Cleveland’s Community Fund Hires an Official With a Global View

By Nicole Lewis

A dozen years ago, George E. Delgado worked his way through a degree in German at the University of Vienna, in Austria, by guiding tourists around the city’s sights using one or another of the six languages he now speaks.

In his job as director of international relations at the Cleveland Foundation, Mr. Delgado will again rely on his tour-guide and linguistics skills as he introduces international companies to Cleveland and seeks opportunities overseas for local companies.

Although Mr. Delgado had never visited Cleveland before his job interview in January, he is no stranger to new places. Born in Cuba, Mr. Delgado, 39, finished high school and college in Moscow, where he was sent to study engineering by Cuban leaders.

His family remained in Cuba while Mr. Delgado lived in Russia, before he defected to Germany in his mid-20s. “I haven’t seen my mother in 21 years and the last time I saw my brother, he was 11 months old,” he says. Mr. Delgado is hopeful regime change will soon come to his homeland. “We are getting there,” he says.

After arriving nearly penniless in Munich, Mr. Delgado sought the engineering work for which he had been trained. Instead, he got a job offer to help in a company’s kitchen.

“It was my first reality check on ‘welcome to the West,’” he says. “I said, ‘There is no way I am going to the kitchen.’”

He learned German to improve his job prospects and went on to receive a master’s degree in business administration, focusing on international trade and marketing, from Munich University. In the sales, marketing, and research jobs he has held since, he has traveled the world, using his English, German, Russian, and Spanish language skills, and also picking up some Italian and Ukrainian.

Officials at the Cleveland Foundation are betting that Mr. Delgado’s global connections will help revive the city’s wilting economy.

“If we can help local companies quadruple their sales by going overseas, then they are going to add employees right here in Cleveland,” says Ronald B. Richard, the foundation’s president, who selected Mr. Delgado from a pool of 100 applicants. “It’s really about jobs, about bringing Cleveland back to life by getting more people here.”

Mr. Delgado is the third person the foundation has hired as part of its effort to create jobs and expand the number of businesses in the city.

The added tax revenue, the foundation hopes, will enable the government to offer more help to its needy residents and help shore up its cultural life. In 2005, Cleveland had the highest concentration of poor people among big cities, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent figures.

“Four years ago my board said, ‘If we don’t really get involved with economic development, we are not going to have an art museum to give money to in 30 years,’” says Mr. Richard. The foundation has assets of $1.7-billion and awarded more than $80-million in grants last year.

While other community funds also focus on economic development, none has created a position like Mr. Delgado’s that concentrates on international opportunities, says Carla E. Dearing, president of Community Foundations of America, in Louisville, Ky.

“It might appear to be an outlier at first but really it’s a creative shot at something they feel needs to be done,” she says. “There is no reason economic development should be different than other areas like youth or health in terms of community foundations using different types of expertise to move the dial for the city.”

Mr. Delgado, who will earn $140,000 his new position, says he will start by forging connections between his previous employers and local businesses. He hopes to tout the affordability of storing goods at local warehouses to companies abroad and find markets in Russia for Cleveland’s manufacturers. Mr. Richard says he would also like Mr. Delgado to convince some foreign embassies, including those of China and Israel, to open consulates in Cleveland, which would facilitate matching local businesses with foreign markets.

Mr. Delgado, who received his U.S. citizenship a few years ago while working in Miami for a real-estate company, doesn’t know much about how foundations operate but says he’s eager to learn.

In an interview, Mr. Delgado discussed moving and his new position.

What appeals to you about Cleveland?

Most people don’t know Cleveland is on a beautiful lake. I didn’t like being in traffic for two hours just to get to the office in Miami; here my commute is 15 minutes. Big cities are appealing for some people, but when you have kids something less chaotic is more appealing for a family.

Do you have any nonprofit experience?

I’ve never worked in charities, but once when I was a student in Moscow I helped a pastor from Baltimore who was opening a church in Russia with translating and dealing with the Russian authorities. This was all new to Russia, God, and the Bible.

How will your previous business experience help your work at the foundation?

When I got my first job it was the year when the Russian economy was being reborn. The Germans needed to sell products to the Russians, but they were afraid of doing business there because they didn’t know the language. I was able to be a translator, not only in the language but I was able to act as a cultural bridge. Each country has a different way of doing business. For example, the Germans are very mathematical; the Russians need to have a drink with you first and get to know you. Since I had lived in both places it was easy for me to gain the sympathy of both and get them to work together. At the foundation I’ll be acting as the same kind of bridge between Cleveland and all these other countries.

What is different about working in a business and working at a foundation?

When I got to the office before, all I needed to do was open my computer and look at the sales numbers and say, well, five containers sold today, that is 2 percent more than last year at the same date, we are doing great. The difference is today I come in and have a few ideas about helping international companies come here and helping local companies do business abroad.

My containers are now the people I am meeting on a daily basis, those are my sales numbers — the people I meet, the synergy I get.

How will you promote Cleveland overseas when you haven’t lived in the city very long yourself?

The good news is, I don’t know how much I don’t know, so you learn every day. Another thing is, I work in a team, I am not my own show. I have a lot of people helping me and I say, ‘This is the idea, how do you see this according to the local mentality?’ Basically I will try to concentrate on what are the opportunities today that already exist but have not been communicated.