Haldane Davis, the director of the Bureau of Economic Research in the Virgin Islands was one of eight attendees we filmed at the American Society for Public Administration’s annual conference in Hollywood, California between March 20 and March 24th.  This is the sixth in a series that appears on Thursdays in this space.

Davies focuses his comments on the importance of teamwork, providing a powerful example in the way the government of the Virgin Islands coped back in 2017 when two category five storms hit over a two-week period.  The approach taken in the Virgin Islands is a model for other territories, cities and states,

“We realized that there was a lot of work to be done,” he says, “work to not only to recover but to transition into the future and to decide how we wanted to operate moving forward. This was not done in isolation, but different teams were set up, teams for governance; teams for infrastructure; there were teams for education; teams to make sure that our students were able to continue to learn and to grow and develop. There were also teams for water and power as well as other forms of telecommunication, teams for health and well-being and human services.”

Davies argues that though these storms were devastating, “we lifted our heads, we rose up and we worked together. . . and that’s why today we are on the road not only to recovery, but to reinvention and growth.”