Andy Cook, Founder & Executive Director of Made in Baltimore, Shares His Passion For Makers

“I'm an urban planner by profession and through my work as an urban planner for the city of Baltimore developed the Made in Baltimore program. So I would say that my craft is an economic development community organization. I’m also interested in all of the different types of activities that our, our member businesses do for their work. I do have a background as an artist, and through that work have done a good, fair amount of carpentry and screen printing and other types of things that a lot of our members do as well,” says Andy Cook, Founder, and CEO of the Made in Baltimore organization.Andy Cook started an organization that was much needed for Baltimore. Baltimore continues to have a bad rep whenever you hear about it on the news but Baltimore is a community of makers, entrepreneurs, and craftspeople that lift up the heart and soul of the city.“I came up with the idea for a local brand initiative in Baltimore, that's kind of the term of art for what we do here, Made in Baltimore wasn't the first local brand initiative. There are others and other cities around the country, I looked a lot towards examples in San Francisco, in New York, San Francisco made and made in NYC were programs that started before us. Also, guidance from a national organization called the Urban Manufacturing Alliance, which was kind of not exactly an umbrella organization for all of these different local brands, but they host an annual conference for people doing this type of work, supporting urban manufacturing. It was at one of their conferences in 2014, that I learned about this type of activity and thought, yeah, there's nobody doing this in Baltimore City, somebody probably should,” says Andy.Kristan chats with Andy more about how the program assists its members in their business operations, what the future holds for the program, and much more. Tune in to hear more about Andy Cook and the program he has built from the ground up.To learn more about Made in Baltimore click here. Follow Made in Baltimore on Instagram and Facebook.The featured musician of this episode is Deanna Bogart who is a part of this series and her popular track Fine By Me Good Bayou. If you enjoyed this Makers of the USA episode, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Facebook. Please check out Makers of the USA's YouTube channel, Facebook and Instagram. Thank you all and stay safe and healthy.