Melissa Bailey File Photo
Haynes (second from right) accompanies Mayor John DeStefano and then-Alderman Marcus Paca on a fact-finding trip to a Massachusetts vo-tech school.
After two years piloting New Haven’s quasi-public economic development agency, Anne Hayes is heading to Cambridge.
Haynes, a 44-year-old Yale-trained architect, plans to work her last day as head of New Haven’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC) on May 18.
City government and corporate leaders formed the not-for-profit EDC in 2008 to help attract and retain businesses to town. The idea is that the city’s hard-working but bare-bones economic development staff doesn’t have enough resources to do the job alone. Click here to read about ongoing work EDC is doing in the Mill River district of Fair Haven, for instance.
It has a close connection to city government; city economic development chief Kelly Murphy will serve as interim director after Haynes’ departure.
Haynes next spends a year in an executive MBA program, the MIT Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership.
“This next step provides me with some fundamental skills that will be useful,” Haynes said in a conversation Monday.
Those skills will eventually help New Haven, she said. She noted that she has been connected to the city on and off for 20 years.
“I’ve left New Haven before for temporary periods, but I’ve always been back,” Haynes said. “I always come back.”