The Knoxville business community has again been recognized by Forbes magazine in its 10th annual Best Places for Business and Careers list. Knoxville comes in 10th, a drop in ranking from previous years, but still in an elite group of cities with a pro-business and pro-career environment.

Over the past 18 months, the Chamber and the taskforce has attacked the following core issues: 38 percent of employers find today’s high school graduates deficient in reading comprehension; written communication tops the list of applied skills found lacking in high school and college graduates; one in five workers reads at a skill level lower than his or her job requires; remedial writing courses cost large corporations $3.1 billion annually.

The fourth annual Knoxville Chamber Pinnacle Business Awards ceremony, presented by Regions Bank, will take place April 25th at the Knoxville Convention Center. The Pinnacle Business Awards recognize Knoxville’s elite businesses and business leaders with honors going to recipients in six business categories and two individual categories.

Two decades in the making and the major construction hasn’t even begun, that all changes this May for the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT).. For more information on the project, visit the SmartFIX40 website.

Knoxville has captured a top-10 ranking for its population in the annual Site Selection Magazine's top metros. The list ranks cities by the number of corporate facility projects during that year.

The Public School Forum, an organization concerned with ensuring Tennessee's schools are implementing best practices in education, has launched a new website at publicschoolforum.org.

The Covenant Health Knoxville Marathon is once again teaming up with the Knoxville Chamber to encourage local businesses to “get fit” by hosting the Fittest Company Challenge during the event set for March 30, 2008.

Your business is running smoothly. It’s well respected in the marketplace. Things are good. So, why would you make a significant change in the way you do business? Why would you adjust your price structure and change your revenue stream? The only reason you would do that is because it was important to your customers, it benefited them, and because it improved your long-term viability.

Click play above to hear from Vice President of Membership, Mark Field, about tiered benefits.

Ed Cole, Environmental Bureau Chief for the Tennessee Department of Transportation, recently suggested that the Knoxville Parkway could be the state’s first toll road. He also said that if the road were approved as a tollway it could be completed as much as a decade sooner than if the road was funded from Tennessee’s general fund.

You’ve heard it again and again from the Knoxville Chamber … improving education and workforce development is critical to the economic future of the region. But what can you do about it? You can attend the Workforce and Education Summit on March 24.
Register for the summit.