Goodbye To All That: AZ Business Magazine Asks Industry Leaders About What's In Store For 2010

Is anyone not happy that 2009 is finally over?

A decade that started with so much promise has ended with a thud, a final and brutal farewell to a generally dismal 10 years. The Aughts were punctuated with terror, wars, election controversies and a near catastrophic economic meltdown. Oh, there were some good financial times somewhere around the middle, but as it turned out we were dancing on quicksand. Farewell to the fraught Aughts.

So what’s in store for 2010? After this past year, it’s a question whose answer elicits hope and fear. Could it possibly get worse? Will it finally get better? The economists tell us we have started digging ourselves out of the quicksand, but it will be a slow struggle as we try to move to firmer ground. 

Every January, Arizona Business Magazine anoints a new class of Who to Watch — a group of community and business leaders who have the potential to make an impact on the Valley and state’s economy in the coming year. We select five people, each representing the five sectors of the economy AB believes are critical to the state: real estate/construction, health care, tourism, high-tech, and small business.

We asked the five people we chose this year — John Chadwick, Southwest-area president for Pulte Homes;Jeffrey Trent, Ph.D., president and research director of TGen; John Chan, interim director of the Phoenix Convention Center Roy Vallee, chairman and CEO of Avne; Gary Naumann, director of ASU’s Spirit of Enterprise Center — the question “what’s in store for 2010?” Click on the links to find out what these leaders had to say. We think you will find their answers candid and insightful.