Photo: GBIC President Frank CIoffi. Photo: Baldwin Photography.
by Joyce Marcel, Vermont Business Magazine
Who is Frank Cioffi, and what does he do for Vermont? Well, it’s complicated.
Cioffi (pronounced “coffee”), 67, is the long-time president of the nonprofit Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation, but that’s just his day job. He also swims in a full tide of acronyms — VTC, CCETB, VCET, EPSCoR, UVM, to name a few. Somehow, he seems to have had a hand in almost every significant economic development in Vermont over the past three decades.
“There are few people as committed to making Vermont an even better place to live and work than Frank Cioffi,” said Governor Phil Scott. “Whether as a commissioner, a University of Vermont trustee, as the head of GBIC or through the countless other initiatives he’s been a part of, Frank is always looking for ways to give back to the state he loves. He’s motivated, hardworking and kind, and the embodiment of Vermont values.”
Most people use the word “passionate” to describe Cioffi — passionate about Vermont; passionate about his alma mater, the University of Vermont; passionate about business; passionate about economic development; passionate about his family.
Cioffi graduated from UVM in 1977 as president of his class with a degree in political science. Part of his platform, when he ran for the presidency, was granting full voting rights to student members on the board of trustees. Cioffi won the election, the students got their voting rights and now, with 20 years of service, he is the longest-tenured member of the board, having been appointed by four different governors of two different political parties.
“He brings that institutional knowledge of the university and a broad historical perspective,” said board President Ron Lumbra, a partner at Heidrick & Struggles in New York. “It is amazing how he weaves in a political perspective — the perspective of the business community, the perspective of the local community, perspective of faculty, staff, students in the town of Burlington. He brings those varied perspectives together in such a balanced way. It is a unique skill set, and a unique perspective.”
Cioffi is a licensed Vermont real estate broker and a past president of the Vermont Association of Realtors. From 1995 to 1998, he served in the administration of Governor Howard Dean as commissioner of the Vermont Department of Economic Development. He became president of the nonprofit Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation and its nonprofit real estate arm, Cynosure, in 1998, and has been on a gallop ever since.
“It’s breathtaking how many people he knows,” Lumbra said. “And how he can take into consideration the network that exists in Vermont. He knows people, and he knows how people know each other. And that’s a powerful asset to understanding how to get things done.”
You could call Cioffi a Vermont-style Mr Rogers: positive, agreeable, energetic, intelligent, humble, self-effacing, funny and kind — a man with a big heart. He’s also a man with a hell of a network, an unparalleled work ethic and a highly developed business brain.
Economic development means, above all, retaining and/or creating good jobs. It’s a topic that’s dry as dust until it explodes into the headlines. Just think of the raging controversy over bringing the F-35 fighter jets to Burlington, and you’ll understand. Cioffi had a big hand in winning that fight; noise wasn’t an issue for him, retaining 900-plus jobs was.
Cioffi started his economic development career by bringing Husky Technologies to Milton in the mid-1990s. The company was based in Toronto when then-governor Dean heard that they might want to relocate south; he put Cioffi on the case.
“Frank was the quarterback who courted the company,” said Timothy P Shea, executive director of the Champlain Valley Exposition and chairperson of the GBIC board of directors.
“Frank did a tremendous amount of relationship building with their CEO and in the community,” Shea said. “It is not common to build a brick-and-mortar manufacturer here in Vermont. All the hurdles one needs to jump through to create something new like that — like Act 250, etc. It’s not overnight or three months. But Frank stuck with it.”
“I have the utmost respect for Frank,” Shea added. “His passion for economic development goes far beyond Chittenden County. He is tremendously respected in so many areas. Because of the work he’s done, he’s a resource to so many other regional development corps. He’s tremendously respected in the Legislature. Frank has the ear of the legislators as far as delivering the message of the business community. Frank represents the business community and their effort to grow and thrive here in the Champlain Valley.”
Cioffi helped Burton Snowboards grow. He assisted Dealer.com. He worked with Blodgett Ovens — approximately 300 employees in three business units in Essex Junction — to find its new manufacturing space. The entrepreneurial incubator Hula now sits on its lakefront site. Currently, he is helping BETA Technologies, which designs and builds electric planes at Burlington International Airport.
“There is no one in Vermont more deeply committed to the viability of Vermont’s businesses than Frank Cioffi, and he has a 30-plus-year record to prove it,” said Dennise Casey, BETA’s public affairs consultant. “Similar to the countless other businesses and local communities that have benefitted from his work, he has supported BETA’s growth, helping with access to state programs, providing technical assistance in the complex regulatory and permitting processes and making connections to business, state and federal leaders.”
For all his accomplishments, Cioffi tends to fly under the radar.
“I think he is one of the under-recognized and underappreciated public servants and leaders in Vermont,” said David Bradbury, president of the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies. "But after US Senator Patrick Leahy, I cannot think of another more impactful economic-development leader than Frank Cioffi.”
This may be the first in-depth profile Cioffi ever sat for, and he’s a hard man to find in a Google search. But he surfaced publicly in a dramatic way after his daughter, Alexa Rose, died unexpectedly in 2016 of acute bronchial pneumonia due to chronic substance abuse. She left behind a son, Frankie, who is living with autism. Cioffi has adopted Frankie and is raising him as his own, along with his ex-wife, Jovana Guarino. The pair live in separate homes in the same development.
“I am divorced,” Cioffi told me. “I adopted Frankie alone, but my former wife — and the mother of our two children, Michael, 39, and Alexa — is helping me co-parent Frankie. I am incredibly grateful to her for stepping up to be Frankie’s mom. Raising a child with special needs is a team endeavor. We are working together trying to find a pathway for Frankie in his journey with autism. I hope we both live a very long time.”
On the website of All Our Hearts, a project of Seven Days, where people share stories of dealing with addiction, here is part of what Cioffi wrote about Alexa:
“My lesson in all of this is: You think you can plan. You can’t plan. If you get sick or something like this happens, you must be agile and find ways to move forward. I’ve done a lot of things in life, personally and professionally, and raising and caring for my grandson is the most meaningful, purposeful and most fulfilling thing I think I’ve ever been a part of. It’s a joyful and fun opportunity and a privilege.”
UVM Provost Patricia Prelock, an autism expert, calls Cioffi a Renaissance man.
“He’s a community member, a business member, he’s active on the UVM board and he’s a grandfather who is raising a grandson with autism,” Prelock said. “It’s quite impressive. My goal is to support him in any way I can. Frank is doing an amazing job supporting Frankie and creating a structured environment for him so that he can learn to his capacity. This seems like almost a full-time job. And Frank has a lot of full-time jobs. He’s also managing what he does in his business and for the community and for the state. And then for all his other volunteer organizations. He’s a man of many talents.”
Photo: GBIC President Frank CIoffi relaxes in his office, surrounded by photos, including one of his grandson, Frankie. Photo: Baldwin Photography
Commerce Secretary Lindsay Kurrle has worked with Cioffi since he was chair of the statewide Workforce Development Board.
“He’s advocating on a daily basis to ensure that there are really strong economic opportunities within the Champlain Valley region,” Kurrle said. “And he does that by being very well connected to the employers that are already in that area. He works with local state legislators and our congressional delegation. He’s constantly trying to find ways to strengthen our economy.”
When the pandemic hit, Scott put together the Economic Mitigation and Recovery Task Force. Cioffi and Kurrle both served on it.
“I know a lot of people are ready to be done talking about the pandemic,” Kurrle said. “But the team was charged with providing technical assistance and expertise that was supposed to mitigate the short- and long-term economic impacts of the pandemic. We were trying to develop strategies and working to help businesses and communities function during the crisis, so we would have a place to go back to when it was safe. Frank was instrumental in that. Most people believe that it was successful, that we were able to keep businesses operating and services provided throughout the pandemic in a safe environment.”
Another part of their work was figuring out how to deploy federal recovery grants.
“When we learned that the federal government would be sending $1.2 billion to Vermont, initially, we worked to find a way that we could get money into the communities very quickly,” Kurrle said. “And, again, Frank and that team made those recommendations about how we could make that impactful.”
Cioffi’s long years of experience helped.
“The other thing I would say is that Frank is always working with our congressional delegation,” Kurrle said. “He has very close relationships with our two senators and Congressman (Peter) Welch. Even when we’re not in times of crisis, Frank is working to try to make sure there is an injection of money coming our way in any place possible.”
What else does Cioffi do?
Well, he’s the chair of the Vermont Technology Council, the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies board, Vermont EPSCoR (Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research), and the board of directors of Peoples Trust Company as well as a member of the Vermont Workforce Development Council and the Tarrant Foundation Board of Directors.
“He’s a wealth of experience and knowledge and wisdom,” said Joan Goldstein, Vermont’s current economic development commissioner. “I don’t know how else to put it. He’s a very calming presence. When I started working in economic development, it was clear he was a leader and somebody that people in economic development listened to. He sort of knows everybody. He’s a very engaged, community-minded person who is an invaluable resource for the state. He believes in workforce development. He believes in employer retention. And he believes in child care. I think he’s just a huge proponent of the pillars of economic prosperity, and he will engage his network for the betterment of Vermonters.”
Cioffi is “an honorable man,” said Lisa Ventriss, former long-time president of the Vermont Business Roundtable.”
“He is a truth-teller who speaks truth to power,” Ventriss said. “He is a most loyal son to Vermont. He is a trusted adviser to people in high office and the boards he serves on. He’s someone who has an uncanny ability to see around corners and anticipate development. He has tremendous institutional knowledge that has been developed since he was in college.”
UVM trustee Johanna “Joey” Donovan said, “One of the great joys I’ve had is to ride through the countryside of Vermont with Frank and just listen to his knowledge and stories. He knows every bush and tree wherever we go. I just sit back in awe. I thought I was steeped in our history, but it’s a real treat to drive with Frank.”
VCET president Bradbury, who served under Cioffi in the Dean administration, also has a story about driving around Vermont with Cioffi.
“I distinctly recall when he was commissioner of development, we’d be driving around Vermont visiting companies,” Bradbury said. “He always pulled over to the sidewalk whenever we saw kids out selling cookies or apples as a fundraiser. I always felt that here was someone that really cared about Vermont and these communities. We bought more darn cookies, apples and pies on Route 100 than anybody could eat in a lifetime. I think that speaks to his character. I think the judge of a person’s character is what they do when nobody’s looking. And I think that sums up the man more than the headlines.”
‘Owning Real Estate Is How We Operate’
Cioffi’s home base, the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation, is a nonprofit economic development corporation serving Chittenden County. One of 12 in the state, it was created by a 1954 act of the Vermont Legislature.
GBIC's nonprofit real estate arm, Cynosure, was created in 1955 to focus on building industrial buildings and help identify key employers to occupy them.. The idea was that they might possibly buy the buildings and make them their permanent Vermont operations.
“At that time there were not any private sector real estate developers building industrial buildings, and especially buildings being constructed before a tenant was found,” Cioffi said. “Cynosure filled that role. Since Cynosure’s creation, there are now many private sector developers in Chittenden County who have built industrial space, so Cynosure has become less active in real estate development. Our holdings are humble, and any monies earned primarily go to help GBIC advance its mission and on projects that advance economic development in Chittenden County and Vermont.”
Over the decades, GBIC created seven industrial parks in Chittenden County. Cynosure built or acquired over 20 industrial buildings, most of which are now owned by manufacturers based in Vermont.
For example, GBIC built the industrial park that became the IBM campus in Essex Junction; Cynosure built the first building that became IBM’s first building on their campus.
“GBIC attracted Jake Burton Carpenter to Burlington to grow Burton Snowboards,” Cioffi said. “Cynosure owned the Burton manufacturing center and headquarters for Jake and Burton for 20 years. Now Burton owns their campus in Burlington. Cynosure has no staff. I am the only Cynosure-affiliated employee. GBIC pays my salary, and I do most of the work for Cynosure. GBIC staff helps me occasionally, and GBIC-contracted staff and contractors who I hire for Cynosure do the rest of the work.”
The GBIC has a staff of five and a budget of approximately $2 million, Cioffi said.
“Owning real estate is how we’re able to operate,” Cioffi said. “We get $108,000 a year from the state of Vermont to do all the economic development programs and services. When I was in the Dean administration, I lobbied to cut the money up equally between all the regional economic development corporations. I was saying that economic development is as important in Bennington as it is in Burlington, so everyone should get the same amount of money. And Governor Dean, I give him credit, subscribed to that. And then Governor Douglas did an exceptional job following him and even adding more money for economic development. Governor Scott has increased some funding, but we’re still at a minute level. We’re about half of what we need, but we’re grateful to have whatever we can have.”
The GBIC’s mission is to attract, retain and expand environmentally sensitive high-paying jobs in the Champlain Valley and to initiate and support advocacy, education and collaborative programs in promoting its vision. Cioffi estimates that to accomplish the corporation’s mission, he and his staff visit about 100 companies a year.
“We need to learn everything about an employer — their product or service, their employee/labor needs, their facility needs, etc. — and then we become a counselor, sherpa, facilitator, promoter, negotiator, deal maker, catalyst and advocate for job creation, job retention and job growth,” he said. “Our primary focus is on employers who are producing value-added goods and services and export those goods and services outside of Vermont and bring the first dollar into Vermont. They have a profile of being goods-and-services exporting, dollar importing and job creators.”
The priority in economic development, Cioffi said, is job retention.
“After that, it’s job creation and recruitment of key employers,” Cioffi said. “Most of the time we are working on the retention and growth of key employers who are already in Vermont — seeking to help them be competitive from their Vermont locations and keep and grow good jobs for working Vermonters.”
One of Cioffi’s chief talents is conflict resolution, Bradbury said.
“Frank, in his role at GBIC, is most often brought in to help think things through, to bring parties who are sometimes in conflict together to find a solution,” Bradbury said. “He’s got the relationships in the private sector, at the community level with town boards and planning commissions, and at the business leadership level that uniquely gets these parties aligned around big issues. Every governor I have seen in the state of Vermont typically reaches out to Frank for counsel for problem-solving, and for trying to craft and implement tax regulatory investment policies that make Vermont a bit more vibrant and easier to do business in.”
Family Matters
Cioffi grew up in St Albans. His mother’s side of the family is Irish; they’ve been in Vermont since 1844.
“My maternal grandfather, Michael O’Heare, was the postmaster in St Albans. When he retired, he was a state representative for two years,” Cioffi said. “They were Democrats.”
His father’s ancestors came to Vermont from Italy in the 1940s.
“When my father’s father, Modestine Cioffi, landed at Ellis Island, he changed his name to George A Cioffi,” Cioffi said. “He took the name George after George Washington. My grandfather was 16 years old, and he traveled with two of his brothers, who were 15 and 14 years old. My grandfather became a barber in New York City and then moved to St Albans with one of his brothers because of the railroad. St Albans then had 10,000 more residents because of the railroad. He was naturalized and served in the US Army during World War I. He served on the St Albans City Council and was very active in the Democratic party. He died when I was in fourth grade.”
When Cioffi’s grandfather came to St Albans, the primarily French-speaking population couldn’t quite pronounce Cioffi the Italian way (Che-off-ee or Chio-fee).
“And the WASPs wouldn’t use the Italian pronunciation, so they pronounced if ‘coffee’,” Cioffi said. “My grandfather let them pronounce our name that way in St Albans. When he was outside of Vermont, he pronounced it the correct way.”
Cioffi’s father also started out as a barber.
“But when the Beatles came in, he decided that he better get out of barbering, so he went into real estate,” Cioffi said. “He was very successful in real estate and in banking. He died in 2020 at the age of 89 from kidney disease.”
Cioffi’s mother is a registered nurse.
“She worked in the operating room in two hospitals in St Albans when I was growing up,” Cioffi said. “She’s phenomenal. She’s creative and kind and compassionate, just like everything you think of in a nurse. She has a lot of self-initiative. She and my dad were incredible partners and great parents.”
Cioffi is the oldest of four. “And we’re all still here in Vermont, which is great,” Cioffi said. “In fact, my siblings spend nights with my mom to this day. My dad built their retirement home, which was set up so they wouldn't have to go into a nursing home. It’s across the street from one of my sisters’ homes and my brother’s home as well.”
Cioffi credits his parents for his love of family and his strong work ethic.
“I think one of the greatest things is to understand the importance of family and community and friends,” Cioffi said. “My parents are very family oriented. They had a tremendous work ethic. They both worked very hard, but family always came first. And to this day, anyone in our extended family that’s coming to Vermont, and certainly to the St Albans area, ends up at their house. Growing up, we had guests at dinner probably seven nights a week.”
Cioffi remembers Senator Leahy visiting the house when he was first running to go to Washington.
“My mom and Marcelle Leahy still write back and forth to each other almost every week,” Cioffi said. “My dad was on the city council in St Albans and did a lot of things for the community. My parents donated some land for a recreation area. And my dad loved dogs, so there’s a dog park on part of the land now. He donated the water and the sewer infrastructure so that the ski hill now can make snow. Now they have a lodge there, and they just put in the community swimming pool.”
This might seem like the height of generosity, but Cioffi says his father was very frugal.
“It’s not like it was writing a big check,” he said. “He put the water and sewer in when he was building a development and just extended the lines to them. The land he donated was part of a development that he was doing. It seemed like the right thing to do.”
Cioffi Field in St Albans was donated in the name of Cioffi’s uncle.
“When he passed away, his children endowed the Little League field because my uncle was very involved in Little League Baseball from his early days,” Cioffi said. “So, all that came from my grandfather and his public service. He was an immigrant, and so are my Irish relatives. They’re all very community-minded and felt the need to give back to the community.”
Cioffi began working as a young teenager.
“We had a little cottage on Lake Champlain, up in St Albans Bay, and there was a farm nearby,” he said. “I started working on the farm at 13 until I was 17 and I could get a job at the credit union. We worked about 70 hours a week. it was a tremendous opportunity. We did everything from shoveling manure to milking cows and baling hay. We didn’t cut the hay — the farmer did all the cutting — but we did some of the baling and collected all the hay and stuck it in the barn. That was a great foundation to learn how to work, and I carried that on. I don’t think I’ve stopped working since I was 13.”
An Enduring Thread
A love affair with the University of Vermont is an enduring thread in Cioffi’s story. He went to UVM for political science and ended up being a politician.
“Our student government dissolved itself when I was a junior,” he said. “It was over opposition to the tunnel going under Main Street, of all the crazy things. I joined a group of students to help rewrite the constitution and the governing documents. I became really interested in student government, so I ran for the Student Senate. I was in my junior year at UVM and I wanted to go to law school, so I applied to work in the Legislative Council in Montpelier. And I was on a student government committee that had representatives to the board of trustees.”
It was fate that brought Cioffi to a board meeting on the day the trustees had just toured the UVM dorms; it was the 1970s, and in Coolidge Hall they saw men and women cohabiting and doing who-knows-what-else.
“One trustee came back and was pretty ticked off at what he had just seen,” Cioffi said. “He made the motion to do away with co-educational housing.”
When it came time to vote, the chair told Cioffi he couldn’t participate. “I asked why, and they said, ‘Well, you’re a student member. You don’t have a vote.’ And I said, ‘We’ll see about that.’”
Cioffi researched the UVM charter.
“I found out that the only way to guarantee that students could have a vote was to have trustees who were students,” Cioffi said. “In order to make that happen, the UVM charter needed to be amended by the Vermont Legislature and approved by the governor. I proposed a plan to do that and ran for Student Government president with that as one of my campaign priorities. I was elected and spent my year lobbying the Legislature and the governor to approve the bill and add two students as voting members of the UVM Board of Trustees.
We were successful in our initiative; the Legislature passed our bill and Governor Snelling signed it into law.
Photo: Frank Cioffi (in light suit) and others stand behind Governor Snelling as the bill to create student Trustees on the UVM board was signed into law in 1977. Courtesy photo.
Since 1978, there have been two trustees who are students as full voting members on the UVM and State Agricultural College boards of trustees.
That vote to end co-habitation failed, by the way.
The student trustee program that Cioffi initiated has brought a great diversity to the board, said board president Lumbra.
“They make sure that the student voice is being heard,” Lumbra said. “Frank was a pioneer, and that’s a legacy that has benefited us for a couple of decades. That’s a great example of a person who really thinks about making sure all voices are heard and perspectives are brought into the boardroom. Of course, the student trustees don’t have the business wisdom or life experience that other trustees have. But they’re in the game. They’re on campus. They’re feeling the place day to day and bringing that perspective to us. Frank gets full credit.”
What distinguishes Cioffi is that he truly loves the university, Lumbra said.
“He is loyal, he is committed, he is ever mindful of the importance of the university and the responsibility of the university as an economic and cultural driver in the state — and the university’s responsibility to the state as a result,” Lumbra said.
After UVM
Cioffi planned to be a lawyer but deferred admission to law school because he had received two job offers. He took one, was sent to Texas and loved the state but absolutely hated the job. At his father’s suggestion, he had already gotten his real estate license during his junior year at UVM. So, he came back to Vermont and started working in real estate.
“I didn’t really think I was ready to go into real estate at that point, but my father was teaching me,” Cioffi said. “At the same time, he owned a property in downtown St Albans that I helped him renovate. We put a convenience store in there. And at that point, law school was out of the question because I was out and active and I just kind of kept going.”
Cioffi helped a friend of his, Jerry Diamond, run for governor.
“He ended up winning the primary, but he got his clock cleaned by Governor Snelling in the general election,” Cioffi said. “That was really interesting, because I got the opportunity to work with Governor Snelling a few years later, which was one of the greatest learning experiences of my life.”
Next, Cioffi and three friends built and ran a bar in downtown Burlington.
“I only owned it for a couple of years,” he said. “I definitely knew that was not going to be a career path.”
In 1980, Cioffi and a friend brought Bob Marley to Burlington.
“We did two shows at the Memorial Auditorium,” he said. “That was our one shot at concert promotion. We didn’t make any money, but we didn’t lose any money. It was one of the coolest things ever, to think that you could hang out with Bob Marley.”
Marley was only a year away from his death at that point and didn’t have much to say. But 15 years later, when Marley’s son Ziggy and his band came through Burlington, Cioffi brought a poster from his show and gave it to him. Ziggy’s mother, Rita Marley, who was there, had also been at the first Burlington show and remembered it, so Cioffi got to hang out backstage with her and the band.
“Bob Marley was a very spiritual and enlightening person who, through his music, continues to touch so many people around the world to this day,” Cioffi said. “I felt quite humbled to have met Bob Marley, Rita Marley and the Wailers and bring them to Vermont. What a tremendously meaningful experience.”
In 1982 Cioffi applied for and got a job with the Franklin County Industrial Development Corp.
“I was thinking that I wanted to learn industrial real estate,” Cioffi said. “I didn’t understand that it was economic development and industrial development.”
Cioffi then had a front-row seat watching Governor Snelling put together the economic platform that still operates in Vermont today.
“He was absolutely, incredibly brilliant,” Cioffi said. “And he really laid the foundation for a lot of the value-added enterprises here in Vermont. Snelling was a complex thinker. Vermont in the mid-1900s started focusing on manufacturing. GBIC was created in 1954. The textile mills were going out of business throughout the state, and the local leaders in Burlington decided they wanted to recruit manufacturing companies and create manufacturing jobs in our area. Rutland County was focused on the same thing. And Windham County was as well. So, the three areas created economic development corporations, nonprofit entities that would work with the state and federal government to attract manufacturing companies to the state. Job creation and job retention were the primary emphases.”
Ultimately, Snelling created 12 regions for economic development and land use planning — the regional planning commissions that are still in operation today. The idea was to build industrial parks and market the state to manufacturers.
GBIC created its first industrial park in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Essex Junction.
“They were so fortunate that Tom Watson came to Vermont to ski,” Cioffi said. “He owned Smugglers’ Notch Ski Area, which was Madonna Mountain at the time. He ended up buying our spec building, and he bought our whole industrial park, which became IBM Vermont.”
Snelling favored building industrial parks throughout the state.
“I think, had Snelling been able to continue on, you may not have seen as many of the shopping mall areas on our interstate exits,” Cioffi said. “Those would have been industrial parks. In Snelling’s world, that’s where you put industry. You kind of drove retail into downtown areas. That was his philosophy. But the state stopped funding the creation of industrial parks after he left his term of office in the early 1980s.”
Foray Into Government
Cioffi ran Franklin County Industrial Development for two years.
“I wasn’t making much money and had my first child, and thought I better start earning more money,” Cioffi said. “So, I went out and started a business with some college friends. At the same time, I got more interested in real estate. So, I went into real estate with my dad as well.”
Cioffi continued working with his father until 1995. Then Snelling ran again, won, but soon died in office. His lieutenant governor, Howard Dean, who was Cioffi’s good friend, became governor.
“I was very supportive of him and very encouraging of him to continue on with Snelling’s economic plans, which he did,” Cioffi said. “Howard appointed me to the Community Development Board. In 1994, he called me and asked if he could appoint me to a state Senate seat. I said, ‘You’re going to be losing your economic development commissioner in the summer. I’ll come in and give you a couple of years doing that and helping you to restructure the Agency of Commerce and Community Development.’ He basically said, ‘OK, done!’”
One of Cioffi's jobs was to close a deal with IBM to secure a multimillion-dollar investment to upgrade all the machinery and equipment to 8-inch wafer manufacturing at its Vermont site. Another was recruiting Husky.
When Cioffi decided to leave state government, he was offered a few private-sector jobs that were financially attractive. But by then he had the economic development bug. When GBIC approached him in 1998, he took the job and never looked back.
“I walked in the door here and have been here ever since,” Cioffi said. “I love every minute of it.”
Photo: It was the tumultuous day IBM announced it was selling its Vermont chip plant to GlobalFoundries, October 20, 2014. Everyone was very nervous and full of trepidation. In the end, it frankly could not have worked out better for the plant or the state. VermontBiz photo.
The Need for Industrial Parks
As an advocate of Snelling’s development ideas, Cioffi believes the lack of federal and state funding for industrial parks has put Vermont into crisis mode.
“During the Kunin era, we could have bought 400 acres of land at Exit 12 in Williston,” Cioffi said. “That’s where Walmart and Home Depot are today. Private sector bought the land and put it into retail. You have to subsidize land for industrial parks. We’re there for jobs, not for real estate development. It’s great that the private sector is entrepreneurial, but certain parts of the land must be set aside to have a manufacturing economy.”
GBIC has developed seven industrial parks since the 1960s.
“Our last park was developed in the mid-1980s,” Cioffi said. “That’s the Catamount Industrial Park. There are only two remaining lots in that park. We could have sold that park out completely 20 years ago. But we tried to allocate the sales to employers who would be manufacturing or manufacturing related.”
When the state and federal government were still funding industrial parks, organizations like GBIC would use the money to buy land and help the municipalities put in the infrastructure.
“You could do that knowing that you’re not going to get a quick turnaround on the sales if you’re holding the lots for manufacturing,” Cioffi said. “When I’m looking at Chittenden and Franklin counties today — and we’re basically the same economic region — there are fewer than 20 remaining industrial lots in both counties. And that’s not many, when you’re looking at the availability for the future. It’s something I think we as a state need to reckon with. Leaders in government need to look at committing to plan for the future.”
Cioffi has been concerned about manufacturing disappearing from Vermont.
“When I came back to economic development in my 40s, we had nearly 26% of our workforce in manufacturing,” Cioffi said. “Today, it’s less than 10%, and that’s the same in the country as it is here in Vermont. That is an important number.”
Encouraging “onshoring,” or bringing manufacturing back home from abroad, has become a national topic of discussion.
“It covers everything from defense to sourcing product, to strategic elements of our economy from a technology standpoint,” Cioffi said. “The majority of the logic chips in the world are built in Taiwan. From a defense standpoint, onshoring strategic manufacturing is going to be a matter of national security and national defense in the future. The pandemic is one of those events that was not only a health event, but an economic event and a social event as well.”
Growing the Workforce
Vermont manufacturing is high-end, Cioffi said.
“Most of the manufacturing companies here — about 90%-plus of them — are not making lower-end products,” Cioffi said. “They’re making higher-value products that end up costing more. You can’t be in a high-cost environment and make a low-cost product. The products that are made here are at the higher end of the value chain. They pay very, very high wages.”
Vermont will lose the low-pay manufacturers, Cioffi said.
“They won’t get the employees,” Cioffi said.
The state needs workers, so growing the population is key to any kind of economic development. Cioffi supports generous immigration policies, for example.
“In our region, we’ve been very successful over the years at attracting new Americans,” he said. “That has been so enriching to our region. Look at Winooski: Today, 25% of the population is from diverse backgrounds or ethnicities. And that has made a huge and dynamic contribution to the enrichment of our region, especially in Chittenden County.”
Retention of young people is another key to growing the population.
“We need to retain a good number of the young people who are graduating from our institutions of higher education,” Cioffi said. “We attract about 40,000 college and university students here annually, which means we’re graduating between 8,000 and 10,000 of them annually. We’ve got to try to retain as many of them to work here as we possibly can.”
One way to keep students here would be introducing them to employers while they’re still in school.
“We encourage more internships and career introduction early on in the academic career of students,” Cioffi said. “That is something that was pretty much led by the state colleges. Here in our region, it was something that Champlain College was doing as part of their curriculum. They taught UVM how to do it as well. I think we’re making great strides at all the colleges.”
Some internships are paid, others simply bolster a student’s résumé. But do these students stay on in Vermont after graduation?
“I don’t have the latest data, but we’re working on it,” Cioffi said. “That’s one of our summer projects.”
Then there are high school students. Vermont graduates about 6,000 high schoolers a year, but 52% of them neither enter higher education nor the job market. They “go on to nothing,” Cioffi said.
“I can tell you from real-life experience that 1,000 of them are addicted to something — because my daughter was,” he said. “I watched her start to go off the pathway when she was a junior in high school. Later, she dropped out of higher education in her second semester. Then her life ended — and the data became real to me.”
Addiction is a scourge that continues to plague the state, Cioffi said.
“I would think there’s 12,000 to 20,000 Vermonters who don’t participate in the workforce in our state because of addiction in some regard,” he said.
One solution, he said, would involve allowing students in all grades of high school to go full-time into career technical education. The problem is that taking students out of the general school population has a negative effect on the amount of education money schools get from the state’s complex funding formula. So GBIC is making it a priority to talk to legislators and find a solution to the problem.
“The governor proposed additional funding for career technical education centers, and we will try to engage legislators and policymakers, but also high schools and superintendencies,” Cioffi said. “I don’t think this is all going to happen legislatively; I think it’s going to have to happen by high schools taking their own pathways as well. This may take a couple of years to figure out from a curriculum standpoint. But this is a problem that we must solve. We can’t afford to have 3,000 high school graduates not participating in the labor force.”
Retirees Are the Future
It may sound counterintuitive, but retirees might be the immediate answer to the workforce problem, according to Cioffi.
“The core of economic development is to take care of what you have first,” Cioffi said. “Before my daughter died, I had planned on retiring this year. In some ways, the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life is raising a special needs child. But I can tell you, it’s the most joyful thing ever. It’s also been the most re-energizing thing for me, personally and professionally. I’m in the third quarter of my life, the way I look at it. If it’s a basketball game, there are four quarters. In our office, we have three people over 62 years old, and each one of them has decades of experience. I’d have to hire six people to be able to do what they do, from a level of experience, and just the dynamism of what they can do. Vermont is going to need retirees.”
The whole country may eventually need to rely on retirees.
“The country needs its retirees to get us building a workforce for the future,” Cioffi said. “Especially in this state, when we’re not growing our population, we need to reengage those who have gone into early retirement to come back into the workforce. Some of them might not be doing what they were doing previously. Some of them might be doing it part time. Some of them are going to be doing other things. But that’s how we can strategically bring our workforce back to its full potential while we are building a workforce for the future.”
One of Cioffi’s passions is early-childhood care and education.
“At the GBIC, we started working with the Business Roundtable about 12 years ago on pre-K and early child care,” Cioffi said. “We’re very supportive of the efforts of Let’s Grow Kids to focus on early chil care and full-time pre-K. In Vermont, we really see that as an economic leveler and probably the best economic development investment that you could make.”
The trick is to figure out how to pay for it; full-time early child care is expensive.
“I know the governor is committed to working with legislators and Let’s Grow Kids to figure out early child care over the next two years,” Cioffi said. “We need to make that something that could be a full-time offering. Why would an economic-development person be so focused on education? Because I’m focused on demographics, and economics and education are our pathways to ensuring that people can provide for themselves later on.”
It’s been obvious that support for early child care is needed, but it never happens. Why is that? “Governance and politics are the two reasons,” Cioffi said. “Governance and politics are not going away, but the situations we’re in are not going away, either.”
Landing the F-35
Cioffi put together the community effort to land the F-35 in the face of furious opposition, mainly due to noise concerns but also worries about the militarization of Burlington.
“The F-35 basing was 100% retention of 900-plus jobs,” Cioffi said. “There were no new jobs, which really didn’t matter because the basing represented the retention of 900-plus jobs that have annual payroll and benefits of over $62 million. In addition, there were over $150 million in capital improvements done on the air base. Lastly, the Air Guard provides fire and emergency services to the airport for free, which saves the airport over $2.8 million in annual operating costs. The lifespan of a fighter jet has historically been about 40 years. Therefore, the basing to us represented a 40-plus-year opportunity for our region and for Vermont. Like any other enterprise, if we provide a welcoming environment and do our best to not overburden a good employer with taxes and unnecessary regulations, then we are likely to retain the employer.”
Some 240 aviators from the Vermont Air Guard — and their F-35s — have just spent six months deployed to Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany as part of NATO’s air policing mission.
Cioffi’s involvement with the Armed Forces dates back many years, through the State Department’s State Partnership Program.
“I got to know Frank through this program,” said Brigadier General Henry “Hank” Harder of the Vermont Air National Guard. “They marry up countries with National Guard units of the 54 states and territories and District of Columbia to help with professionalization of their militaries. Ultimately, the hope is for economic and civic ties as well.”
Harder once traveled with Cioffi to Senegal, which has had a relationship with the Vermont National Guard since 2008.
“After that trip, Frank became interested in the mission of the National Guard,” Harder said. “In around 2015 or 2016 he became a United States Air Force civic leader. Between 50 and 60 people across the country represent their regions; Frank was representing the region of New England to the United States Air Force at the highest levels. It’s a way for the Air Force to interact with people from the business community, academia and NGOs to educate them on the mission of the Air Force. Those prominent individuals help the Air Force with their professional development and help them to advance and mature and grow.”
Cioffi is now a civic leader emeritus, but for a while he had intimate access — at dinners and parties — to both the secretary and the chief of staff of the Air Force.
“I continue to serve as an emeritus member of the United States Air Force chief of staff’s Civic Leader Program,” Cioffi said. “I plan to continue to serve as long as I am capable. I also serve as an honorary commander of the Vermont Air National Guard.”
It was Cioffi’s relationships with the Air Force that helped in the fight to bring the F-35s to Vermont.
“I think Frank’s ability to interact with Air Force leaders at the senior level helped to bring back some of that knowledge and educate some people in our community about what the F-35s were going to mean to Burlington and the Vermont National Guard from a mission standpoint and an economic standpoint,” Harder said. “He was able to translate the importance of that program to folks that perhaps didn’t know what it was about.”
The military has certainly learned how to manage public relations.
“We’ve learned that we need to educate our citizens about what we do, because sometimes they don’t really understand it,” Harder said. “The greatest talent we have in the Vermont National Guard, Air and Army, is our people. And Frank was able to translate that information to places like the Burlington City Council and the South Burlington City Council and Winooski. It doesn’t mean that you always change minds. But it allows you to communicate on a level where you have a well-known person in the Vermont business community telling our story, not somebody in uniform. It’s somebody in a civilian jacket and tie saying, ‘Hey, these folks are well-trained professionals. They’re here to help our national defense and help the state of Vermont and the governor. And here’s how they do it. Therefore, you should alter your perspective on what you think the guard is.’ So that was helpful to us.”
Cooperation goes both ways. In 2020, during the pandemic, the Vermont National Guard converted a convention center in Essex Junction into a pop-up 400-bed hospital in mere days.
“That was unprecedented,” Harder said. “And it’s just one example of how, if we didn’t have a strong Guard, they wouldn’t have been able to react the way they did in a state of emergency. That’s why it’s important to have a well-trained, well-equipped National Guard, both Army and Air.”
Photo: Frank Cioffi, Marcelle and Senator Patrick Leahy with USAF Civic Leader Mary Graham and Ernie Pomerleau when the F-35s were welcomed to the VTANG base. Courtesy photo.
Still a Thrill
Cioffi does not intend to leave the UVM Board of Trustees anytime soon; instead, he will ask the governor for reappointment when his current term ends in 2023.
“I want to continue to serve until the university completes the work it began before the pandemic to improve our athletic campus, which includes the Tarrant Center, Gutterson Arena improvements and creation of more health and wellness facilities and programs for all students and the campus community,” he said. “I also want to challenge UVM to design a residential master plan that has a goal of creating 2,000 beds of new housing for UVM students to help open many apartments in Burlington to workforce housing for working Vermonters.”
Cioffi’s priority will always be his grandson.
“I will probably create a foundation for Frankie,” Cioffi said. “I expect that will lead to working with other families with children and young adults with special needs to find care and lifelong living and learning homes for them.
“So, my pursuit will be twofold: seeking to work with autism providers and the university to create an autism center in Vermont, and to work with other families to create residential living communities for special needs adults, mostly those who are non-neurotypical.”
Cioffi has no plan to leave any of the many boards and working groups on which he sits.
“I serve on the State Workforce Investment Board and will continue to serve at the pleasure of the governor,” he said. “I serve as chair of the board of directors of the Peoples Trust Company, and plan to continue in that role as long as possible. I serve on the boards of directors of the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies and the Vermont Technology Council and will continue to serve as long as I can make a positive contribution. I will also continue to volunteer to help raise money to maintain and improve the cemetery where my daughter and other family members have been laid to rest.”
So, the tireless Frank Cioffi will not be retiring any time soon.
“If Alexa had stayed alive, I’d probably be retired from GBIC,” he said. “But life kind of throws stuff out at you. And I just I love my job. I’m lucky to have a job that I don’t really feel like it’s a job. It’s more passion than anything. So, it’s thrilling to be here.”
Joyce Marcel is a journalist in southern Vermont. In 2017, she was named the best business magazine profile writer in the country by the Alliance of Area Business Publishers. She is married to Randy Holhut, the news editor/acting operations manager of The Commons, a weekly newspaper in Brattleboro.