Dynamic Decisions Podcast

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 Lee County's tax base grew 30% year over year to $8.8 billion, and the two levers, zoning and water and sewer access, local government actually has to manage it

• "Coopetition": working with Raleigh, Durham, and Charlotte on shared infrastructure while still competing hard for the same projects

If your team is scaling growth, courting site selectors, or just trying to figure out which questions actually matter, this one's worth the full listen.

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 businesses
• Why Extend builds the capability and lets banks sell it, instead of competing with neobanks like Ramp and Brex head on
• What David had to unlearn from 25 years at Amex, from a full support team to booking his own travel and building his own systems to fill the gap
• Why closing a deal with a major bank or card network takes years, not months, and what actually earns you the next step

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 through approval in 60 days by getting bond counsel, developers, and attorneys in one room instead of six separate meetings
• Why 5,000 people showing up to Food Truck Saturdays in a town of 19,000 taught him more about economic development than any deal he's closed
• The Yukon Horizon Program: an incentive tool he built by adapting Kansas and Missouri's Community Improvement District model to fit Oklahoma law

If you think economic development is just chasing incentives, this conversation will change your mind.

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, aesthetics, community, standards, and engagement, and why "aesthetics" still gets dismissed as lipstick on a pig despite the real estate data behind it.
• The real diagnosis behind struggling downtowns: not a lack of funding, but rampant apathy, and the six-months-without-cleaning-your-house analogy Jeff uses to explain it.
• What Jeff's civic health assessments and civic pride workshops actually produce for a city in three days, and why he measures success by whether leaders stop chasing "bigger" and start chasing "better."
• How Jeff's own seat on the Mount Lebanon commission puts his framework to the test, including a real fight over bike lanes and who local infrastructure is actually built to serve.

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 to match it. Spoiler alert, it wasn't incentives.

• How Jackson won a $425M Georgia Pacific plant, the largest investment in its history, by building trust with the site selection consultant before incentives were ever discussed
• Why "Team Tennessee" thinking means Mandy sometimes coaches competing communities, including teaching a Japanese business etiquette course to two nearby towns bidding against each other for the same project
• The real mismatch between fast-moving manufacturing technology and slow-moving educational institutions, and how Jackson bridges it
• Mandy's decision-making breakdown across four leadership personas, and how 27 years on the job shifted her from a balanced approach to a values-first one

If you think incentives are what wins industrial recruitment, this conversation will change your mind.

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 and the first African American to win a second term on that council, giving him a rare view into how research actually lands in real decisions.

• Why site selection has shifted from cheap land and low taxes toward talent attraction, housing, and quality of life over the last decade

• How Minnesota competes with low-tax states like Texas by selling schools, parks, and infrastructure instead of a lower rate

• The real story behind the Amazon HQ2 bidding war, and why Greater MSP was comfortable not winning it

• How Golden Valley built its first-ever economic development strategic plan and funded dedicated staff through a new EDA tax levy

If you've ever wondered what actually convinces a company to pick one city over another, this one will change how you think about it.

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 without a big budget.

• The origin of "Give Them the Pickle" and why Kelsi built a whole ambassador training program around it
• How a four to five month training series turned some of the county's loudest online skeptics into its biggest cheerleaders
• Why Kelsi's team chases cave divers and hunters who stay a week or more over day-trippers who don't spend much
• How a public-private partnership at Jackson Blue Springs tripled foot traffic without costing the county in operations

By the end, you'll understand why "just give them the pickle" has become the whole philosophy behind Jackson County tourism.

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 Birmingham's $6.2M BOLD grant program from the ground up.

• Why Coreata's first 30 days in city government, right before COVID hit, exposed how little most residents and business owners actually understand about how city government works

• How BOLD evolved from a $6.2M fund for 66 organizations into a 12-month, technical-assistance-backed partnership model instead of a compliance program

• Why Birmingham deliberately maps funding and investment across all 99 neighborhoods instead of concentrating it downtown

• The results of Coreata's live Decision Style Persona Assessment, showing exactly how he weighs values, data, risk, and long-term strategy when allocating public dollars

This is what economic development looks like when equity is a mapped result, not a talking point.

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 retention among the sales teams she staffs.

• The exact behavioral questions Joi asks to find out why a candidate really left their last job, before she ever screens for skills
• How she carried her instincts from high-volume RPO recruiting into slower, higher-stakes enterprise sales hiring
• Her rule on salary conversations: talk about money early, and never let the candidate name the number first
• A live, on-air persona assessment that reveals just how values-driven her decision making really is, and what that could be quietly costing her

If you hire, manage, or coach salespeople, this conversation will change how you run your next interview.

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.

• Why Kristen tells developers to prove their financial gap with a real pro forma before a city offers a dollar in TIF incentive

• The Watertown, Wisconsin block she convinced a city to demolish for a park, and the 10x tax base bet that followed

• How developer-funded TIF and revolving loan funds let cities keep sharing in the upside long after a district closes

• What most city councils get wrong about infill housing, and why a vacant lot costs more than it looks like on paper

If you have ever sat in a room where a city and a developer couldn't agree on who's taking the risk, this episode is your playbook.