Cascadia Innovation Corridor Conference Highlights

The Cascadia Innovation Corridor held its 4th annual conference in Seattle, Washington on October 2-3. The corridor, which connects Vancouver, Seattle and Portland, is an initiative created in an effort to develop opportunity and prosperity across borders.

The vision is to become a global hub for innovation, tackling challenges such as improved connectivity, economic development, transportation and health outcomes for people locally and globally. The annual conference brings together business, academic and government leaders across borders to discuss challenges, opportunities and future goals for the Cascadia Corridor.

This year, in particular, the conference focused on creating a vision for the Cascadia Corridor for 2035, the future of mobility, federal partnerships and becoming a leader in the global community. Highlights included:

  • Supercluster CEO, Sue Paish, moderated a panel that discussed how Cascadia can lead in the global community. The discussion focused on how we can become a global leader in health care research/treatment/prevention, global economic and political challenges and increasing our talent base to prepare students and workers for future job opportunities .
  • Supercluster Co-Founder and COO, Bill Tam has been involved since the inception of the Cascadia Innovation Corridor concept and served on the Steering Committee for this year’s conference.
  • Vancouver Economic Commission (VEC) and Great Seattle Partners (GSP) formalized the Cascadia Economic Development Agreement (CEDA).
  • BC Premier John Horgan and Washington Governor Jay Inslee unveiled a joint clean grid initiative, marking an effort to combat climate change.
  • The Cascadia Data Discovery Initiative, bringing together research organizations such as UBC, BC Cancer, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research, to accelerate cancer research through a shared data platform.