Leadership Spotlight: An Interview with Sally J. Guzik, President

In October, Sally J. Guzik became President of Fourth Economy, assuming the mantle from co-founder Rich Overmoyer. Sally joined the team as a Vice President during Steer’s 2021 acquisition of Fourth Economy. With a deep understanding of the company’s core values and its people, Sally will expand the firm’s approach to utilizing human-centered engagement, holistic data analysis, and creative strategy to help communities thrive.

We asked Sally to reflect on her leadership, the growth of the firm, and what she has learned from working with clients to develop their economies. 

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This transition comes at Fourth Economy’s 15th anniversary. How would you describe this milestone – for you, the firm, and more broadly?

It feels like a hinge point, where the past and future meet. Personally, it’s the right mix of familiarity and stretch. I know this team deeply, but I also see the new ground we can cover together. For the firm, our fifteenth year is not just a milestone but a chance to sharpen our identity while widening our reach through closer alignment with Steer North America. And more broadly, communities are asking for partners who do more than write reports; they want people who will listen, work across silos, and stay with them through the hard work of implementation. Housing and health are converging. Workforce needs are shifting. Public funding cycles are unpredictable, but local resolve is strong. This moment calls for being practical and people-first, while still daring enough to be ambitious.

What have been the initiatives or projects you led over the past four years that had the biggest impact on you and the firm, helping you to arrive at this hinge point, as you so beautifully put it?

The Central New York effort stands apart. Beginning in 2022, as Micron announced plans to invest tens of billions in the region, we were asked to help design and guide a multi-county process for what became the Green CHIPS Community Investment Fund, a 500 million dollar commitment to ensure that the benefits of that investment reach every corner of the community. It was work of a rare kind, the kind that comes once in a generation. I saw how the steady gathering of voices, when listened to and organized, could shape investment on a scale that alters the future. I am still rooting for that region.

Just as meaningful has been the chance to learn beside the Fourth Economy team as they have moved across industries and geographies, helping communities understand change before it arrives. In 2023, working in partnership with the Chamber of Progress and Steer, the team studied autonomous vehicles as a force that could rewire the future of long-standing manufacturing regions. The question that sat at the heart of it was simple and sharp: will public policy open the door wider, or will it close it quietly?

With LA Metro, beginning that same year, we explored how one of the nation’s largest transit systems might also become a vessel for equity in a city that is always in motion. In Westchester County, New York, our work turned toward food access and community health, noticing how the most ordinary detail, what ends up on the dinner table, shapes whether people can fully take part in economic life.

At the Port of Portland in Oregon, we joined Steer to look deeply at trade and transport. The work, which included an economic impact analysis, a study of wider benefits, and a review of workforce demographics and equity, reminded me that ports are never just about ships or goods. They are about people, livelihoods, and who is carried forward by global trade and who is left behind.

Here in Pennsylvania, where I am based, the team has taken on statewide strategies in agriculture and housing, two pillars of community life that must adapt to stay strong. And the economic mobility projects we have led, from Oregon to New Hampshire, continue to show how families can move forward when systems, not just individuals, are built to help them thrive.

What holds all of this together is the way the team works, with a steady kind of curiosity. They begin by listening, not just to the words but to the silences, the pauses where need and hope often live. From that ground, they shape strategies that belong to the people who will carry them forward. They keep sharpening how to measure, how to convene, how to translate complexity into something useful for daily life.

It is both care and challenge. They care enough to stay with the hard questions, to see the people behind the numbers, and to carry that weight with respect. And they challenge assumptions, even their own, so that new ways of seeing can appear. I see them asking communities, and one another, to imagine futures that feel real, rooted in place, and worth the effort it will take to bring them to life.

What are the guiding principles you have followed to achieve this work? Which of them did you bring into the organization with you, and which have you learned through working with Fourth Economy clients?

Pay close regard to people and place, because the details of daily life often hold the truest answers. Hold on to a sense of wonder, because it keeps the work alive and helps you see possibility where others see only obstacles.

Much of this comes from the hard-working women in my family, who shaped me in every possible way while facing some of life’s hardest circumstances. From them I learned that purpose is not a luxury, it is survival. That endurance is not about speed, but about returning again and again with care, even when the path is rough.

I carried those lessons into Fourth Economy: a belief that every project should leave something better than it found it, whether that is a process, a relationship, or a community’s confidence in its own strength. I brought with me a discipline of hard work, not the kind that burns out but the kind that understands the long horizon. This work asks for endurance, for patience, for the willingness to return to the task until it takes hold.

From our clients I have learned that compassion is not easy. It asks you to stay with complexity when it would be simpler to step away, to listen when it would be easier to fill the silence, to hold tension when smoothing it over would be quicker. I have also learned that curiosity is not a passing trait but a discipline. It means following questions to their end, testing ideas with openness, and being willing to learn in full view of others.

This forms the ground I stand on: wonder and purpose, endurance and compassion, curiosity and respect. They guide how I lead, how I stand beside the team, and how I know whether the work we do matters.

Since joining Fourth Economy, you have been instrumental in growing the team from 11 to 20 people. What strategic decisions have you made to hire and retain talent, and how do you see the talent of the Fourth Economy team reflected in client results?

Our team is full of people who bring both talent and heart. They could do many things, but they choose to put their energy here, helping communities imagine and build stronger futures. That choice humbles me. You can see it in the trust our clients place in us and in the way the work carries on long after a project ends.

When we welcome someone new, I am struck by how many people feel called to this kind of work. Every interview is a reminder that there is a wide circle of people who want to help, and I feel honored when someone chooses to join us. We look for curiosity, for kindness, for people who are ready to listen and to learn, and who want to leave things better than they found them.

I think often of Mr. Rogers’ invitation to notice the helpers. Our team is made of helpers. My role as a leader is to make space for them to do their best work, to clear the path when it gets tangled, and to notice not only what they achieve but the care they bring to achieving it.

The most strategic choice we have made in growing the team is to hire for values and curiosity as much as for skills. We look for people who want to listen first, who carry both humility and ambition, and who believe that leaving a community stronger than they found it is the real measure of success. Once here, we work hard to create an environment where people feel trusted, supported, and stretched. Growth comes from the balance of encouragement and challenge, from knowing that your work matters and that someone will notice the effort you put into it.

You can see the talent of this team reflected directly in client results. Projects move from ideas into action because the team knows how to bridge strategy with implementation. Communities attract new investments and see strategies take root because our staff stay present long enough to guide the hard parts of change. Clients return to us because they know the work will be both rigorous and caring, and because the people they meet at Fourth Economy help them feel more confident to take on ambitious goals.

What are you hoping to achieve in your first year as President? And where do you hope to take Fourth Economy in the coming years?

In my first year, I want to set a strong foundation for what comes next. That means making sure our projects are managed with clarity, our people feel supported in the long work of change, and our clients know we are beside them from the very beginning through to the work’s lasting impact. It also means strengthening our ties with Steer so that together we can bring both local insight and global perspective to the communities we serve.

In the years ahead, I hope to take Fourth Economy deeper into the work that matters most: the ties between housing and health, the ways workforce and industry shift together, and the intersections where climate resilience, education, and childcare shape whether people have real access to opportunity. These are not separate issues. They move together, and the future of a community depends on whether we choose to see the whole picture.

I want us to be known not just for strategies written on paper, but for helping communities carry them into practice. That looks like investments taking root, leaders building confidence, and clients feeling empowered to take on ambitious goals with excitement.

The future of this firm is not only about growth, though we will grow. It is about being a place where curiosity is honored, where endurance is practiced as part of the craft, and where compassion and rigor move hand in hand. If we can do that, we will leave communities stronger and keep learning ourselves. That, to me, is the real measure of success.

Work is just one facet of your multidimensional life. What are some of the ways that your life beyond Fourth Economy enriches your work, and some of the ways that your work enriches other parts of your life?

My life and my work move together, though not always in balance. I have an enormous record collection, and I still listen to albums start to finish, in order. I like that practice, especially in a world where most things are neither linear nor intentional. It reminds me to stay with something from beginning to end, to hear it as a whole.

During the pandemic I also picked up fishing. It gave me a sense of peace, the kind where time can slip by unnoticed. For now, with young children, it is something I do less often, but I look forward to the day when they are older and can share it with me.

I am a parent of two young children, still learning how to balance time. Adding another child has stretched me in ways I did not expect, and I am not always good at saying no, especially to the things that matter most. Like many, I face the realities of childcare, of caring for family, of the complicated and emotional choices that come with responsibility. These experiences are not distractions from leadership. They are what make me more honest in it.

I have lived through trauma and hard circumstances, and they taught me endurance, gratitude, and how to find laughter even when things are hardest. That sense of purpose is something I choose each day.

All of this shapes how I lead at Fourth Economy. It keeps me aware that economic development is never abstract. It is about people living complicated, beautiful, difficult lives, and creating the conditions where opportunity and access are not the exception, but the rule.