Many states run their welfare programs and workforce programs like two separate businesses that never talk to each other. Families in poverty have to navigate multiple agencies, multiple buildings, and mountains of paperwork just to get help — let alone get back on their feet.

Utah decided to do something different.

Welcome to Episode 5 of From Ideas to Innovation. I'm joined by Nic Dunn, Vice President of Policy and Communications at the Sutherland Institute, one of Utah's most influential think tanks, and one of the country's sharpest thinkers on poverty, upward mobility, and what it actually looks like when policy works.

Nic Dunn didn’t start out in policy. He started in broadcast journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, but he left the program feeling like he didn’t yet know enough to go into the field. That intellectual humility sent him to the University of Utah for a master’s degree in public policy. From there he entered a career that has taken him from speechwriter for Governor Gary Herbert to policy advisor at the Salt Lake County Council to Chambers of Commerce in Utah to his current role at the Sutherland Institute.

Along the way, Nic has developed a rare combination of policy depth and communications instinct — and a firm conviction that the two are inseparable. Good policy that can’t be communicated effectively goes nowhere. And communication without substance is just noise.

Today at Sutherland, he hosts the Defending Ideas podcast and leads the Institute’s work on poverty, upward mobility, housing, and welfare reform. He is one of the most thoughtful voices in the country on what a pro-work, pro-human approach to the social safety net actually looks like in practice.

What You’ll Take Away

Why Utah has ranked number one in social mobility two editions in a row— and what other states can actually replicate

How Utah’s One Door to Work model integrates welfare and workforce programs in a way that federal law prevents most states from doing

What a chronically homeless man taught Nic about what the social safety net should actually be for

Why the benefit cliff is one of the most underrated barriers to upward mobility, and how Utah is fixing that

What it looks like when think tanks do their job well, and communication’s role

Why Utah’s political culture is a model worth studying

Why housing affordability is both a symptom of Utah’s success and its most pressing challenge

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