More than 400 attendees at Thursday’s Power Breakfast at the Wilmington Convention Center heard five speakers talk about issues they believe are essential to the development and wellbeing of the Cape Fear region.

The format of the event, presented by the Greater Wilmington Business Journal, was 10-minute, TED-style talks that ranged from combating gang violence to spurring a culture of innovation.

Ben David, district attorney for New Hanover and Pender counties, made a plea for community involvement in giving at-risk youngsters viable alternatives to gang participation. He outlined the efforts of his office and local law enforcement in identifying gang leaders and giving them more positive options. But he also challenged the audience to augment those steps by providing three things: their time as volunteers, jobs for the young people and money – specifically, donations for a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) summer program at D.C. Virgo Preparatory Academy that draws at-risk students.

Laura Hunter, an award-winning teacher and administrator in the Brunswick County Schools, talked about the changing mission and methods of education in the 21st century, emphasizing that schools must prepare students to fill jobs that have not yet been created, to use technology that has not yet been invented and to solve problems that have not yet been articulated.

Feedback from employers tells educators that today’s education priorities for students should be literacy and numeracy as well as skills in collaboration, communication, problem solving and critical thinking, Hunter said. The challenge in preparing 21st century learners, she added, is that today’s teachers are 20th century learners.

“Our classrooms must be places where everyone is learning: students and teachers together,” she said.

Shann Coleman, a nuclear engineer who founded the Wilmington Minority Professional Networking Group several years ago, spoke about his motivations in starting the group, which has grown in both numbers and influence. The group is an example, he said, of an affinity group, which can have positive benefits to the community and workplace as well as to the individual.

When Coleman worked at GE-Hitachi, the company had several affinity groups for employees of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Coleman encouraged his listeners at large companies to develop affinity groups within their organizations, saying that the groups help members connect and form friendships and networks, businesses develop supplier diversity networks and companies retain employees and create a more visibly inclusive culture in the community.

Judy Girard, former president of the Food Network and HGTV, presented a snapshot of women’s leadership in the business world. A successful business woman herself, she said she has monitored the numbers of women in upper management for the past 40 years.

“The percentage of women in four or five levels of management across 10 industry sectors has grown from 12 percent to 18 percent at present, but it is declining,” she said, adding that the good news is that nearly 90 percent of Americans are now comfortable with the idea of women leading major companies.

Drawing from her own experience in the media industry, Girard said she had learned the critical importance of giving young women from disadvantaged backgrounds opportunities to gain self-confidence and leadership abilities.

Saying that she had started to dream about that issue in her retirement in Wilmington, Girard announced that she and Georgia Miller, wife of University of North Carolina Wilmington chancellor Gary Miller, have started the nonprofit organization Young Women Leading Inc. to open an all-girls charter school in Wilmington. Click here for related story about the proposal.

Tom Looney, a software entrepreneur and co-founding partner of UNCW’s Seahawk Innovation Fund, spoke about the importance for metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) of creating innovation hubs. One innovation job, he said, supports five non-innovation jobs. Advanced manufacturing operations and advanced service enterprises like PPD, are innovators, he said.

“There are three possible paths – two, really – for MSAs. They can become innovation hubs or manufacturing hubs or they can be undecided,” he said, noting that innovation hubs attract new jobs and provide growth, while employment is declining in manufacturing hubs.

To create an innovation hub, Looney said, MSAs must have companies that export goods and services outside the area. That kind of economic activity, in turn, creates a healthy “non-traded” sector of support businesses, from attorneys and health care professionals to real estate developers, educators and restaurant employees.

If the Cape Fear area is to develop itself as an innovation hub, he said, it must capitalize on its competitive advantages and must collaborate as a region.