Q&A: Futurist Rebecca Ryan says Madison needs to come to grips with its growing diversity

Rebecca Ryan has been associated with new-economy Madison for almost a decade now.

In 2005, less than a year after she brought Next Generation Consulting to Madison, the Wisconsin State Journal dubbed her a coolness consultant for her work with companies and cities to attract and retain young people. Shes spoken at the Overture Center on the new economy, been the keynote speaker at a Madison Area Technical College graduation and now chairs the board of Sustain Dane, which aims to make Dane County more environmentally friendly and economically successful at the same time.

As it did for many businesses, the Great Recession changed Next Generation. Down from a peak of 10 employees, the company is now just Ryan, 41, and her partner (both in business and life), Marti Ryan. They are futurists, helping clients (mostly municipalities now) nationwide navigate economic and demographic trends to stay relevant.

Rebecca Ryan is the resident futurist for the Arizona-based Alliance for Innovation, but shes kept a high local profile, including writing a regular column for Madison Magazine. In October, she was the target of some angry blowback for a column titled the Tier-Two Tradeoff in which she said living in a smaller city like Madison comes with an opportunity cost.

Ryan said she was taken aback by the intense reaction to the column, though she conceded in a follow-up piece that tier two which in her line of work refers to a city of between 500,000 and 1 million people might sound like an insult. She also wrote that despite the expressed wishes of some, she has every intent of staying in the city. She came in to the Cap Times offices recently to talk about what Madison has going for it, what its problems are and why shes going to stick around.

Cap Times: Tell me a bit more about Next Generations new focus.

Rebecca Ryan: Version two really came from having a crisis of faith in my clients in some ways. During the first part of my companys history we had helped a lot of companies get on "best places to work" lists and then during the recession, some leaders did things that I just really felt were unconscionable.

Such as

The classic example I got a call from the managing partner of one of the biggest public accounting firms in the world, theyd been a client of ours, and he said, Rebecca, Im going to send you a draft of an email that were going to send out tomorrow first thing and I want you to tell me what you think.

So the email comes to my inbox and its announcing a 15 percent reduction in force effective immediately. I called him and I said, "I remember you telling employees that you were running 5 percent ahead of where you were going to be with some of your initiatives." I asked what communication have they received between then and now and he said, Well, none.

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Q&A: Futurist Rebecca Ryan says Madison needs to come to grips with its growing diversity