WHEN MAJOR Boston banks were absorbed into transnational giants, and venerable Boston businesses were acquired by larger corporations, the city feared that it would lose its leaders. No longer could a group of local CEOs gather around a table at Locke-Ober and sketch out plans for civic improvements on the back of a napkin.
With the changing business landscape, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce is now wisely concentrating its efforts on maintaining local, civic-minded leadership at all levels of business, from interns to middle management to senior executives, instead of relying on the dwindling number of locally bred CEOs. What the recent approach seems to realize is that leaders of local offices of larger firms have considerable autonomy, even if their corporate parents are elsewhere, and that Boston’s next generation of business leaders will come from people who weren’t necessarily born into their jobs, but rather chose to put down roots here.
Those roots can only be strengthened by participation in Chamber programs such as Boston’s Future Leaders. Aimed at younger, mid-level workers, the program introduces its members to some of the area’s more innovative companies for discussions about leadership and economic growth. Yesterday, the Chamber, in association with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, launched a website to link students from local universities to high-value internships in Boston — aiming to ensure that the most talented people of the emerging generation choose to stay here.
It’s not the Vault of yesteryear, but it could be a key to more committed business leadership in Boston.
