Dynamic Decisions Podcast

If There's No Power, You're Out of the Game Anna Cardona has worked in architecture, project management, municipal economic development, and now energy infrastructure strategy.  Her message for economic developers is blunt: power, not land, decides whether a site stays in the running. Why a four or five year utility timeline can take a site out of contention What "time to compute" means to da...

Trevor Lewington has been a food manufacturer, an entrepreneur, a mayor, and a city economic developer. Now he runs growth for Lethbridge County, a 2,800 square kilometer agricultural powerhouse in Alberta that wants to be Canada's most innovative rural community. He brings the blunt version of what that takes. Why 80% of job creation comes from existing businesses, and what that means for your bu...

Nate Clayberg has spent a decade proving workforce development and economic development are the same function.  As business and industry director for the CAPS Network, he connects employers with more than 100 high school programs where students work as junior consultants on real company projects.  Why site selection RFPs list community college programs and call it a workforce strategy Sh...

Tanner Jones spent eight years as a local economic developer in Alabama before moving into consulting. Today, as Director of Economic and Community Development at Fourth Economy, he helps communities across 40 states plan for growth they actually want.  Why momentum, not infrastructure, is the first thing to break when a region booms Why most companies won't look at a community without existi...

Dr. Alice Holloway spent 20 years managing supplier relationships at Alabama Power, started six companies, and now leads Birmingham's Entrepreneurship Center for Growth and Excellence. She knows what corporate buyers say in the room and what they never say out loud. The unglamorous reasons small businesses never get the call, from email platforms that do not connect to proposals that do not read a...

Paty Araiza grew an SDR team from 20 to 100 people, drove about $5.7 million in TCV, and promoted around 20 reps to account executive. She calls the first stretch "absolute chaos," and that honesty is why this conversation is worth your time. Why institutional knowledge, from discount limits to call cadences, quietly sinks new hires The buddy system and "hierarchy of questions" that let two manage...

A French company had four sites to choose from for a $450 million North American plant. It picked a Manitoba city of 15,000, and the owner explained why. Dr. Jean-Marc Nadeau, former Portage la Prairie city manager and now CEO of SUMA, tells the story, including a rebrand that went badly wrong. Why the owner of Roquette credited councils that weren't in conflict, and not just the incentives How a...

Jamie Nichols covers North Central Oklahoma for the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, and her job starts with asking who in a town is already selling outside it. One county believed it had maybe half a dozen micro businesses. Then someone pulled the data and found 500 registered.  Even if only 25 of those are real and unseen, thats 25 businesses a community can help grow, and that is economic...

Jessica Olives has spent more than fifteen years inside nonprofit and public sector governance, including the Port of Seattle, King County Housing Authority, and the Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority. Now she runs Mission Match, a nationwide platform where nonprofits search for board members by expertise, location, and cause instead of waiting for someone to answer a posting. What to do when the perfec...

Marta Tarantsey spent 12 years in Oregon state service, from civil rights compliance at ODOT to certifying more than 400 small businesses to now serving as Business Oregon's liaison for four Southern Oregon counties. She does not advocate for one business over another, and she explains why that neutrality is how she helps all of them. Why treating Dutch Bros as a unicorn guarantees you never see a...

Gloria Salinas runs growth strategy for one of the fastest growing cities in America, and she still says no to projects that don't fit the plan. As Chief Growth Officer for the Frisco Economic Development Corporation, she's helped turn a former farm town into a magnet for Fortune 500 headquarters, 16 corporate R&D centers, and a talent pool with double the national average of tech workers. How...

Kathleen Rose has spent 30+ years on both sides of the table: advising municipalities on real estate and economic development, and writing the checks as managing partner on South Main Square in downtown Davidson, North Carolina. She knows which plans lead to action and which ones collect dust. And she'll tell you, even when you'd rather not hear it. Why about 25% of every community plan repeats th...

Cornell Wesley left banking for an 88,000-person town in Arkansas, turned a $2 million fund into $30 million of economic activity in 11 months, and got a call from Washington asking how he did it. You'll love his response. Today he runs Prosper Portland, with a $200 million budget and 11 urban renewal districts. He talks to Teasha Cable about money, power, and who development is really for.  ...

Peter Bishop spent years in commercial real estate before crossing over to run economic development for High Point, North Carolina, and it shows. In this conversation he explains how a vacant hosiery mill becomes market-rate apartments, why three rival cities agreed to stop competing against each other on incentives, and how one blended-wing aircraft startup is about to bring 14,500 jobs to a form...

Todd Tucker has worked in economic development at three different altitudes: state commerce, utility site selection at Progress Energy, and now leading growth for a county whose tax base just jumped 30% in a single year. That range shows in how he thinks about the job. Why most companies can't actually answer "how much power do you need," and what economic developers ask to get a real number How L...

David Blaha spent 25 years building relationships at American Express before becoming Chief Revenue Officer at Extend, a virtual card platform banks and fintechs use nationwide. His take: the smartest fintechs don't compete with banks, they arm them.  How COVID turned virtual cards from a niche fix for interviewees and non-carded employees into an everyday bill pay tool for small and mid-size...

Damien Denmark became Yukon, Oklahoma's first-ever economic development director in January 2026, He arrived from Olathe, Kansas with one rule: build the relationship before you need the deal. At only 30 years old, he's already moved a $100 million development through approval in 60 days and built his own incentive tool from scratch. Read that 2x. Learn how Denmark moved a $100M TIF district throu...

Your City Is Sick...and More Jobs Isn't the Cure... Jeff has spent more than two decades helping downtowns recover, first as a Main Street manager running Ohio's statewide program, then as founder of Revitalize or Die and author of Your City is Sick. He joins Teasha to argue that economic development has solved for the wrong problem for forty years. Jeff's five points of civic pride: identity, aes...

Mandy White, Chief Economic Development Officer for the Greater Jackson, TN Chamber , has spent nearly three decades helping turn Jackson, Tennessee into a manufacturing hub home to 60 to 70 companies, including several Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 brands. In this episode, she breaks down what actually won the region's largest single investment ever, and how she keeps the workforce pipeline growing...

Not All Growth Is Good Growth: The Case Against Chasing Every Deal   Maurice Harris has sat on both sides of the site selection table: first as a researcher at Greater MSP and Transwestern Real Estate, now as an economic development specialist at JLL working with BNSF on rail expansion across Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Montana.  He's also a Golden Valley, Minnesota city council member a...

Kelsi Jackson, executive director of the Jackson County Tourist Development Council in Northwest Florida, built her county's entire visitor strategy around a decades-old customer service story about an extra pickle.  She explains how that mindset turned skeptical gas station clerks and restaurant workers into genuine tourism ambassadors, and what it takes to grow a rural visitor economy witho...

Coreat Houser directs the City of Birmingham's Department of Innovation and Economic Opportunity, overseeing economic development, workforce development, real estate, and small business support across all 99 city neighborhoods.  In this conversation, he explains why civic education, not just funding, is often the real bottleneck to inclusive growth, and breaks down how his team rebuilt Birmin...

Joi, known as The Joiful Recruiter, is the lead talent acquisition advisor for sales at Dynatrace, president of the Black Employee Network Business Resource Group, and founder of Joiful Talent Solutions. After a decade in high-volume RPO recruiting and years in enterprise SaaS, she has built a track record that includes a 95% offer acceptance rate, a 20% drop in time to hire, and a 30% lift in ret...

Kristen Fish-Peterson has spent over 16 years running Redevelopment Resources, advising cities and developers across the Midwest on tax increment financing, grants, and the deals that bring struggling downtowns back to life.  She has worked both sides of the negotiating table, from City Hall to the developer's pro forma, and brings a rare fluency in both languages to this conversation.  ...

Derrek Lennox is SVP of Corporate Development and CFO at Dougall Media, a managing partner at his own consulting firm, and an adjunct professor of corporate restructuring at York University's Schulich School of Business. In this episode of the Dynamic Decisions Podcast, he doesn't just talk turnarounds, he hands over the exact frameworks he uses to make decisions under pressure. The three-part fra...