Shaye Mandle talks about building consensus among business executives and legislators by educating them on issues of importance–instead of grabbing them by their ties and pulling them together.
As the new executive director of the East West Corporate Corridor Association, Mandle is likely to bring a different style of leadership to the business coalition that his predecessor, Bonnie Wood, launched in 1985.
Wood was an entrepreneur and pioneer, aggressively pursuing issues that she believed were important to commerce in one of the faster-growing regions of the Chicago area. Mandle has been schooled in the art of politics, corporate as well as government.
“This [association] is going to be an active and vocal voice for business,” Mandle said.
“Does this organization need to make itself more productive–more powerful, more vocal–so that it makes sure that it’s relevant? Yeah. … But the reality is that in this area there always will be a need for a strong regional business voice.”
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One of his goals is to put together an association committee that will take positions on public policy issues and present them to Congress, the state legislature or local officials in DuPage, Kane and Will Counties.
“Shaye brings with him a high level of energy and enthusiasm and a think-outside-the-box style as it relates to interaction between the public sector and the private sector,” said Scott Robinson, a member of the association’s board and managing partner of Kensington International. Kensington is an employee retention, search and placement firm based in Oak Brook.
Mandle, 31, is a lawyer and a former staffer for U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).
In 1999 he was named president of the Illinois Coalition, a not-for-profit economic development group that promotes science and high technology in the state. He will remain a member of the coalition’s board.
Technology is important to the state’s economic growth, but Mandle said the job with the East West Corporate Corridor Association will give him an opportunity to take on broader public policy issues.
A native of Yorkville, Mandle lives in Aurora with his wife and two young children. He has an undergraduate degree from Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington and a law degree from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.
His allegiance to the western suburbs is another reason for his decision to leave the Illinois Coalition.
“I wanted to be effecting changes that were more relevant to my daily life,” he said. “The economic vitality and strategic planning of the western suburbs is something that is relevant to my life on a daily basis.”
Founder to be honored
Wood founded the association with eight members. The group, which has offices in Naperville, now has about 150 members, including corporations such as Molex Inc. and Tellabs Inc. as well as institutions such as Benedictine University and North Central College.
Wood will be honored Thursday at the association’s annual breakfast meeting in Drury Lane in Oakbrook Terrace. She announced in March that she planned to retire.
“She started this organization from scratch,” Mandle said. “Bonnie defined this organization for 17 years.”
The association offers its members a forum for education and networking. But it also has taken an advocacy role on issues ranging from disaster planning to transportation to the need for better high-speed Internet access in the region.
Though the association will continue to be vocal on subjects important to business, Mandle said he wants to sharpen its structure and focus.
Transportation issues
“As the organization gains credibility and people know the name, you get pulled in a lot of directions,” he said. “I want to bring to the organization some new discipline and some new prioritization so we can decide which three or four or five areas that we need to be in that are really important to business.”
Those areas could include politically sensitive issues such as the toll increase sought by the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, the proposed expansion of O’Hare International Airport and the proposed Prairie Parkway in Kendall and Kane Counties that is supported by Hastert.
“The reality is that the Chicago metro area continues to move west,” Mandle said. “We need to build a transportation infrastructure before we get to a point where we don’t have that flexibility anymore.”