Monday, February 21, 2011

Pittsburgh Hosts Eurasians for Business Conference

The City of Pittsburgh is hosting 18 executives and professionals from many former Soviet satellite nations as part of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s "Special American Business Internship Training" (SABIT) Program. Each year the Commerce Department selects cities to host these delegates, and Philip Cynar, spokesman for the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, says this time Pittsburgh was picked for its global attention the past couple of years.

President of the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce Barbara McNees says Pittsburgh was a good choice “because of the [city’s] economic transformation story,” along with “similarities to these countries being industrial and having to make some transformation around their economy.”

The SABIT program builds relationships between foreign not-for-profit businessmen and helps teach American business and management practices.

“What they are really looking for from us is to hear about our public/private partnership, how we put our organization together, how we function,” McNees says. “They’re really looking at organization structure so that they can go back to their communities as business leaders and make that model work for them.”

As part of the trip, delegates from Armenia, Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Ukraine also met in Washington, D.C. and Raleigh. The delegates arrived in Pittsburgh yesterday and remain until Thursday. McNees says they will learn business practices from the Pittsburgh Executives Association, Allegheny Conference on Community Development, the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, and the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance.

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