A Road Map to the Future

from Prairie Business September 2021

Li fe is dr iven by pu rp os e

By Andrew Weeks

The future is fueled by innovation –something Joe Raso knows well. Innovation is, in part, what led to his moving to the Fargo-Moorhead region about two years ago.

Now, as president and chief executive officer of the Greater Fargo/Moorhead Economic Development Corp., he is doing his part to innovate the organization and community for the years ahead.

One tool he is using is a communitywide initiative called Fueling Our Future, which relies on partnerships with many businesses and their leaders. The Fargo Moorhead West Fargo Chamber of Commerce is a primary partner.

Raso, in fact, said that’s where the initiative started in about 2017, when the late Craig Whitney was chamber president.

Raso and current Chamber President Shannon Full are fully on board with the initiative, which at its core has three focus points or initiatives: People, Prosperity and Place.

The initiative’s aim is to attract new talent to the region and retain its workforce; attract new businesses within targeted sectors and support entrepreneurship; and create critical infrastructure components and amenities to enhance the region’s prospects and quality of life.

Whitney died in 2019, Raso said, but his vision for the future of the region has remained, fueled by others who want to see the region continue to develop and prosper.

“It was pretty apparent that many of the leaders in the region felt that they were going to move forward with a broad initiative to address major issues in the region” – the ones they were willing to support, or what Raso calls the “big-rock issues” in the region. “We have kept the flame going. All those things have been talked about, but no one really had an X on their back or was taking the charge and keeping a light on those items.”

Raso said the EDC and Chamber “were not necessarily the organizations to implement, but we wanted to make sure that the business community, through our two organizations, would support and keep screaming from the mountaintop that these things needed to be addressed.”

Some of those big-rock issues are the very things the initiative seeks to address in its people, prosperity and place categories.

Full, who took the reins of the chamber presidency last December, said, much like Raso, the business community’s involvement in their communities was a motivating factor in her moving to the area, which at its core is a main thrust of Fueling Our Future – to attract new talent to the region.

If she and Raso are only two examples of many, they said, think of the potential of drawing more talented people to the region.

“What was really prevalent was this really strong desire to collaborate in a very meaningful, purposeful, and intentional way,” Full said of the business community.

Some other regions across the country have figured out how to address those big-rock issues, the most critical opportunities of their communities, and put them into action. The Fargo-Moorhead region can learn from them and be numbered among them, Full said.

“I was very interested in how the chamber could work with the EDC, mostly with the EDC but then other community partners and leaders throughout the community,” she said. “Fueling Our Future is a great way to convene all of these great ideas, opportunities, thought leaders and minds, and move that into action.”

Besides the three items mentioned above – people, prosperity and place – the initiative has many parts under each focus item.

The elephant in the room, however, is attracting and retaining workforce, which also means working with institutions of higher learning. Fueling Our Future sets its sights on regional colleges and universities, prime players in the future of any region.

“We don’t have a systematic approach to workforce development that is comprehensive and collective of all of the different entities and so Ignite is that,” Full said.

Ignite, much like its name, seeks to spark opportunity and innovation.

She explained: “This is really a combination of a technology platform, coupled with a strategic relationship development strategy that will allow us to better connect student exploration, active job-seeker exploration with direct opportunities from our businesses.

“For instance,” she continued, “there will be a technology platform side of it that has video career cards that are crowd-sourced from all over the country, but are also ones that are shot here locally; there’s online learning to help job-seekers and students better align with online courses that are driven by the private sector.

“And then there is an opportunity where companies are able to put in their profile and through that profile they can identify of all of their employees on their team who’s willing to speak in classrooms, job shadows, tours, internships, mentorship and all of those exploration opportunities that also is a major initiative that is being funded, in part, by Fueling Our Future.”

Full and Raso said they are optimistic about the future of the region, mainly because of its people but also because of what’s in store as the the future continues to be fueled by innovative minds working to achieve one goal: To make the area a hotspot where top talent and a driven workforce impacts prosperity and place.

“If there were not courageous leaders who saw the opportunity to come together and be a catalyst for the future of our major opportunities here,” Full said, “we wouldn’t be positioned in this way.”

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