The Leading Ladies of Economic Development®

Marketing with a Wink: How Surprise, Arizona Attracts Retailers │Jeanine Jerkovic, CEcD

In this episode of the Leading Ladies of Economic Development podcast, Kaycee Bunch welcomes Jeanine Jerkovic, CEcD, Economic Development Director for Surprise, Arizona. Jeanine discusses her career journey into economic development, including her international experiences and her recent last-minute trip to Taiwan tied to the semiconductor supply chain. She shares how humor, creativity, and community connection have shaped Surprise’s award-winning marketing campaigns and helped attract retailers and restaurants like Whole Foods and Cheesecake Factory. Jeanine also explores how resident feedback and retail surveys informed the city’s strategy, as well as Surprise’s next chapter focused on placemaking, mixed-use development, and job growth. She reflects on navigating the challenges surrounding a proposed DHS detention facility and the lessons she’s learned about leadership and public service.

In this episode, we explore:

Quotable: “  So maybe this is encouraging for any economic developer going through a tough moment; there's a Maya Angelou quote that every storm runs out of rain, and it's so true, your passion for your community just has to keep going.”

Resources and Links

Connect with Jeanine Jerkovic on LinkedIn

Mission: Cheesecake Video

City Declares KALE EMERGENCY Video

Surprise Arizona Economic Development YouTube

Special Guest: Jeanine Jerkovic, CEcD.

Tracye McDaniel, strategic advisor at TIP Inc. and IEDC’s Chief Growth and Strategy Advisor, joins host Kaycee on the Leading Ladies of Economic Development podcast to discuss what drew her to economic development, shaped by community leadership in Waco and 17 years in the Texas governor’s office working with five governors.

McDaniel shares how global exposure informs local strategy, advising rural communities to start with regional collaboration, and highlights the Rio Grande Valley’s transformation through anchor investments like SpaceX and the Port of Brownsville. She explains leadership as clarity, curiosity, and engagement, and distinguishes influence as trust-based relationships beyond titles, emphasizing proactive inclusion of missing voices.

The conversation covers long-term “legacy” planning, community concerns around data centers, and her contribution to The Cost of Cool on who benefits from growth, with workforce development framed as an underutilized asset and “secret weapon” for inclusive economic impact.

In this episode, we explore:

Quotable: “ When you're in this trajectory of growth, we don't ask the question of who is this growth for and who is it going to displace?”

Resources and Links

Connect with Tracye McDaniel on LinkedIn

Bridge Bedford (TN) - Shelbyville 2075: Legacy in Motion—An Investment Blueprint • TIP Strategies

The Cost of Cool: Austin's Tech Growth and the People Left Behind (Kenneth E. Montague Series in Oil and Business History): Roberts, Jon, McDaniel, Tracye, Echeverri-Carroll, Elsie L., Johnston, Evan, Todd-Goynes, Jennifer: 9781648433832: Amazon.com: Books

Special Guest: Tracye McDaniel.

In this episode of Leading Ladies of Economic Development, Kaycee sits down with Dr. Tina Yerkes, an executive strategist, leadership mentor, speaker, and founder of Transformative Leadership Consulting. Tina left leadership to start a consultancy and write a book focused on helping women navigate workplace bias in male-dominated environments. Drawing on 30 years of experience—being talked over, dismissed, and denied proper titles despite her authority and education—she says she realized the problem is systemic, though change will take time. While waiting for organizations to catch up, she emphasizes mentors and individualized strategies that allow women to succeed without shrinking themselves or pretending to be someone else.

In this episode, we explore:

Quotable: “ I had seen the same thing happen everywhere to women and to myself, and I just had had enough."

Resources and Links

Connect with Tina Yerkes on LinkedIn

https://www.amazon.com/Change-System-Not-Women-Leadership/dp/1639082069

I Was Told to Shrink. I Chose to Fight Instead.

Special Guest: Dr. Tina Yerkes.

In this episode of Leading Ladies of Economic Development, Kaycee interviews Kayla Meisner, MEng, CLP, executive director of Kentucky Commercialization Ventures (KCV), a statewide technology transfer and commercialization initiative housed within the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation (KSTC). Meisner shares how an undergraduate internship at the University of Louisville’s tech transfer office shaped her career and explains how KCV was launched in 2020 as a public-private partnership to support technology transfer and research capacity at Kentucky’s non-R1 institutions and KCTCS. She discusses KCV’s role in advancing multi-institutional tech transfer models, including collaboration with Tennessee that helped inspire TTAC, and highlights successes such as startup formation (Bumped Up Labs and Eastern Scientific), SBIR/STTR wins, and an NSF EXLENT-funded KCV–NKU Invent program that provides virtual commercialization training and paid internships. Lastly, Meisner urges economic developers to build IP literacy, leverage regional assets, and collaborate rather than compete.

In this episode, we explore:

Quotable: “ Kentucky ideas will solve Kentucky problems, and Kentucky's problems are the world's problems.”

Resources and Links

Special Guest: Kayla Meisner, MEng, CLP.

In this episode of the Leading Ladies of Economic Development, Kaycee talks with leaders Jenny Poon & Chelsea Smith from HUUB, the digital platform that helps cities and economic development organizations centralize resources, funding, training, and community support to help small businesses start, grow, and thrive.

Jenny and Chelsea share their paths from entrepreneurship to economic development and explain how their experiences navigating disconnected small-business resources led them to create HUUB, a digital platform launched during the pandemic to connect entrepreneurs with the right support. They discuss early challenges like relying on scattered online information and the importance of “one right person” in changing a business trajectory, shaping HUUB’s focus on vetted experts and tactical help. HUUB partners primarily with municipalities, often alongside chambers, nonprofits, and other ecosystem organizations, and offers one-on-one advising, an on-demand learning library, community board, aggregated funding and events, and ecosystem mapping—automating tasks that economic developers often do manually and providing continuity when staff turnover occurs. They emphasize equitable outreach through translation, UX design, demographic tracking, and representation among advisors, and note lessons from product development and from resisting traditional startup pressures, while urging greater technology investment and more thoughtful AI use.

In this episode, we explore:

Quotable: “ And that's the key thing that I kept seeing over and over as an entrepreneur. It just takes one person, one right person, to completely change your trajectory as a business owner.”

Resources and Links

Connect with Jenny Poon on LinkedIn

Connect with Chelsea Smith on LinkedIn

HUUB - Economic Development Tools for Small Business Support

Tools | HUUB - Economic Development Tools for Small Business Support

Special Guests: Chelsea Smith and Jenny Poon.

In this episode of Leading Ladies of Economic Development, Kaycee welcomes Anne-Tyler Morgan, Member at McBrayer and Chair of the firm's Economic Development Practice Group. Anne-Tyler shares how growing up in rural Kentucky, riding alongside her developer father, sparked a lifelong passion for public policy, law, and community development. She discusses her unconventional path from in-house counsel to private practice, the evolution of economic development law, and the critical role legal strategy plays in helping communities attract investment and create opportunity. Anne-Tyler also offers thoughtful insights on leadership, mentorship, resilience, and what it means to be a woman leading in traditionally male-dominated spaces. From housing policy and workforce development to regional collaboration and community engagement, this conversation highlights the people, partnerships, and purpose behind economic development in Kentucky.

In this episode, we explore:

Quotable: “ I hope that a few generations from now, someone can point to a company and say, ‘My granddaddy worked there,’ and know that I had a small part in making that possible.”

Resources and Links

Special Guest: Anne-Tyler Morgan.

In this episode of Leading Ladies of Economic Development, Kaycee sits down with Gretchen Hunt, Director of the Office for Women for the City of Louisville, Kentucky. As a lawyer, advocate, and lifelong champion for gender equity, Gretchen has spent more than two decades improving outcomes for women, families, and communities across Kentucky.

From advancing workplace policies and leadership development programs to reimagining public spaces through the lens of safety and inclusion, Gretchen shares how Louisville is taking a practical approach to creating a more equitable city. She also discusses the hidden impact of caregiving responsibilities, the importance of supporting women's economic participation, and why meaningful change starts with addressing systems—not just individuals.

Along the way, Gretchen offers powerful insights on leadership, wellbeing, and finding balance in a world that often asks women to carry more than their share.

In this episode, we explore:

Quotable: “Women really are the barometer of whether an economy is working or whether a city is working. If women are struggling with housing, childcare, safety, and economic opportunity, those are community issues. They're just being felt most acutely by women."

Resources and Links

Special Guest: Gretchen Hunt.

In this episode of the Leading Ladies of Economic Development, Kaycee talks with leaders Andrea Schultz Winter & Nicole Haas from the Greater Freeport Partnership to explore how collaboration, communication, and community-driven strategy are reshaping regional economic development in northwest Illinois.

Andrea Schultz and Nicole Haas share how their unexpected career paths led them into the field and ultimately back to the region, where they now help guide a merged organization that brings together economic development, tourism, Main Street, and chamber functions under one collaborative model. They reflect on the evolution of the organization since its formation in 2018, including the challenges of aligning four legacy entities, building trust with members, and establishing a unified vision during a period that included both organizational transition and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this episode, we explore:

Quotable: “Change is built at the speed of trust.”

Resources and Links

Special Guests: Andrea Schultz Winter and Nicole Hass.

In this powerful episode of the Leading Ladies of Economic Development Podcast, Kaycee sits down with Kathleen (Kat) J. Guillaume-Delemar, President and CEO of the Center for Community Progress. Kat shares her deeply personal journey—from growing up in under-resourced communities in Brooklyn during the crack epidemic to leading a national organization focused on equitable property revitalization. She challenges conventional ideas about “blight,” economic development, and community engagement, emphasizing that lasting change must be community-led, policy-driven, and rooted in lived experience.

Through candid storytelling and practical examples, Kat explains how communities can reclaim vacant and abandoned properties without displacement—and why listening to community “whispers” is the key to sustainable revitalization.

In this episode, we explore:

Quotable: “You can censor words—but you can’t censor lived experience.”

Link to register for the 2026 reclaiming vacant properties conference: 2026 Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference | Center for Community Progress

Resources and Links

Special Guest: Kathleen (Kat) J. Guillaume-Delemar.

In this episode of the Leading Ladies of Economic Development Podcast, host Kaycee sits down with Monica Hershberger, Chief Strategy Officer at RoleCall, to explore how communities can attract talent by embracing what makes them truly unique.

In this episode, we explore:

Quotable: “ The more you invite people into creating your community’s vision, the more you’ll build relationships that actually bring the right people home. Talent attraction isn’t just strategy—it’s human.”

Resources and Links

Connect with RoleCall on LinkedIn

RoleCall Talent Attraction Summit Registration Link

Handel’s Ice Cream

Ecosystems aren’t the answer — Civic Collaboration Consultants, LLC

From Comeback City to Talent Magnet: What Buffalo Can Teach Us About Talent Attraction

Opening Doors: Inside Freeport’s Downtown Unlocked Vision Tour (and how you can host your own!)

Special Guest: Monica Hershberger.