I think that some of the most innovative, if not the only innovative programs that we saw to be successful was because the City listened to communities and neighbors and residents who had all the ideas quickly and your small business, entrepreneurs like your restaurants who were like, we got to figure something out of we're closed down.- Joaquin Torres

Our featured voice in this episode is Joaquin Torres, the former Director of the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development and the new San Francisco Assessor-Recorder. In this special hour-long episode, we wanted to focus on the City and County of San Francisco’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development. The Office of Economic and Workforce Development is one of the City Government departments that has a unique mission of working across multiple sectors in our community from economic and community development to workforce training, community benefits, and housing. To accomplish our goal of this deep dive in this episode we feature the voice of Joaquin Torres who over the past decade-plus has been working in the center of all the intersections of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development

For more information about the importance of economy development please listen back to our Economic Development episode with Cathy Hickey, Carla Mays and Andrea Baker in our Archives. Find out how small businesses are being incubated by listening to our conversations with Pierre from SFMade in Episode 21, along with Sharon and Tim with Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center in Episode 48 and Pooja and Andrea from En2Action in episode 23. To get insights into our restaurant sector’s struggles please listen to our interview with Laurie from the Golden Gate Restaurant Association in episode 11 along with food entrepreneurs Jeff and Shannon from Blue Plate in episode 20, Rome from Rome’s kitchen in episode 24, Brad, Haley and Jay from Firefly in episode 32 and women in the bayview who’s restaurants have become community centers Barbara from Gratta Winery and Market in episode 38 and Kristin from All Good Pizza in Episode 41. And to get the insights of what it has been like owning and operating a small gift and card shop during a pandemic listen to our conversation with Lisa from Serendipity in episode 53

Delve deeper into Voices of the Community Series on Arts & Culture, Making the Invisible-Visible, Covid-19's impact on nonprofits, small businesses and local government, City of Stockton's rise from the ashes of bankruptcy and our archives: You can explore episodes, speakers, organizations, and resources through each series web page. Watch and learn from all five series now!