Chamber Reflects on Vision 2025

Last year, Indiana’s Chamber of Commerce released its Vision 2025 plan. 

It outlines goals of how to make the state’s business environment better.

Monday, the organization sat down in Indianapolis to review the progress.

"People are excited, they are energized, they feel good about the economy, they feel good about the future," said Central Indiana Corporate Partnership President David Johnson.  "That's exciting and you are starting to see people do some really interesting and creative things about trying to improve education, about trying to make Indiana an even more attractive place for our talented young people to stay in or to move back if they have left and want to come back and start doing some great things here."

The long range plan was put together by a 24-member task force and includes a series of objectives.

Some of them have been achieved, including making Indiana a Right-To-Work state and eliminating the state inheritance tax.

"The general strategies are in place, but I think with every conversation, with new folks reflecting on it, I think there are added areas of emphasis and certainly opportunities to cross things off the list and we heard today some ideas that may be added to the plan," said Keira Amstutz of Indiana Humanities.  "There was a lot of talk about quality of place and how maybe there could be some metrics added in related to how quality of place relates to economic development."

The Chamber plans to have meetings every year in seven regions of the state to update the progress.

Amstutz says education will be a primary focus moving forward, specifically how to close the skills gap.