Over time, one question has surfaced repeatedly in my role as Director of the California Advanced Air Mobility Corridors Initiative (CAAMCI):
What is economic development doing in an aviation conversation?
It’s a fair question.
Advanced aviation is often discussed through the lens of aircraft, certification, operations, airspace integration, and regulation. Those conversations are essential. Without them, there is no industry.
But as this work deepens, another set of questions emerges.
Questions about infrastructure.
Communities.
Workforce.
Public benefit.
Whether regions are prepared for what comes next.
These are the questions I keep encountering through the work of advancing CAAMCI—and they reflect why Monterey Bay Economic Partnership is in this conversation.
At first glance, connected aviation infrastructure may seem far removed from MBEP’s traditional areas of focus. After all, what does advanced aviation have to do with housing, broadband, healthcare, workforce development, regional planning, or economic competitiveness?
Quite a bit.
With MBEP having celebrated its 10th year anniversary, a clear pattern has emerged across many of the organization’s most significant wins for the region.
The Monterey Bay Housing Trust did not begin with housing projects. It began with understanding housing needs, identifying barriers, building partnerships, and creating a framework for action before investments could be made and homes could be built.
Broadband expansion did not begin with infrastructure deployment. It began with mapping gaps, understanding community needs, building coalitions, and advocating for resources before residents could be connected.
Uplift Central Coast did not begin with funding. It began with research, regional collaboration, and a shared belief that six counties working together could create greater opportunity than six counties working alone.
That work ultimately helped position Uplift Central Coast to serve as the California Jobs First convener for the region. It also helped secure more than $9 million in investments supporting community-based organizations and other partners working to expand economic opportunity across the Central Coast.
MBEP securing the region’s Economic Development District designation from the U.S. Economic Development Administration followed a similar path.
Years of planning, data collection, coalition building, and advocacy culminated in the first federal EDD designation awarded in California in 15 years.
Today, that designation is helping create a tri-county Economic Development Hub—one that supports stakeholder engagement, improves access to economic development resources, and advances shared priorities across Monterey, San Benito, and Santa Cruz counties.
CAAMCI is following a similar trajectory.
Regional reports helped identify advanced aviation as an emerging opportunity. The Advanced Air Mobility Activation Plan connected that opportunity to broader regional priorities and the community-centered framework reflected in California Jobs First. That regional work was later incorporated into California’s Economic Blueprint, which brought regional plans together into a statewide implementation and investment framework. CAAMCI represents the next step in that progression—the move from research and planning to implementation.
Different sectors.
Different challenges.
Different stakeholders.
The same underlying pattern.
Research helps regions understand opportunities and challenges.
Policy creates alignment and establishes priorities.
Implementation turns ideas into outcomes.
The sectors change.
The pattern rarely does.
That reality has increasingly shaped how MBEP approaches economic development.
Economic development is often associated with business attraction, industry recruitment, and job creation. Those remain important parts of the work.
Increasingly, economic development is also about helping regions prepare for change.
It involves asking different questions.
Who benefits?
Who is missing from the conversation?
What infrastructure is required?
What partnerships need to exist?
How do communities participate in shaping what comes next?
How do we move from possibility to practice?
Those questions matter because innovation alone rarely creates change.
Change happens when communities, institutions, partnerships, and infrastructure align around a shared opportunity and commit to the difficult work of implementation.
That is true for housing.
It is true for broadband.
It is true for disaster recovery.
And it is proving to be true for connected aviation infrastructure.
The more time I spend working on CAAMCI, the less surprised I am that economic development organizations find themselves in aviation conversations.
Advanced aviation conversations often center on aircraft.
Implementation depends on people, places, partnerships, and trust.
And helping regions build those conditions has always been at the heart of inclusive economic development.
Recently, that realization came into sharper focus while participating in a panel discussion at the AIAA Aviation Forum in San Diego. The conversation included Kristina Buelo, eIPP Program Lead and Manager of Advanced Aviation Technologies; Lisa Abeyta, representing eIPP New Mexico and serving as Acting Deputy Director for Aviation Innovation and Strategic Development; Josh Duplantis, representing eIPP Louisiana and serving as Assistant Director of Aviation; and facilitator Tom Davis, Chief Innovation Officer for Crown Innovations, Inc. and a member of the CAAMCI Project Team.
Sitting alongside leaders working on aviation implementation from federal, state, and regional perspectives brought the central tension into focus.
What if the biggest challenge facing advanced aviation isn’t certification?
We’ll explore that question in the next edition of The CAAMCI Chronicles.
Lavera Alexander
Further Reading:
- California Jobs First
- California Economic Blueprint
- Uplift Central Coast Regional Reports
- Uplift Central Coast AAM + Unmanned Systems Activation Plan
- U.S. Economic Development Administration Economic Development District Program
- Advanced Air Mobility National Strategy
- Advanced Air Mobility Comprehensive Plan
- California Advanced Air Mobility Corridors Initiative (CAAMCI)
About The CAAMCI Chronicles:
The CAAMCI Chronicles explores how communities, institutions, and partnerships move complex ideas from possibility to practice through the lens of connected aviation infrastructure.
Grounded in real-world implementation experience, the series examines infrastructure readiness, community readiness, public benefit, and the conditions required to transform innovation into meaningful regional outcomes.
Author: Lavera Alexander serves as Director of CAAMCI and Chief Growth Officer at Monterey Bay Economic Partnership. Her work focuses on aligning systems, partnerships, and investments to advance inclusive opportunity and long-term economic growth.