Workforce Voices: a conversation with Stacey Duncan
Stacey Duncan grew up in Binghamton, NY, expected to leave, came back, and has spent her career making the region worth choosing.
How Stacey Duncan found her way into this work
Stacey Duncan grew up in Broome County, New York planning to leave. That was the expectation for a lot of Gen X kids in the Southern Tier: find something bigger somewhere else. For Stacey, that somewhere was a byline at the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. She was drawn to communication, to words, to the idea that writing could be a career.
Then she graduated from St. Bonaventure University into a job market that was reorganizing itself in real time. Print was moving to digital. The field she’d imagined looked different than she’d expected. She came home to Binghamton, not totally sure what came next, and enrolled in a graduate program in public administration at Binghamton University. What came next was the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce, where she found her footing doing advocacy work, representing businesses, navigating policy, and learning how a community actually functions.
That was the early 2000s. She wove in and out of that work over the years, took time to raise three kids, and came back. By 2017 she was at the Broome County Industrial Development Agency as deputy director. By 2019 she was running both organizations simultaneously as the first CEO of what’s now called the Leadership Alliance.
She’s been there since, and the region has changed around her.
Two organizations, one mission, and why it matters to people who live here
Economic development is one of those fields that’s easy to tune out. It’s full of acronyms and ribbon-cutting photos. But what it actually involves is more consequential than most people realize, because it shapes the jobs, the tax base, and the infrastructure that everyone in a community depends on.
The Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce has been around since 1964. It’s a network of more than 700 member organizations: manufacturers, healthcare systems, retailers, nonprofits, school districts, and universities. The Chamber’s job is to create value for those members by connecting them to each other, advocating for them with elected officials, running leadership development programs, and speaking up when a state or federal policy would hurt local businesses.
The Broome County Industrial Development Agency, or IDA, was created by New York State in 1970 with one goal: attract investment and create jobs. The IDA builds out economic development sites, offers financial incentives to companies that expand or relocate, provides small business loans, and works on the infrastructure, roads, utilities, and land, that makes growth possible. It’s the behind-the-scenes operation that prepares a community for business before a business ever shows up.
Stacey runs both. She describes the relationship plainly: “They have a shared mission, but different ways of executing that mission.” The Chamber is member-facing and relationship-driven. The IDA is project-based and deal-driven. Together, through the Leadership Alliance, they serve as the connective tissue between employers, educators, government, and the broader community.
Since 2019, the Alliance has championed $1.2 billion in new investment across Broome County. In 2024 alone, that meant more than $174 million in private investment, more than 1,000 jobs, and $30 million in new tax revenue. Those are numbers that show up as schools funded, roads maintained, and services delivered.
Smaller cities are gaining ground, and Binghamton is building for it
For decades, the story in regions like Broome County was one of departure. Industry left, jobs followed, and the cultural narrative encouraged young people to do the same. Stacey remembers it clearly. “I do recall the days of watching industry leave, jobs leave, and a general sense of defeat that started to take over the collective narrative,” she said.
That story is shifting, and the data supports it. Smaller metro areas across the country, those with fewer than 250,000 residents, have reversed years of population loss among workers aged 25 to 49, gaining at least 100,000 net new residents in each of the past three years, according to recent Census data. Remote and hybrid work opened up a new set of options for a lot of people: if you can work from anywhere, a smaller city with lower costs and a tight-knit network starts to look different than it used to.
Stacey sees this playing out in real time. She describes Broome County as a place where someone early in their career can gain experience faster than they would in a larger market, where the network is tight enough to actually matter, and where the cost of living doesn’t consume everything you earn. “You can get in and learn stuff that in other communities it would take you years to be able to do,” she says.
The Broome Tech Park, a ground-up economic development site that Stacey’s team is building out, is part of that investment in the future. The goal is to attract companies focused on research and development, clean energy, and high-value jobs across a range of experience levels. “It’s an opportunity to build something from the ground up,” she said. In a region that spent a generation watching things close, that sentence carries weight.
What she tells young people about building a career in a world that keeps changing
Stacey has three adult children. Two daughters and a son, all at or entering the workforce. She’s candid that even they sometimes ask her what economic development actually means. The work is consequential and largely invisible to people outside the field, and she thinks about that gap.
When she talks about preparing young people for what’s ahead, including AI, shifting labor markets, and a fresh look at what a degree is actually worth, she skips the talking points and goes somewhere simpler.
A student once asked her what three things she looks for when she’s hiring. She said presence, communication, and intellectual curiosity. Show up. Ask questions. Want to understand why the thing you’re doing matters. She has a senior member of her own team who never attended college and is one of her strongest performers. “She shows up, she asks questions, she’s very curious about the role and wants to learn more.”
Her advice to her own kids follows the same thread: whatever opportunity you’re given, be all in on it. It doesn’t have to be forever. But if you’re there, be there. “That’s when opportunities, I think, start to present,” she said.
She’s also watching what AI is doing to the conversation around education, and she’s not stepping around the harder questions. She talks about the renewed national interest in the humanities, in critical thinking, and in the kind of learning that builds judgment over time. “How do we make sure that things aren’t lost in the fast-paced movement to this technology” is something she takes seriously.
The piece of advice she still comes back to
When Stacey stepped into the CEO role in 2019, she’d spent her career as a strong number two, the person who got things done and supported whoever was leading. Taking on the top job was different, and she wasn’t always sure she carried herself like someone in charge.
A mentor, a former boss who later became chair of one of her boards, gave her advice she still returns to. He told her: stop using question marks. Start using periods.
It sounds simple. For someone who’d built a career on collaboration and supporting others, learning to make a call and own it took real work. She describes it as something she replays when her confidence dips, a reminder that the role asks her to actually be in it.
She’s been in it for six years now. The investments are real. The jobs are real. The park is being built. And the person who grew up planning to leave is the one making sure there’s something worth staying for.
Stacey Duncan is the CEO of the Leadership Alliance, serving simultaneously as President & CEO of the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce and Executive Director of the Broome County Industrial Development Agency/LDC, based in Binghamton, New York.
This conversation is part of Workforce Voices, a series by BOUNCE highlighting the stories of people working across workforce and economic development ecosystems.
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