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Friend of the Industry - Commissioner David Lehman
COMMISSIONER DAVID LEHMAN
CT Department of Economic and Community Development David Lehman serves as Connecticut’s Commissioner of Economic and Community Development, the department that oversees an extensive amount of programs which promote business growth, brownfield redevelopment, the arts, historic preservation and tourism.
In that role, Commissioner Lehman has been a tremendous partner to Connecticut’s restaurant and hospitality industry throughout the unprecedented challenges of the COVID pandemic. He was a regular point of contact for the CRA, staying in frequent communication and helping to move forward actions that helped our industry, including: keeping indoor dining open safely ahead of neighboring states, offering grants to restaurant owners and other small businesses, allowing for alcohol-to-go, expand outdoor dining options, and more. As these various changes were under consideration, he was an accessible and communicative partner with the CRA, helping to ensure that the voices of our members were represented at the table where decisions were made.
More broadly in his role as Commissioner, he is dedicated to creating an innovative public-private partnership between DECD and AdvanceCT (formerly CERC) that will provide a new economic development delivery model for our state. His business development priorities include helping build our urban centers into engines of growth; further capitalizing on the state’s top-flight colleges and universities; strengthening the state’s workforce pipelines; and marketing Connecticut as a place that is open for business.
At the start of 2020, Commissioner Lehman hoped to begin his time as commissioner by building back the state’s business incentive program and launching a new jobsgrowth strategy. However, he spent a year and a half working diligently to save Connecticut’s economy from a global pandemic. He worked with Governor Lamont to keep manufacturing and construction open as essential industries. He also helped develop business reopening guidelines and oversaw several state grant and loan programs that provided much-needed capital to small businesses desperate for a financial lifeline. All of these efforts assisted in keeping the state’s economy above water.
Prior to joining DECD , Commissioner Lehman worked in the financial services industry. Most recently he was Global Head of Real Estate Finance for the Investment Banking Division of Goldman Sachs, where he worked for 15 years.
