Earlier this month, Madison Nguyen was hired to step in as the City of Milpitas’ Interim Economic Development Director.
“I love it here. I’m so thrilled to be joining the City of Milpitas and the Economic Development department,” said Nguyen in an interview with The Beat. “Every day I come into work, excited to see what’s new and developing in Milpitas.”
Nguyen comes to the job with a deep understanding of the Silicon Valley business landscape; she has worked on different economic development projects in the past. She has also served on San José’s City of Council from 2005-2014, and was Vice Mayor there for four years. She has served three years as Executive Vice President of the San José Chamber of Commerce (which was known as the Silicon Valley Organization while she was serving).
Most recently, Nguyen worked as Vice President for PRxDigital in San José, doing public relations, marketing, and communications.
Former Director of Economic Development Alex Andrade left the City of Milpitas in December, after having served in his position for seven years.
When asked what her priorities are, Nguyen spoke of a few different projects. She hopes to be able to contribute to making Milpitas’ Main Street into a vibrant place:
“I feel that the City of Milpitas needs to invest more toward helping small businesses thrive. We’ve seen transformation in places like Morgan Hill and Livermore, which are smaller cities. And if they can do it, I think Milpitas is in the position to do something like this with strong support from the community,” said Nguyen. “To make the area more vibrant, we need to engage the residents and the small business community.”
One of Nguyen’s other goals is to drive meaningful revenue and growth through a focused strategy that includes attracting new businesses and supporting the expansion of existing ones. She also wants to determine ways in which the City can pursue state and federal funding opportunities to get small grants for small business owners.
Nguyen would like to see the City of Milpitas leverage opportunities to attract businesses from other countries.
“I think economic development investments shouldn’t be limited to the United States,” said Nguyen. “If we look globally we can attract more people to come to Milpitas. It’s a vibrant city here in Silicon Valley. If we’re telling potential investors that this is a great city to grow your business, that could be one of the key attractions for our city.”
