Ascension is seeking a senior strategic-planning professional who can independently lead a complex, time-sensitive consulting engagement involving:

• Local economic and tourism development;
• Government and community stakeholder engagement;
• Economic and labor-market research;
• Strategic prioritization;
• Action and implementation planning;
• Performance-measure development;
• Executive-level facilitation; and
• Preparation and presentation of a formal public-sector strategic plan.

The selected consultant must be comfortable working with County officials, appointed commission members, businesses, nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, workforce partners, tourism stakeholders, community leaders, and regional organizations.

This individual should be an organized and decisive project leader who can work with limited supervision, anticipate project risks, reconcile differing stakeholder perspectives, and maintain momentum through multiple review and approval cycles. The position requires strong judgment, political awareness, facilitation skills, analytical discipline, and the ability to convert complex information into clear recommendations suitable for public presentation and adoption.

Ascension’s existing capabilities include strategic planning, program analysis, stakeholder facilitation, data analysis, performance-measure development, project coordination, and organizational improvement. The Project Lead will apply these capabilities specifically within the economic and tourism development domain.

Summary of the Contractor Role

The Strategic Planning Project Lead will have primary responsibility for planning, managing, and developing the 2027 Economic & Tourism Development Strategic Plan.

The consultant will review the County’s 2022 plan and its implementation status; assess available resources, constraints, and opportunities; analyze current economic and tourism data; facilitate stakeholder and community engagement; evaluate Kent County against selected peer jurisdictions; and develop recommendations across five required strategic areas:

1. Business attraction and competitiveness;
2. Business retention and expansion;
3. Entrepreneurship and small-business development;
4. Workforce development; and
5. Tourism development.

The Project Lead will author the strategic plan, while Kent County’s Economic and Tourism Development staff will provide data, stakeholder coordination, review, input, and refinement. The County expects the consultant—not County staff—to perform the day-to-day drafting and lead the development of the final product.

The completed plan must include a mission and shared vision, priority goals, short-term and medium-term strategies, actionable recommendations, responsible parties, required resources, implementation timeframes, and performance measures. The final plan will be presented to the Kent County Commissioners for adoption.

Day-to-Day and Project Activities

The Strategic Planning Project Lead will:

• Lead project initiation, kickoff activities, scope confirmation, and development of the detailed project work plan.
• Develop and maintain the project schedule, milestones, review dates, decision points, dependencies, and deliverable status.
• Review the 2022 Economic & Tourism Development Strategic Plan, implementation progress, existing County studies, regional plans, and related economic-development materials.
• Assess completed initiatives, ongoing activities, lessons learned, existing performance measures, and unresolved priorities from the previous strategic plan.
• Coordinate data requests and research activities with Kent County’s Department of Economic and Tourism Development.
• Analyze economic, demographic, workforce, industry, business, and tourism data from sources such as ESRI, Lightcast, Tourism Impact Studies, the USDA Census of Agriculture, the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, and Eastern Shore Business Sentiment Surveys.
• Select three to five appropriate peer counties or jurisdictions based on rural characteristics, economic composition, industry mix, demographic profile, and tourism assets.
• Compare Kent County’s competitive position, assets, infrastructure, workforce, business environment, tourism resources, and economic-development practices against selected peer jurisdictions.
• Identify three to five priority business sectors supported by a documented, data-based rationale.
• Evaluate Kent County’s existing business-attraction practices and identify opportunities involving infrastructure, zoning, permitting, prospect engagement, and other business-climate improvements.
• Assess current business-retention and expansion activities, including business visitation, supply-chain opportunities, communications, responsiveness, workforce constraints, infrastructure, and regulatory barriers.
• Map the entrepreneurship and small-business support ecosystem, including available lenders, mentors, educational institutions, technical-assistance providers, the Small Business Development Center, and other business-support resources.
• Evaluate current and anticipated workforce needs by industry, occupation, skill, and education level.
• Analyze workforce barriers involving housing, transportation, childcare, digital access, labor availability, employee retention, and alignment between employers and education or training providers.
• Assess tourism assets and gaps involving lodging, amenities, recreation, wayfinding, visitor services, waterfront experiences, events, cultural offerings, and high-value visitor segments.
• Develop and execute a scalable stakeholder engagement plan in coordination with County staff.
• Facilitate interviews, workshops, stakeholder sessions, community meetings, partner discussions, and leadership meetings.
• Prepare agendas, interview guides, discussion questions, presentation materials, meeting summaries, decision logs, and action-item trackers.
• Engage approximately 15–30 stakeholders representing businesses, nonprofits, community organizations, regional partners, public agencies, and local leadership.
• Synthesize stakeholder input while distinguishing recurring themes, isolated opinions, factual findings, policy considerations, and feasible recommendations.
• Reconcile competing stakeholder priorities and facilitate agreement around strategic direction and implementation priorities.
• Develop a clear mission and shared vision for Kent County’s economic and tourism development activities.
• Formulate realistic goals, strategies, and action plans for each of the five required planning areas.
• Organize recommendations into short-term priorities covering years one and two and medium-term priorities covering years three through five.
• Define responsible parties, implementation partners, resource requirements, dependencies, risks, expected outcomes, and performance measures.
• Author interim and final strategic-plan products, including supporting matrices, summaries, appendices, and presentation materials.
• Manage County review and approval cycles at the 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% completion points.
• Incorporate comments and resolve conflicting edits while protecting the consistency and integrity of the plan.
• Present draft recommendations to County leadership and final recommendations to the Kent County Commissioners.
• Maintain organized project records, data references, interview notes, version histories, decision records, and supporting research.
• Ensure all deliverables are accurate, professionally written, internally consistent, accessible, and completed no later than February 28, 2027.

Anticipated Tools and Processes

The Project Lead should be comfortable using or directing work performed through:

• Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint;
• Project schedules, milestone trackers, action-item logs, and risk registers;
• Economic and workforce datasets, including ESRI and Lightcast;
• Public datasets such as QCEW and USDA Census of Agriculture data;
• Survey, interview, workshop, and focus-group protocols;
• Qualitative coding and stakeholder-theme analysis;
• Peer-jurisdiction benchmarking;
• Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis;
• Environmental scanning;
• Logic models or results frameworks;
• Strategy prioritization matrices;
• Implementation roadmaps;
• Performance-measure and KPI frameworks;
• Document version control and formal review-resolution processes; and
• Virtual and hybrid meeting platforms.

Experience with Power BI, Tableau, GIS-based analysis, survey tools, or economic-development research platforms is helpful but is not required unless the candidate proposes to use them as part of the planning methodology.