Inside America's Best Cities, An Economic Development Podcast

Brooke Randels of Campus Tulsa joins us on this episode with insight on retaining college students in your community. She also shares about the knowledge you can glean from the upcoming Young, Smart & Local talent conference in New Orleans and chats about the future of higher education, plus what Gen Z is getting right.

Be sure to subscribe so you're alerted when we release new episodes. You can also subscribe to our talent attraction newsletter.

At Livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and mid-sized cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies and potential residents through digital content and print magazine programs.

Learn more about us at LivabilityMedia.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email host Amanda Ellis at [email protected].

Inside America's Best Cities is produced by SpeakEasy Productions in Chattanooga, TN.

In this episode, Chris Fair, futurist as well as founder and CEO of Resonance, discusses what will make the cities of the future good places to live and what to be thinking about now to be a talent magnet in the coming decades.

Be sure to subscribe so you're alerted when we release new episodes.

Resources Mentioned:

Why a Prosperous City is Both Livable and Lovable

Resonance's 2023 America's Best Cities

Livability's 2023 Top 100 Best Places to Live

At Livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and mid-sized cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies and potential residents through digital content and print magazine programs.

Learn more about us at LivabilityMedia.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email host Amanda Ellis at [email protected].

Inside America's Best Cities is produced by SpeakEasy Productions.

Kaleigh Cox, of DxTEL and Fiber Homes, joins us for our first episode of Season 3 on how fiber internet can help you meet your talent and business attraction goals. She also talks about resources for bringing fiber to your area and tapping your local real estate agents to support your strategy.

Be sure to subscribe so you're alerted when we release new episodes.

Resources Mentioned:

Livability & Fiber Homes' Connected Communities Certification

Connected Community Mount Horeb and their internet trolls

Podcast about tapping real estate agents as community ambassadors

At Livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and mid-sized cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies and potential residents through digital content and print magazine programs.

Learn more about us at LivabilityMedia.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email host Amanda Ellis at [email protected].

Inside America's Best Cities is produced by SpeakEasy Productions in Chattanooga, TN.

In this special bonus episode, Mike Christenson of Applied Geographic Solutions shares how the right data can have a big impact on your efforts to draw talent and businesses, and how the barriers to getting good data are not as high as you might think.

This is the last episode of our second season, but we'll be back soon with Season 3. Be sure to subscribe so you're alerted when we release our next episode.

Resources Mentioned:

Blog Post mentioned at 7:30 about 2020 Census data

At Livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and mid-sized cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies and potential residents through digital content & print magazine programs.

Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn. Have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email [email protected].

Each season, we'll hear from a community who recently won a significant project, and how they did it. On this Pick Me! Episode, Chassen Haynes, Senior Director of Business Development for the State of Tennessee, joins us to talk about landing the biggest investment in Tennessee history: Ford's $5.6 billion BlueOval project creating BlueOval City.

In this episode, we sit down with Adam Knapp, President & CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber to talk about Baton Rouge's comprehensive talent strategies, and how this community is upskilling high schoolers, college students and adults. Not only are they matching the right people to the right jobs, they're also closing opportunity gaps and promoting their area along the way.

In this episode, Nathan Ohle, President & CEO, International Economic Development Council, looks back on his first year leading our industry's premier professional association. He also talks about the future of IEDC and the profession, especially recruiting students to our industry, IEDC's Economic Recovery Corps and much more.

Places with a large nearby military presence know that can really shape the fabric of your community. But are you maximizing that impact when it comes to your talent strategies? And how do you keep transitioning military folks in your region? In this episode, April Bragg of the Robins Regional Chamber in Warner Robins, Georgia, talks about engaging with nearby Robins Air Force Base and how these relationships make Warner Robins a special place.

Have you been charged with marketing your community? Get place marketing insights from Development Counsellors International. In this episode, you'll learn about where to start and who to partner with in your community, plus more to help you go from launching a place marketing strategy to an established place brand that appeals to talent, business and visitors alike.

Looking to boost your community's pool of workers in fields like health care, tech or manufacturing? You're in the right place – our two-part series on upskilling. In our second installment, the Ames Chamber joins us with expert insight on how to design workforce programs, with case studies on their See Yourself in Ames intern retention initiative and the Story County Retraining Program upskilling locals.