Transcripts For CSPAN3 Aspen Institute Discussion Focuses On

But theyll be ushered in. Good afternoon and welcome to the Aspen Institute. On behalf of the Strategy Group and the Rural Development Innovation Group, i want to thank you for joining us for this lunchtime dialogue series. Americas rural opportunity. I want to thank all the people in the room here, in washington, d. C. , with us, as well as the hundreds of the people Live Streaming and those of you watching on cspan3. So i am i wonder how many there are. Im janet topolsky. Im executive director of the Aspen Institute strategies group. What we do here at aspen usg is we do a lot of work out in the country equipping local leaders to build more prosperous regions. And to advance those living on the economic margins while they do that. Since 1985, aspen csg has focused most of its work in Rural America. And through our experience over those years, we have learned full well that Rural America is not flyover country. Rural america, rather, is livein, workin, start a business in, and raise a family in country. So recent media headlines as we all know have focused attention on our nations acute rural challenges. The decline of critical sectors, inadequate job opportunities, infrastructure challenges, Community Health crises, and more. Those are real. But a deeper understanding of Rural America reveals an important but less publicized picture of innovation. And collaborative local leadership using their local assets to turn challenges into opportunities. So to launch this series today, we wanted to highlight just three representative stories of innovation that have built on local assets, from three different parts of Rural America. Were happy to be joined today by the people you see here on the podium. By Rural Business entrepreneurs and critical intermediary organizations that partner with them, and are deeply engaged in the Rural Economic Development and building rural urban connections. Before we get those stories under way, i want to introduce rob riley, whos president of the Northern Forest Center, and the Northern Forest Center and bob are really who instigated the Innovation Group. Hes going to tell you what that group is. Rob . [ applause ] thanks, janet, and thank you all for joining us today. Im rob riley. The center works across a 30 million acre region of upstate new york. Building economic and Community Vitality while fostering found forest stewardship. Our work over the past 20 years has focused on helping local communities to transition a Rural Economy that was once dominated by one sole industry, pulp and paper, to a more diversified one that can capitalize on the still important industry, but broader Economic Prosperity that capitalize on our Natural Resource base. This transition has been long and painful. But also very inspiring. Back in late 2015, on the ver roon da of the Mount Washington hotel anyone been there . Thank you. Thank you. Come back. We would like you to come back. The idea of the Rural Development Innovation Group was born. It was clear to many of us that theres a need to more intentionally focus interest and investment on Rural Development. We are tired if not exhausted by the story line that janet mentioned of challenge, economic distress, that dominated rural, and wanted to create a new narrative, one that positions rural as a National Asset that it is, while at the same time acknowledging the need for effective investment and innovation to unleash potential opportunity. With the Aspen Institute Community Strategies group and u. S. Endowment for forestry, we meet for a year and it has been almost a year to provide expert advice to each other to accelerate the impact of our own work, and identify emerging opportunities for rural, troubleshoot strategies and collectively learn together. Now were highlighting innovative approaches and helping to inspire Public Sector and philanthropic Decision Makers to reconsider americas rural opportunity. The Innovation Group identified on your handout has invested their time and energy, balancing the hard work, the really hard work they do back at home with the work they have there, raising up innovative practices and stories to support rural opportunity. Lastly, i do want to say, on a slightly sentimental tone, but one laden with alternate practicality, that this is personal work for many of us. Personally i grew up working on my familys farm in southern vur montana that was hughed out of the woods 225 years ago. Cut my teeth really in fields, picking stones, working in the forests, and wondered what the future might be from my family and my community. I know im not alone with those challenges of what the future brings. To improve rural places. So thank you all for being here. Janet . [ applause ] thank you, rob. And we do want to acknowledge and thank several organizations for their inaugural support of this series. Besides our own group, these include the Northern Forest Center, the u. S. Endowment for forestry and communities, encourage Community Foundation in wisconsin, the Lower Foundation which partners with Rural Communities in the inner mountain west, and includes every member of the Rural Development Innovation Group, all of whom have contributed significant time and resources to the earth. If you want to share your thoughts or have any questions and youre not in the room, if youre out there in the twitterverse or universe, you can use rural innovation, which is right here next to me. Maybe you can see it. If you have a question, and youre not in the room, thats what you use to get the question. We have someone monitoring it. So when we have a q a section, you can well get your questions there. To learn more, get updates, or share your stories, and wed love anyone to share stories, visit at as. Pn rural, or follow us on twitter rural innovators. Lets get started. Im going to hand the mike over to ray suarez who will be moderating todays panel. We didnt want to use veteran journalist, so im going to use been there done that journalist ray suarez who most recently was host of inside story, which was al jazeera americas daily news program. He spent 14 years as a correspondent and anchor of pbs news hour and more than six years as the washington based host of the nprs talk of the nation. Ray, heres your chance to talk with innovators from our rural nation. Thank you. [ applause ] i want to apologize at the outset for the stereotypical thinking that went into tapping me as the moderator for this program. Because after all, who else would you invite to do this but a puerto rican guy from brooklyn. [ laughter ] who is a residence of washington, d. C. , living in the smallest jurisdiction hes ever lived in in his life. But this is a topic of vital importance to me, as well as to the country. So im happy to be here. Of all the splits and tears in the National Civic fabric, there are few that are as vast and windening as that between americas metropolitan counties and Rural Counties. We take all places for investment, for preparation for the future. And solidify the lines. And i think even the hardest of hardcore urbanites would agree that americas world counties still need to be economically and socially coherent places, places that are able to provide for themselves, and the people who make their homes there. School systems need to be funded, roads need to be maintained, courts and sheriffs departments are places of accumulated capital, that needs to be maintained. And for that to happen, people need another microphone. We have great ideas working in Rural Counties and they are represented by my guests here today. To kick us off, well start with the Appalachian Partnership for Economic Growth and john molinaro. Thank you very much, ray. Im very pleased to be here today. Im going to start by telling you a little bit about our region. We are the third of ohio that most people never thinks about, the appalachian part of ohio. About 18,000 square miles of rugged, heavily forested resourcerich country. Culturally and our population is both the way that you may think about an appalachian population, one that struggles with poverty, many people with scotchirish roots, but also a growing population from other areas. Immigrants, as well as very substantial and expanding amish population. The economy of appalachian ohio has always been focused on resource extraction and manufacturing. Thats still true today. Weve gone through periods where our timber, our clay, to make bricks, our iron ore, our coal are the drivers of the economy, and frankly the builders of the American Cities in the east. Today shell natural gas continues to play a huge role. Were seeing a resurgence in the hardwood industry. We have extreme poverty, but its mixed in with highly skilled manufacturing workers and artisans who are trying to cope with the erosion of jobs in the factories and industries in the region. And were beginning to see a rebirth. The coal and steel jobs have mostly been lost, but theyre being lost by the gas industry. And in a resurgent with products industry. Our story today is going to focus on the Woods Products in the region. Our fine appalachian hardwoods that grow there, because of economic displacement in the Great Recession we just came through, are no longer primarily used in the region. 80 are exported in their lowest value forms, as raw logs or green lumber. And mike workman from contracts furniture in mcconnellsville is a leader of a group thats really taking that on and driving more value back into our communities through higher value use of those Forest Products. Mike . Thank you, john. Thank you for being here in the audience. This is a 20year story thats hard to tell in five minutes but ill do the best that i can. I work for a furniture manufacturer in Southeastern Ohio for about 20 years. And in 1994, the company was sold by our Investment Banking firm who owned us to a Regional Bank in cincinnati. The reason the bank bought all the assets of the Investment Company was to get a seat on the new york stock exchange. But they were not interested in manufacturing, and nothing to do with it. As a result, in 1995, they closed our factory, and put 160 workers, including myself, on the street. We were all without jobs. After thinking about it, i decided that im going to start my own business this time around, and that was in 1996. A partner and i in our little town of mcconnellsville purchased at auction some of the equipment from our former factory my former factory, and we built an 8,000 square foot building and started manufacturing stools. And we hired three employees from the from our previous employer. And we went into stool production immediately. And it was a very easy business. It was almost like a hair pin. So life was good for a few years. From 2002, we concentrated just on stool production. And in 2003, i got a call from a gentleman most of you have heard of, his name was chuck williams, and hes the founder of williams sonoma. I had gotten to know chuck over the years i had been in business. He asked me workman, what are you doing . I said well, chuck, we are making stools for you, got my feet on my desk, life is good, we are shipping these to you every week and really enjoying life. And he said well, workman, he said i want some tables. I said well, chuck, we dont do tables, we just are doing the stools for you. He says youre not hearing me. He said i want tables and i want you to do them. So i said okay, give me a couple weeks, chuck, and let me think about this. So i knew a lot of people in the industry and i went through my list of people who were small manufacturers, they were backwoods people. They were not interested in marketing or Product Development or in sales, and i asked them if they would be interested in making Custom Furniture for me, and they said yes, we would be very interested in doing that. So over the course of between 2005 and 2009, we created or networked 20 factories in the Appalachian Region to do Custom Furniture and in back in 2004, chuck had asked me to do cabinets as well so the answer was the same. Ill figure this out. In 2010, i got a call from eric burkeman, president of the ohio manufacturers association, and eric asked if i would go to the Amish Country in ohio and help four small familyowned factories find their way in Product Development, in design, marketing, sales, that kind of thing. They werent really interested now, they were only interested in manufacturing furniture. So i gave him some tips to find out about the business, steer them on the right course and then eric asked me on the way home, well, what did you think. I said i see a big opportunity here that i think what you should do is network these people and brand this thing chiquita banana. He looked at me and said why dont you do it . So thats what happened. That was the catalyst. Eric set up a meeting with the Ohio Department of development. We received some grant money to vet this whole idea of networking and we were looking at what model are we going to use here. Is it a cooperative, is it a quasicooperative, how are we going to organize this. And we decided to organize it as a hub and spoke system and its been operating since 2011. In the last six years, our annual revenue has grown by 15 a year. We have increased our sales by 4 million. Our goal in 2020 is to increase it by an additional 6 million and so far, we have impacted 300 incumbent workers and created 100 new jobs from this effort. So i think that the story mike tells has a couple of really telling points. First, it was the local entrepreneurial spirit that really made this thing work but second, there came some critical points where some additional assistance was required. So Manufacturing Extension Partnership fund channeled through the state of ohio helped pay for pulling together the plan to hold together these companies. Subsequent to that, theres been additional manufacturing extension support that has helped with work force training. Mike mentioned there are 100 new workers. Someone had to train those up to the skills needed specifically in these industries. Manufacturing extension helped with that. We have also gotten some department of labor funds to help with skill upgrades and going forward, this is plugged into a larger Regional Innovation Cluster Initiative that was actually founded based on the principles of mikes work to drive more value in the Forest Products cluster back through the supply chain and do higher value work at appalachian ohio. So that Regional Innovation cluster is among a set of clusters sba supports in things Like Aerospace and advanced energy, we are focused on the product that people have been making things since we lived in caves but its working and driving more value into the region. Ray . Thank you for coming in on time. Its an example much to be emulated by other panelists. From ohio, we will move next to the state of oregon and hear from nils cristofferesen. Its a pleasure to be here today. Our storys a little different. Its the story about a Public Private partnership that addresses the challenge of Forest Restoration and job creation across the rural west. In the innovation that we are going to talk about emerged in northeast oregon, a threecounty area nearly the size of new jersey, with less than 50,000 people. More than 50 of this land base falls within the National Forest. Our communities in that area have always been tied to the land. We are isolated communities, very far from urban centers and markets, but rich in natural and human capital. There may not be many of us but theres a wealth of skills and knowledge and enduring work commitment, and a commitment to land stewardship. The forest and Wood Products sector used to be the highest private sector payroll provider in the region, providing very high wages and good private health insurance. Most of those jobs were lost in 1995 when the mills shut down. Following dramatic reductions in forest timber harvests. Profound impacts rippled across the communities. County services were cut. Schools laid off t