Letter from the President

Baldwin County is an incredible place with outstanding public and private sector leadership.

Thanks to the Baldwin County Commission we have launched a new website, www.southalabamamegasite.com for the sole purpose of marketing our mega site.

Thanks to a US EDA Grant, we are adding technology and information enhancements to www.baldwineda.com. That site will become one of the premier economic development websites in the United States.

The Alliance exists to increase the standard of living in Baldwin County and to create economic opportunity for our citizens, jobs which allow our children and grandchildren to live and prosper here if they choose to!

Your investment and support is critical to our success! Please join us at our Fall Investors Reception to learn about our activities and plans!

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Speakers Announced for Investor Reception:

Linda Swann, ADO & Mike Randle, Southern Business & Development Magazine and Southern Auto Corridor

Linda Swann is a veteran economic developer who has been actively involved in some of the most successful economic development efforts in Alabama’s history, including the location  of ThyssenKrupp, Raytheon Missiles, SSAB, Austal, Hyundai  Heavy Industries, Honda, Boeing, Mercedes, two Hyundai expansions and others to Alabama. Ms. Swann has served as  Alabama Development Office’s assistant director since 2003 with a brief period as Director of the agency. 

During her extensive career, she ran her own consulting firm, Economic Development Services & Strategies, served as the Director of Business Information with the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, served as Associate Director for Alabama Power’s Alabama Resource Centers in Birmingham and Montgomery, and was Manager of Research and Existing Industry Assistance at the Gadsden-Etowah County Industrial Development Authority. 

Swann is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Alabama and a Past President and Honorary Life Member of the Southern Economic Development Council. 

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Mike Randle founded his first business publication, The Birmingham Business Journal, in 1983 at the age of 27. He then sold the Birmingham Business Journal and started Southern Business & Development in 1991 at age 35. SB&D remains the South's most prominent business and economic development publication 20 years later. While publishing SB&D, Randle has visited over 1,200 cities and                    towns in the American South.

 He launched SB-D.com, SouthernAutoCorridor.com and  SmallTownSouth.com in the last decade. All sites are currently live on the World Wide Web and thriving. Launched RandleReport.com in November of 2010 and its readers currently average 15.3 pages and 27 minutes per session. Randle's publications and four Web sites have been quoted and/or featured on CNN, Time, ABC News, Fox News, CNBC, MSNBC, PBS, The Huffington Post, Time, Yahoo, Al Jazeera and in dozens of other electronic media and in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, USA Today and The New York Times.

Randle lives in Mountain Brook, Ala. with his wife Stacy and their five children.