Mayor Patricia Lock-Dawson and fellow mayors from across the country discussed plans to further economic development in their cities – with a focus on green tech – at the Accelerator for America (AFA) Advisory Council forum.
AFA is a nonprofit organization that supports mayors and local leaders to develop economic mobility in their communities. The two forum panels took place on Sunday afternoon at the Mission Inn Hotel and Monday morning at the Barbara and Art Culver Center.
Lock-Dawson, who joined the AFA council last year, told the Gazette her economic development strategy is to build on existing strengths.
"I think the best thing we can do is build on what we have here in Riverside, not try to create something new," she said, adding that she didn't want to recreate something other cities like Silicon Valley had.
"We have robust industry here in Riverside already: aeronautics, defense, medicine and healthcare, arts and tourism, all of those things are centers of excellence in our city that we are promoting right now and actively growing," Lock-Dawson said.
During Monday's panel, Lock-Dawson was joined by Dr. Rosibel Ochoa, UC Riverside's Associate Vice Chancellor for Technology Partnerships, George Gebhart, founder and CEO of Riverside-based electric truck company Voltu Motor, and Michelle Decker, president and CEO of the Inland Empire Community Foundation.
The panelists discussed their strategy for growing Riverside's economy, centered around green tech and university-driven innovation.
Green tech development
Lock-Dawson said she began working with the AFA three years ago to transition the city's vehicles to alternative-fuel and hybrid vehicles. Riverside was named the No. 1 green fleet in North America by the NAFA Fleet Management Association in 2022 and made the top 50 green fleet list by the same association in 2025.
Gebhart described the city as a growing green tech hub supported by a local supply chain and workforce pipeline. His company is developing fast-charging solutions designed around fleet needs.
"Charging is usually a pain," he said, explaining that his company's technology will allow fast charging without fleets making heavy infrastructure investments.
University partnerships
UC Riverside also plays a key role, said Ochoa, noting that the campus is both a major research institution and a local mobility engine.
"Ninety-two percent of our students are California residents. Forty-eight percent of our students are from Riverside," Ochoa said. "The university plays a transformational role in their future."
She said UCR is positioning the city as a "living laboratory" where companies can test technologies in real life while hiring students who gain skills and stay in the region.
"See the university and the city, the whole region, as a living laboratory where companies come [and] test their [solutions] in real conditions… because that's what we want. We want them to really sell and be successful," Ochoa said.
Ochoa pointed to UC Riverside School of Medicine as an example of the approach.
"The medical school is really a training school. It started because of the lack of [physicians], and the idea is that the students, once they graduate, spend at least two years in the community… before they leave," Ochoa said, adding that the school is working with the community to expand into an outpatient clinic and eventually a teaching hospital.
"We are working with the community to expand the medical school, to create an outpatient clinic and then a teaching hospital… The idea is to recruit local but also regional, to train these doctors that do not need our region to go somewhere else," Ochoa said.
City development
Lock-Dawson said the city's strategy also includes strong quality-of-life investments, including parks, streets, housing and clean air.
"It's all for naught if you have filthy air and you have no parks and no place for people to recreate and no restaurants," she said. "We are investing in our parks… our streets… and ensuring that we have adequate and diverse housing supply so people can afford to live here."
Referencing a Brookings Institution report on economic clusters, the mayor said Riverside now meets the three conditions for a successful cluster: industry-driven activity, research support and enabling government policy.
"Economic clusters, when they form, have three common factors. One is that they are industry driven, they are research supporting and that they have policies by the government that support them," she said. "We have all three here in Riverside to support a green and green-tech [cluster]… to go from green belt to green tech, which is what we're doing right now."
The city's longer-term goal, she added, is to align universities, local government and industry around clean-technology growth.
"I put that expectation on myself and everybody in this room to use the assets that we have in place to create the future," she said.
