Exciting changes are coming to the Office of Economic Development (OED)! The office is expanding to include new areas: WSU OPEN and Corporate Engagement. This restructuring is a direct reflection of Wayne State University President Kimberly Andrew Espy, Ph.D.’s efforts to reorganize select teams within the university and is in direct alignment with the “Fuel Innovation for Our Competitiveness” pillar of Wayne State’s Prosperity Agenda.  

WSU OPEN — an acronym for Opportunity, Partnership, Engagement and Navigation — will tentatively launch in late September and is considered the entry point for corporations to tap into the knowledge, talent and resources of the university. This team will optimize Wayne State's work with its corporate partners and facilitate broad collaboration between corporate partners, students and faculty. This includes collaborative research projects, technology commercialization, workforce development/internships/fellowships, curriculum engagement and development, and consulting advice from subject matter experts.  

Corporate Engagement, an existing team that was previously called Corporate Relations, will now be housed under OED. The team consists of Corporate Engagement Officers who specialize in understanding the university’s research activities, academic programs, events and strategic faculty priorities.  

In early May, Danielle Manley stepped into a new role as Wayne State’s assistant vice president of corporate engagement and advancement. Manley will also remain senior director of strategic partnerships for TechTown Detroit, Wayne State’s entrepreneurship hub. Through these dual roles, Manley will oversee the WSU OPEN, Corporate Engagement and TechTown Fund Development teams.  

Here, Manley and Ned Staebler, Wayne State’s vice president for economic development and TechTown’s president and CEO, share more about the goals of the WSU OPEN and Corporate Engagement teams, Manley’s new role, the continued collaboration between OED and TechTown and more.  

OED: Can you share more about the WSU OPEN team and its goals?  

Danielle Manley: Our primary objective is to make the university an accessible place to our corporate community that results in their time being spent collaborating on projects instead of navigating a complex institution. One of the many ways we will do that is by making connections between our partner companies and internal resources, like Career Services, who ensure that WSU students are visible to recruiters that want to hire for internships, co-ops or fellowships. Another way the WSU OPEN team functions is to help faculty create more sustainable relationships with companies that further their research objectives or technology transfer/commercialization goals. The good news is that in the Office of Economic Development, we have developed the muscle to tie all efforts to economic resilience. The common factors in this transition are that talent, technology and research create a more competitive landscape. When Detroit becomes more competitive, the whole region becomes more competitive, which creates a better environment for us to compete for the most innovative companies and projects to invest here.  

Same for Corporate Engagement, what are the goals of that team?  

Manley: It’s to discover the programs and research that faculty are engaged in and to pair those opportunities with corporations who make philanthropic gifts to fuel that work. The new structure locates the officers raising money on the same team as the WSU OPEN managers who are responsible for connecting corporations with faculty, getting our students hired, and helping the university be more accessible. Like most universities, WSU has always had a team responsible for developing relationships with the corporate community. The new structure — an iteration of our previous model — allows for a dedicated team to undertake the intensive, cross-campus, relational work that needs to be done to develop relationships outside of philanthropic expectations.  

Looking at the Prosperity Agenda that President Espy introduced earlier this year, how will this restructuring of OED align with the Agenda?  

Manley: One example that illustrates this is DTE Energy, one of Detroit’s best corporate citizens. While they give a lot philanthropically and hire a lot of WSU graduates, a recent visit revealed that they also want to play a role in the president’s goal to “Empower Health for Our Urban Neighborhoods.” One idea we’re discussing is for the Wayne Health Mobile Units to partner with them on days when they set up cooling stations. WSU can send our units to those places and administer preventative screening. We’re also actively partnering with TechTown’s small business clients with brick-and-mortar locations in neighborhoods. Wayne State’s Mobile Health Units can be deployed so that their workforce benefits from the convenience of the services they provide. 

Offering the corporate community the opportunity to support WSU’s goals, in this case to leverage its technology and resources to ensure that Detroit’s urban neighborhoods experience fewer heath disparities, is one of many examples of ways the Corporate Engagement team helps corporations achieve community impact.  

Ned Staebler: While it's nice to contribute to all goals of the Prosperity Agenda, this work is part of the third pillar of the Prosperity Agenda, “Fuel Innovation for Our Competitiveness.” So, how are we better utilizing our talent, innovation, assets and our place in business support and community engagement to help make the region more competitive? That is what all of this is essentially; we’ve been asked to work on the whole third pillar. 

Danielle, as you get situated into your new role overseeing WSU OPEN and Corporate Engagement, alongside your existing role over TechTown Detroit’s Fund Development team, what have you been excited about during your first 90 days?

Manley: I want to be very certain that I acknowledge the work that has been done prior to my role taking effect; that’s really important to me to have noted. I’m really excited — my entire professional background is in fundraising, and I started in corporate. Specifically, I started in public radio selling underwriting to companies 20 years ago in Louisville, Kentucky. My career has broadened since to include other kinds of fundraising, but corporate fundraising was always where I felt most comfortable. It pushes us to be active listeners and to provide solutions. The opportunity to layer the WSU OPEN solutions like talent and research create economic benefits that incorporates the experience I've had working in WSU’s Office of Economic Development since 2017. It has helped me position WSU as a multifaceted solution to their economic challenges — and when you speak that language to a corporation, they tend to want to find ways to work together.

Part of the theory of separating the fundraising function from WSU OPEN, is to encourage creativity to blossom. We can be solution-oriented and responsive to a company’s unique needs without the pressure of always driving toward a financial gift. I’m excited to get some interesting results. With a reputation for incubating creative projects, the Office of Economic Development is the perfect place for this kind of “build, measure, learn” iteration of WSU’s corporate engagement efforts.  

Ned, from your roles as Wayne State’s vice president for economic development and TechTown’s president and CEO, what are you most excited for in OED’s new and existing work?

Staebler: I think what I’m most excited about is that for a long time, I think there’s been a distance between the work of OED and TechTown (and OED more broadly and the rest of the university). I think that President Espy has embraced the work that we’ve been doing and wants to make it more central to the university and create opportunities for us to work in partnership with lots of other folks across the university. 

How do you both hope that the WSU OPEN, Corporate Engagement and TechTown’s Fund Development teams all connect and work together, while also ensuring each team gets the proper attention it needs? 

Manley: The very simple answer to that is, across the university, we all engage a lot of the same companies. A lot of our funders are funders of TechTown, funders of the Office of Economic Development, funders of Wayne State, volunteers and sponsors of faculty research. And if we’re doing our job well, those funders are curious and engaging across all schools and units because we have communicated their value separately and as part of a larger, connected strategy. My philosophy is to create a hub where connections are made and tracked. By opening the aperture to include impactful WSU programs, initiatives and research, we’re signaling that partnerships with the Office of Economic Development can be varied to help companies meet their unique economic goals.    

Staebler: This is a case of two plus two equaling seven. I think there’s going to be all kinds of synergies. There’s going to be a lot of creativity unleashed. We’re going to create an atmosphere for all of the team members to grow personally and professionally. I think it’s going to be really successful.

As dual employees of Wayne State and TechTown, how will these changes to OED continue to reinforce the alignment between the university and TechTown, especially with this year being TechTown’s 20th anniversary since opening its headquarters?

Staebler: I think it’s important to recognize that TechTown, and Co.act Detroit, are parts of Wayne State. I think it’s reflected in TechTown’s 20th anniversary logo and our new branding exercise that we’re going through right now. The relationship is going to be much more evident in lots of ways. Some of those ways will be visible, like logos and PowerPoint templates. Some places it will be in more substantive ways that I think are going to be really powerful. We have more to offer partners, whether they’re corporate, philanthropic or programmatic partners across the ecosystem, if we come together. And that is going to make us way more successful. 

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Wayne State University is currently hiring for the WSU OPEN Director position. This individual will lead all WSU OPEN activities and initiatives, providing strategic vision for the department and defining success metrics. Click here to learn more about the position and apply.