← Econ Dev Show Podcast - Economic Development
Econ Dev Show Podcast - Economic Development
227: Never Underestimate the Power of Ceremony with Melissa James
00:37:57
Melissa James explains how California’s Central Coast turned economic uncertainty into a regional strategy built around collaboration, durable partnerships, workforce development, housing, and the region’s strengths in energy, aerospace, and technology.
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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the Econ Dev Show. We explore the strategies, ideas and insights that are driving economic development forward into the future. You'll hear new insights from passionate EDs about their successes and struggles. And you'll learn from attraction and retention experts about how to apply actionable strategies inside your edo. We'll help take your organization, your community and your career into your to the next level. Here's your host, Dane Carlson.
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Welcome back to the Econ Dev Show. Today we're here with Melissa James. She is the founding president and CEO of Reach Central coast in California. Melissa, welcome to the show.
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C
Thank you. So good to be with you.
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B
I'm excited to have you. I can't remember the last guest I had from California. So this is kind of exciting.
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C
I know. I bet there's lots of people who like to talk about California from an economic development standpoint and probably a lot of times have a lot of things to say about how California is not, you know, doing the things to help, you know, create jobs, but definitely not the case in California. We've got a lot going on, especially on the Central coast.
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B
Wonderful. So the Central Coast. So for our listeners who don't know, you guys serve San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties in California. Right. Where are those for? Put that into perspective for our listeners who may not know.
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C
Yeah, absolutely. So we are along the coast of California, right in the middle of San Francisco and La Son, so call it a three hour drive from either of those kind of metro areas.
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B
I've seen these YouTube videos that ask why is there no major city right there? Do you have any idea why there's no major city, you know, right on the coast right between San Francisco and Los Angeles?
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C
So I'd say in some Santa Barbara county is kind of the county seat. Cities are San Luis, the city of San Luis Obispo and the city of Santa Barbara. Both are cities that hold universities. So in the case of San Luis Obispo, it's Cal Poly State University, and in the case of Santa Barbara, it's University of California, Santa Barbara. So a UC and a csu, you know, here on the Central Coast. And I would say that like the history and the fabric of the Central coast more broadly has been more rural and agricultural. We have these college towns, agricultural communities. We have a lot in kind of the wine industry and they have kind of by design also been kind of a network of smaller kind of regional cities. So in our two county region, it's 15 cities and two counties and our largest city is the city of Santa Maria In Santa Barbara county, just about 100,000 people.
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B
Yeah. And it's, you know, it's hilly and it's rugged on the coast, right?
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C
Yep. It's not, you know, the topography. Yeah, we have, you know, we have a lot of state and federal parks as well. There's a strong value and appreciation for open space for the kind of the coastal areas as well. So. Yeah, there's a lot of. There's a lot of different things to the topography and geography that definitely create these microclimates within our region too.
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B
Sure. So REACH is a relatively new organization. From what I've read. It was founded in 2019 and it came out of this moment when the region was facing real economic challenges or they had perceived economic challenges. Talk to me about that. What was it?
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C
The Central Coast I kind of shared a little bit about. A lot of folks know our region as college towns. They know our region as tourist communities. We have a lot of tourism, both from coastal to kind of our more wine and kind of inland areas. But people come and visit here quite a lot. In the Central coast area, one of our largest private sector employers is Pacific Gas and Electric Electric. They own and operate California's last nuclear power plant. So these are a couple of thousand very good paying jobs. And in, I guess it would have been about 2016 initially there was a phased and announced closure of the power plant in large part due to kind of state policy around prioritizing renewable energy and not classifying nuclear as a renewable energy. That from an economic development community standpoint really created a lot of conversation and a lot of concern around what the future of the Central coast would look like if our largest private sector employer, huge kind of tax base, all of these good paying jobs, you know what that would do to our community. And that conversation was what became the beginning of a lot more alignment in our region. So to think and act with more kind of priority and being more proactive in what we're looking at. Diablo Canyon actually was granted through the state legislature and a signature of the governor, an extension to stay open for another five years. And that five years takes us through 2030. And there's an active conversation happening in California again around the future of energy and if the power plant will be extended beyond that. Because since we had the conversation before, a lot has been happening in the energy space and the need and the demand with AI and data centers and things like that.
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B
Sure, absolutely. I can imagine that it's going to be a hard sell to close a power plant in any time in the near future. Yeah. You also mentioned tourism, so I would assume that that fed into probably an affordability question because a lot of right
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C
now when we were looking at, at the. We're having this conversation in our community about, you know, what are we going to do when we lose this, you know, really important economic driver in our community. We then, as the organization was starting to form around what does it look like for us to be proactive and plan for this closure and try to diversify our economy. We looked a lot at the baseline data, and with the power plant open at the time, there was a lot of kind of economic indicators that were flashing warning signs. So things that people did not recognize and realize in our region were things like one in every two public school children are in poverty in a household income of 45,000 a year for a household of four. So it's one in every two public school kids. And you're thinking about that. And on the Central coast for, for your listeners who might not be aware of California and the Central coast in particular has very high home price prices. So when you're at that low of an income, with that high of a housing cost, there's a lot of kind of, you know, economic challenges for things. We did a public opinion poll of all working adults, and nine out of every 10 did not believe that young people today would have the opportunity to build a life, a career, a future on the Central Coast. So those were big challenges that we, you know, brought together a lot of alignment around the need, which then moved into a lot of alignment around the solution, the solutions that we needed to start advancing, which were thinking about things like economic diversification. We're thinking about where our strengths and our assets were, what industries that we should place some bets on and to support their growth and expansion for new job creation, what kind of workforce development programs and projects we needed to advance to help people get access to those jobs. So that is where the conversation really started to go. 2019 was when the organization was founded, and we're having all of these conversations about kind of the economic challenges of our future. We're trying to stand up a brand new regional kind of approach for a community that had a region that had been mostly fragmented and cities kind of focusing on their individual communities and not necessarily networked and leveraged in a regional context. And then Covid hits and then we're all, you know, thinking about something that was not on our radar, like, you know, of course, for many others. But that actually ended up kind of putting more emphasis on the need for Our region to have economic diversification because we saw that in Covid right. What different industries were impacted. And so it created a broader awareness for local government, for business, for community partners to say, no, we actually there's a role that our region needs to play to tending to the whole economy and not just thinking about kind of Main street type issues.
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B
Sure. I would imagine the tourism industry got hit really hard. I'd imagine. Did the universities go virtual and all of that?
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C
The tourism industry did get hit really hard. And then what we didn't expect is we ended up having a major surge because of our community. Kind of the tourism assets are that it's a lot of open space. It's beaches and open space. So a lot of the metro areas, LA and kind of San Francisco, they were coming to places like the central coast to vacation because they don't want to get on a plane. You gotta be somewhere within driving distance and you want to get out of the urban area. So after an initial hit, then our tourism actually over time went up. It was fascinating.
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B
That is fascinating. So what do you think was the hardest part of standing up the organization? Was it getting everybody on the same page? Was it, you know, some other aspect?
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C
I would say probably the hardest part was not trying to get people to understand the need. People understood the need, the problem. And people talked about the problem all the time. They talked about it in their living rooms and in the coffee shops and their workplaces. Everybody knows that housing prices are too high. But the translation to we can come together, work together and actually do something to shift or change these long range systemic issues was not something that people just entered at the beginning with a ton of optimism. They entered with cynicism. Oh, that's been tried before. That's never going to happen. No. Because of this. And that's too hard. You can't do that. And getting a critical mass of folks to say we can and will do something and then over time have a small win and that brings in some more people and build momentum over time. But before you have something with any proof and you're selling a vision, that is harder. But what we are grateful for, and I would say what I think made the difference was ultimately it was private sector, kind of large employer, community leader types, a handful of those people that people trust the people, then they could follow the people. That is what got it going at the beginning.
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B
So then you put together the Reach 2030 Master Plan. Tell us what that, what does that lay out? What did that describe? And I would imagine that was A lot of aspirational sort of vision for the region. So how does that see the vision for the place in 2030?
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C
We have all this need, we have this big vision, we got to do something about it. Then it really became what are you going to do about it? So we very quickly kind of came around and built out a strategic plan which we call Reach 2030. It was kind of unveiled in 2020 and the goal of that was to create 15,000 good paying jobs by 2030. And we focused in on a handful of kind of key industry bets where the industry sectors were offered good paying jobs growth. They had assets that were unique and would create competitiveness in that arena. And those were energy and clean tech. We have been an energy generating community from solar to we've had the nation's largest offshore wind designation for a future when that technology is built out. We have new and upcoming fusion companies that have started here and incredible transmission infrastructure. Diablo Canyon is 10% of the state's power. So there is a lot of transmission infrastructure that gets that energy to the grid. So energy, it's a critical one. The other one that we have done a lot of work in and became a very large flagship initiative was space and aerospace. So we have Vandenberg Space Force Base, which was an Air Force base when we started. And then obviously the Space Force was stood up. And this is the Western range. It is this year set to be the busiest spaceport in the world. With the amount of launches at the time it was under 10. Now we're going to one to two a week with companies like SpaceX and Firefly and ULA and others that are coming, such as Blue Origin just announcing that they will be coming. So back when we started, that was not something that anyone believed was going to take off, but it has been a long and intentional effort that has really we are starting to see the fruit of that kind of investment. So space, narrow space and then the third one, these are like our three big innovation hubs that can impact to kind of industry growth is high tech. So in kind of the Santa Barbara Goleta area, we have a lot of R and D that really comes out of the university. Ucsb, UC Santa Barbara. We did some initial analysis to kind of look at what some of our assets were. And one of the things we found was the R and D horsepower of that area. 650% above the national average with companies that have grown out of that area or have then been acquired. We have Amazon, we have LinkedIn, we have Raytheon, Google AI, Microsoft, so technologies and space and aerospace in quantum and semiconductors. And we have a very kind of deep bench of innovation and companies in that area. And so when we think about, you know, when you think about economic, economic development, you think, okay, how do we create more economic opportunity for people? The, you know, and the practice which, you know is really like, it's a strength space or assets based approach. What strengths, assets do you have? What can you leverage? How can you kind of link things together to maybe create more momentum, investment opportunity that might not exist. So we were, for example, we're not going to say we should be Hollywood 2.0 because we have zero assets in that industry. But when it comes to energy, space and as high tech, we have assets that you can't pick up and move somewhere else. And that was a big part of kind of why we chose some of those areas. So it was really about job creation, industry diversification and wealth generation for people in the region. And once we really started getting momentum in those areas in 2025, we really expanded out our portfolio of work. Thinking about three things we say jobs, people and housing. It's all about creating the good paying jobs and these future oriented oriented industries which I've described, it's about creating a skill set for people ready to do those jobs. All about workforce development and making sure they are accessible to people in our region and then making sure that homes are within reach. So for us that is a lot of community development organizing, thinking about creating more housing stock and creating more opportunities for people to get in housing. Because you can have a job, you gotta have the training for the job and then you gotta have a place to live. If you're really gonna kind of create the type of economic and community vitality that we are looking at doing here.
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B
I think that's amazing. I would assume that nobody even had, you know, put this idea together that these things existed and if we just focus on them that it'll, you know, we can build something real. And I think that the Central coast story is sort of a powerful reminder that economic development is not about inventing something new. It's about figuring out, recognizing what it is that you have and organizing around it. I think that that's what you've done, right, organized around these things.
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C
I would say one of the translatable best practice approaches, I think about people who listen to your podcast are doing economic development in different communities and everybody is going to have different assets and what it looks like to organize around something. But what I, what I have found is that when you have, you really have job creators, private sector folks investing in and at the forefront of a kind of job creation strategy, industry diversification, that is key because they are right up at the forefront. And then collaboration, like coalition building, consensus, having cross sector partnerships, and so finding that alignment around whatever the initiative is. So education, employers, political leaders on both sides of the aisle, communities all coming together and understanding what it is you're trying to see happen and what their individual role might be in its success. And for us, one of the things that we've done in the variety of our initiatives, and it seems so simple, but it actually has been a really important through point is we create MOUs, just a memorandum understanding that has all the critical leaders, what we're accomplishing, what our roles and responsibilities are, and they are agreed to by the organization. And that has been important because in the case of the Space Force, we have every two years they have a new leader. That is a part of a culture of the military is you have two year stints. So it can't live with an individual person thinking it's a good idea because then the initiative dies with that person. So we've had six different base commanders as a part of this initiative. Same thing in the case of the State of California governor's office as a part of that agreement. And we've had different economic advisors that the MOU is stood throughout, no matter what person comes in. Because then they come in and it's like, oh, this is something the organization is bought into. So I think that has been a really important part of keeping alignment and keeping traction. Because if it's just like dependent on, you know, someone's passion about it or not, you can lose out. And if it's just a side hustle and not an organizational priority, you also can't keep things moving forward when people and seats change.
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B
That's so interesting that you mentioned continuity that you know, we see that all the time, organizations, leadership changes and on whichever organization it is and suddenly everything falls apart and you have to keep, you know, these are things that take time. You had a 10 year strategic plan and we're only, you know, know, halfway through. If you didn't have these MOUs and this continuity, there's, there's no, there would be no chance that you would be able to make.
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C
No, absolutely.
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B
Wow. You have mentioned all of these launches at Vandenberg. What does it mean, you know, for the local person on the ground that the cadence has increased from 9 to 100. Like how does that impact them directly
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C
I know, because the space industry is such a interesting one. All of us, you know, we think about the Artemis going to the moon and we think about astronauts, we think about rocket scientists. A lot of the. So the launches that are coming out of Vandenberg are a lot of StarLink satellites from SpaceX as an example, GPS monitoring, those kinds of things. A lot of payloads that are going up and for us the launch cadence increasing next to a whole workforce and industry that is supporting that. So in the case of SpaceX, they have reusable rockets. So you're sending something up, putting some payloads into space, it's coming back, you're kind of repairing it and working on it and it's multiple times. So for us, kind of an underlying skill set in the space industry, but also impacts into the broader aerospace industry. When you're, if you're thinking about, you know, aerospace and defense, different defense contractors, drones, vertical takeoff and landing vehicles and aviation are all kind of part of our broader industry. But it's precision manufacturing, it's a technician level skill set that is actually where a lot of the job growth is. So I'm seeing, we've seen, you know, since we started until now like 5x job growth and through kind of signals and launch cadence, different contracts that have come in. There is a whole lot of aerospace manufacturing related companies in our region that are, are growing, expanding, expanding, doubling, tripling or quadrupling in size and that, you know, you come, you come. Well, for us we, we've been creating workforce development programs, try to try to support the demand. So an example would be there's some workforce development programs in both high schools and in community colleges. So a lot of these jobs don't need a four year degree and they're also, you know, when we think about all the changes that are happening in the workforce with AI, these are hands on technician level jobs that are, you know, I would, I don't know if AI proof is the right thing, but they are, they are jobs that are going to be needed in demand and folks can get trained up and high school and maybe early college and step into a very good high paying job. And then you have enough companies and enough saturated in the industry that you can move around and grow your career. Whether you're working on a rocket, a drone or an airplane. It's transferable skill set.
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B
So you have touched on a lot of successes. I'm sure that it wasn't a straight line from, you know, zero to hero. So tell me about, you know, the failures or the or the setbacks or the, or the things that were harder than, you know, maybe they should have been that you've experienced.
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C
One of the things that is hard is the long range nature of economic development. So when we came in early on, I'm kind of stuck on the space industry because we, it's the example that we have context around that I can explain with avenue, go into a different industry. But when we first came and said, hey, this is going to be an important area, let's align and focus and try to nurture and support this, people were like, no, that's too far fetched. And you think we started in 2020. You and I both know, hey, you know, working on something for five to seven years to have this type of growth is actually breakneck speed. But when you're kind of working on like political cycles where, you know, local government leaders are coming into their job for a two year term, the type of speed in which they want to see things happening is much quicker than that. And I think it can be hard in economic development because for most it's pretty amorphous. It means something different to everybody else and I think it's a bunch of hocus pocus. So trying to keep people focused and committed and in the long range when the types of actors that you need bought in and invested, they also need credit and they need to show to their constituents or whoever it may be that they're putting some wins on the board. So that kind of tension between kind of this rise above self interest, altruistic vision, you know, for all, and then like, okay, what's your agenda? What's your needs? What's your interest? How do we motivate you to want to do this? There have been all kinds of different pain points along the way, which I'm sure you can imagine.
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B
Tell me, how did you, you know, how did you get into this? You're the founding president and the CEO. I read that you went to Cal Poly and then sounds like you left. So how did you end up running this organization?
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C
It's, it's probably an atypical path to it. I, I had kind of grown, grown up, went to Cal Poly. All my interests in my kind of my career were in the helping professions. Teacher, counselor. I did mission based work in Eastern Europe for a couple years after college. Like I very much kind of social impact as a social sciences major, psychology, minor, teaching, concentration. It's all in that helping people profession. And I by happenstance ended up working, doing casework in a legislative office which I had no idea what a state assemblyman was, but it was just kind of a, okay, I'll do this job for a little bit. And it was interesting because I learned a lot about the inner workings of state government by trying to help people interact with state government. And one thing led to another and I kind of stuck with public policy in the state legislature for several years. Worked in district office and I went to a capitol office. I worked in the assembly and I worked in the Senate. I ended up being a capitol director in the Senate and learned a lot about politics and how decisions get made through all of that timeline. But because I really do appreciate kind of like a human impact story, how you actually make a difference in people's lives, politics in Sacramento felt far from that. I came back into community based work. I worked at chamber of Commerce and then I worked in an economic development organization. And what it really became about was just solving problems. And there was a big problem. When Diablo announced it was closing, it was like, okay, there's a problem, we need to fix it. How do we bring people together? And it turned into a solution that ended up being, oh gosh, our region needs like a quarterback steward type of an organization to drive and hold this work over the long term. That became the solution. And it was funny because at the time I had no interest in leading an organization. I had an idea and had a solution and I knew it needed to happen. Had a lot of political will. I tried to get three people to do it. Hey, be the CEO. I'll support you in this. We got to get this going. And that did not work. And I was like, fine, I will get it going and then I will turn it over to someone else. But here I am seven and a half years later. We started at two people and now we're an organization of 17 and we'll be approving next month $9.5 million budget. So it is, you know, a completely different dynamic than it was when we were first getting started.
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B
How is it different, you know, today, just on a day to day basis, you know, than when you started?
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C
It's. It is less proving and selling. We now there is kind of, the organization is established and has a tremendous amount of credibility in the region and in the state. We've been able to deliver on and secure multiple federal and state grants, a strong partner with the governor's office of economic Development, which has given us a lot of credibility in the region, saying, oh, actually people used to say that and they weren't wrong, but we're a state of 40 billion people. And in our two county region we're less than a million. And it was a stretch for small communities to even think about identifying as a regional. And for me, working in Sacramento and understanding how policy gets done, it's like if you're a city of 50,000 people in a state of 40 million, good luck, it's just not going to be important. And that was the truth of being sandwiched in between San Francisco and la. But it was like, well, if we can position ourselves as a regional player, we can have alignment in our region. We can approach Sacramento or D.C. and invite in investment. It will work. People didn't believe it to be the case, but now we've proven it. I think our most recent total was through that we've been able to secure 360 million in investment from state and federal into our industry and community development priorities. So now people go, oh, it actually might benefit us to think and act and work regionally where before there was a little bit more of a scarcity mentality. So just the tone and temperature of the work, we can kind of just like come in and get to work more than before where you're just like having to kind of prove that there's a, is a role to play in a regional kind of organization like this. So the attitude that is probably the biggest thing I notice. And then also, obviously this is hard, complex work and being able to have a team of experts with different specialties and areas is key to actually being able to get some of this hard stuff done.
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B
Sure. And I'd imagine, I think it's simple to say, but it's probably true, is that now you get to actually solve more problems than you did at the right.
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C
Yes. And can like you build up, obviously when you start something new, you have no institutional knowledge, you have no skill set. You build that up over time. And we have many of the people who are on our team have stayed and it's just continued to grow. We have a core team that's been on for five years and we have several others that have come on in more recent years. But we are able to retain and grow the talent within the team. But we also have gotten to work with a lot of really smart, capable, kind of technical consulting firms that we've built relationships with on any different issue that we might be working on that are kind of a part of our extended team as well, that kind of know, okay, here's the issue. The problem this is who needs to be on this, both from a political alignment, coalition building and the community from a stakeholder perspective, but then also in a. How are we going to get this done? And what knowledge is needed and can kind of pull that all together and be a lot more rapid in our ability to get stuff done?
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B
Well, Melissa, this has been awesome. You have, I think, hopefully for our listeners, you have really opened their eyes to what's possible not just in California, but also in their own communities.
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C
Yeah.
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B
If you had any sort of closing advice for anybody who's maybe sitting in the organization, it's just them or it's them and someone else, and they're.
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A
They.
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B
They see these big challenges and, you know, they. They're. They don't want to give up hope, but, you know, hope seems distant and dim. What advice would you give them?
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C
Oh, yes, I will share a piece of advice that was given to me at the very beginning when I would say it felt impossible and daunting. And this advice came from a man by the name of Tom Clark, who led the Greater Denver Area Economic Development Organization for decades, and he was named the godfather of Regionalism by the governor. He said to me, never underestimate the power of ceremony. And it has always stuck with me, and it has been woven into a lot of the work that we do. So in the case of the MOU I described, that's not just like a document to kind of make sure that your Gantt chart and your stuff is getting done, that is also a level of profile and accountability that we sign these documents and then we memorialize and ceremonialize them. We put them out in the press. We talk about each of the different actors and players and why it matters. They speak about why it matters to them and why they're invested. And it is a shared credit, a shared doing, and a shared credit. And I think that idea of not underestimating the power of ceremony to allow people the opportunity to own and be a part of it is actually the thing that keeps it moving. So that would be my. That is what has. Has been the advice that I have implemented over and over and over again.
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B
Oh, that's awesome. I think that thousands of economic developers who just listened to this just gasp because you just made possible everything they ever wanted. Right. This is a way that they can unlock this. This is so good. Let's just talk briefly, sort of quickly, about the Central Coast. We'll kind of do a little lightning round. I'll just ask you things and you'll just shoot out an answer for me.
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C
Okay.
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B
So for anybody who is visiting the Central coast, what is your Favorite local spot.
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C
I'm not. My lightning is really slow. You'll have to edit this out because it's so hard to kick. Paso Robles Wine country. There are hundreds of amazing wineries to come and visit. And then I would say we have Avila Beach. We have wonderful beaches, but Avila beach is this quaint little beach and that has like very light surf break, great restaurants, super fun. And then downtown, State street in Santa Barbara, they've been doing a lot of work there and they've closed off the street to be a walking street, really beautiful down by the beach there. Those would be three, give you a, like an inland, a coastal and an urban.
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B
So are you, are you a morning person or a night owl?
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C
Night owl.
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B
Night owl. Coffee, tea or something else?
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C
Coffee.
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B
Coffee. Good.
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C
But not at night. I mean, if.
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B
What's your go to productivity tool?
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C
Well, right now it's Claude or you know, any type of AI because who is not transforming everything that they're doing through AI right now and just trying to keep up with the space, how fast it's moving.
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B
Has it sped up your organization?
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C
Yeah, oh yeah, Dramatically. Especially in kind of content generation. You know, a lot of the things that you're trying to communicate. For sure, for sure.
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B
I find that you write the email and then you say this and it.
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C
Yeah.
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B
You know, you realize, oh yeah, I can set this a little bit better or more specifically or whatever.
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C
Yeah, I like using it for a thought partner too, where it'll be like, hey, I. I'm trying to come up with a brand for X, Y and Z and I have these ideas and give me ideas and kind of go back and forth. I like to brainstorm with AI.
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B
So what's the one word that you hope that people would use to describe the Central coast in 2030?
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C
Innovative.
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B
Innovative. Okay.
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C
I was trying. I didn't have enough time.
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B
And if you weren't doing this work, you kind of touched on this before. But if you weren't doing this, if you weren't leading reach, what would you be doing?
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C
I would be in a classroom. I would be doing counseling, teaching, some sort of support, helping profession.
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B
Well, it sounds like on a different scale that's what you're doing now.
- [36:16]
C
I do, I do feel like those skill sets of like organizational psychology or psychology in general, just understanding what motivates people, what do they need, are some of the most important skill sets. When you think about trying to find alignment or deal making, you have to understand what the needs and agendas of others are. And you have to then have the trust building, the finesse, the people skills to be able to bring it together. So I do think that is an probably an under stressed skill set in the economic development world is a lot
- [36:55]
B
of the kind of soft skills economic development is. I think it's a lot of technical skills, but it's that soft skill that makes it that brings it all together, right?
- [37:05]
C
Totally.
- [37:06]
B
At the end of the day, we're all about making our communities rich and rich in a variety of different ways. And you can only do that if you have compassion and you can listen to the needs of your community, right?
- [37:22]
C
Yep. Absolutely.
- [37:24]
B
Melissa, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for coming today and sharing your story. We really appreciate it.
- [37:31]
C
Yes, thank you for all the work that you do to help keep us connected as well.
- [37:37]
A
You've been listening to the Econ Dev show with Dane Carlson. If you're an economic developer who never stops learning. For more expert strategies, fresh insights and new ideas to take your career, organization and your community to the next level, visit us on the web@econdevshow.com.