. It happened at Maxwell Air Force Base. So that gateway project is really about a master development that takes you from the banks of the Alabama River down to our Air Force Base gate and connects you with trails and beautification and shopping and housing and new development along the banks of the river in the capital city. And that's something this entire region is rallied around because we all share that same love, our patriotic love for Maxwell Gunnar. We have a lot of military installations in our community, the 187th Red Tails, which we're so proud of, the 908th training unit out at Maxwell, the reserve unit. We have many military installations in our community. And again, it's that ripple, right? Because We don't necessarily think about the ripple that each mission has in national defense, but what it also has in our community. So again, through this, this ripple effect podcast, we can start to bring those commanders in, start to talk to their people, their military families. We can learn more about how we can better support our military families and as a country and globally, we've got people that leave here and deploy all over the world. Are we telling that story? And again, Montgomery at the heart, Central Alabama and the Capitol region at the heart of global events and making sure that we're connecting all of our folks, wherever they are, back to the heartbeat of Montgomery and the Capitol City. We talk about the Ripple. And so I have to immediately think about how proud we are of our partnership with the Alabama Port Authority and the investment that they have made in the what we call the inland port. It's an intermodal container transfer facility that is in that capital logistics quarter between I-65 South and the Highway 80 quarter of Montgomery, if you're familiar with Montgomery, close to our airport. Think about the volume of our Alabama port and how tremendous the growth has been down there.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

It has.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

And so our port here, our inland port, is critical because it allows the cargo to come on up the river and then move by tractor trailer out of our community. And then you just expedite the movement and the logistics of goods and services. So again, we will be a huge deployment center for the entire Southeast, thanks to that partnership with the port.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Anna, this was great. Thank you so much for helping launch this conversation and setting the tone for what the Ripple Effect is all about. We're excited to highlight people, partnerships, and ideas shaping the future of our region and to explore how leadership and collaboration create impacts far beyond what people initially see. Thank you for listening and joining us for the very first episode of The Ripple Effect. And we're excited for what's ahead.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Thank you, Megan.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Thank you. Enjoyed it so much and looking forward to all the great things to come. Absolutely.