This week on the podcast, Matt sits down with Heartland Forward’s President and CEO Ross DeVol and Chief Communications and Development Officer Blake Woolsey. They begin with Ross explaining what Heartland Forward does and their goal of focusing on improving economic performance in the American Heartland. They then dive into how Ross and Blake became involved in Heartland Forward and where their passions for economic development in the Heartland comes from. They close out by discussing how Heartland Forward supports and encourages entrepreneurs to experiment and grow their ideas through their Community Growth Program.
Episode Transcript
Blake Woolsey 0:00
Having had the family as a first mover in investing and as at the same time, we are
looking for those other investors because it's only going to allow us to continue
the momentum that we have today.
Matt Waller 0:11
Excellence, professionalism, innovation and collegiality. These are the values the
Sam M. Walton College of Business explores the education, business, and the lives
of people we meet every day. I'm Matt Waller, Dean of the Walton College and welcome
to the be epic podcast. I have with me today, Ross Devol who's president and CEO of
Heartland Forward. He has been a Walton Fellow with the Walton Family Foundation.
For almost 20 years he was with the Milken Institute, and served as Chief Research
Officer. And he has other amazing experiences. So glad to have you here. Ross, thank
you for joining us.
Ross DeVol 0:54
I'm glad to be here Matt, it's a great opportunity to be part of your podcast.
Matt Waller 0:59
And I also have with me today, Blake Woolsey, who is Chief Communications and Development
Officer for Heartland Forward. And she has extensive experience in communications.
She formerly was Executive Vice President of Mitchell communications for almost 10
years. But I got to know Blake a long time ago back in the 90s, when she was director
of development for the Walton College.
Blake Woolsey 1:27
Yes.
She was arguably the most successful director of development we've ever had.
Well I loved my job so and it was right time, right place for sure.
Matt Waller 1:37
Well, it is such a thrill to have you both here. And Ross, of course, I started following
your publications, when you were at the Milken Institute, because they were so relevant
to things I was interested in, like entrepreneurship and higher education and technology
commercialization. So you have a long history in looking at these kinds of variables.
And now that you've been with Heartland Forward, would you mind just providing a brief
overview of what Heartland Forward is, and its mission?
Ross DeVol 2:12
Glad to do so, Matt. This was a remarkable opportunity for me personally, as you know,
I'm from an of the heartland and the ability to focus my research areas in programmatic
impact areas in entrepreneurship, innovation, University Technology Transfer, the
role of industrial r&d, building human capital, stem, on the center of the country,
with the idea, what we refer to as the Heartland, it's 20 states as we define it,
it's a large Heartland from Michigan in the northeast, South to Alabama, west to Texas
and north to North Dakota and everything in between. So it's those 20 states there.
But to really focus on how can we improve economic performance in those 20 states,
we're based here in Northwest Arkansas. But our footprint is across the American Heartland.
And I was approached by family members, Walton family members, back in early 2017.
And by the Summer of 2017, we'd made an agreement that this there was a pathway forward,
there was a need for this, because there was a divergence in economic growth between
the coasts and kind of its knowledge intensity, its technology, focus. And per capita
incomes were not keeping up in the center of the country, with what was happening
on the coasts. And so that's where this idea came from, was to try and improve job
creation in the Heartland, the quality of those jobs that are created, and all the
attributes from human capital, innovation, entrepreneurship, health, well being to
boost things here.
Matt Waller 4:01
Well you know, one thing I've always liked about your research is, you write it in
a way that is very accessible, even though you're using lots of sophisticated statistics.
But it's also actionable because you your research uncovers which variables are making
a big difference. And so I know that it's interesting, because I remember the first
report I read of yours I can't when it was but I thought, Well, with this being known
I'm surprised all regions aren't implementing these kinds of things. But
Ross DeVol 4:31
It's interesting point you make. I sometimes feel the same way sometimes. Some of
my research staff gets upset with me because I say no, you've written that for an
academic journal. And there's a place for that, but that's not the audience we're
trying to address here. But here's an example. The greatest kind of confidence boost
and positive statement that one can make about your work was what I experienced at
the Milken Institute global conference just a couple of weeks ago, I was in a meeting
with Lowell Milken, who is Mike Milkin's brother, and, you know, has worked with the
Milken Family Foundation, since he was in his early 30s. And he had been having private
meetings with governors across the country, governor of Hawaii, governor of Virginia,
governor of Arkansas was there as well, governor of Kentucky. And he had one of our
reports out on entrepreneurship he had the pages flipped and it showed it was a chart,
I'm going to try and explain it in x and y axis, the Y axis being knowledge intensity
of young firms, firms from five years of age or less, what percent of employees had
at least a bachelor's degree or above. And then on the on the y axis, it had the percent
of employment at private firms, the five years of age or less of total employment.
So what that share was, so it kind of gives you a sense of the knowledge intensity
as well as the overall kind of mainstreet entrepreneurship. And Lowell was telling
each of these governors who subsequently informed me, he told them, this is the most
important thing you should be looking at. If I were, you know, valuating, your performance,
this is what I would look to. So that's what you're trying to do when you're conducting
the research. You can't a priori know where it's going to end up, you have a hypothesis,
you have to test it. But not everyone wants to see your statistical bells and whistles
and you put them in the appendix. Now that drives some of my staff crazy, but that's
okay.
Blake Woolsey 6:33
Yeah. But I think as from a comms perspective, since communications is really where
my focus is, and we think ourselves as a think and do tank. And really, for us, that's
a differentiator, because a lot of people are think tanks. But really, we're looking
at the think, as applied research, to then be able to then inform the programmatic,
the do work of ours. And when I'm from a communications perspective, you know, for
anybody who's done communications, the very first thing you think about is who are
who's our audience and who are we communicating to? And the reality is, we can't make
it so complicated, Matt, that people who are say, say, I'm a checker at a grocery
store, but I serve on my city council in my local community, that I don't understand
what Heartland Forward is sharing with me to where I actually could understand it,
and help drive a policy decision sitting from the city council, you know, from that
seat that I'm sitting in. So we have to make it to where everybody can understand
it, not just some people understand it, because we're trying to educate people in
the process as to what can make their economy successful. So that's a lot of different
eyes and ears that we need to be communicating to.
Matt Waller 7:43
Well you know Blake, you also have a lot of experience in this region. And in the
heartland, what made you interested in joining heartland?
Blake Woolsey 7:53
I guess one, because I've always considered myself a builder. I love drafting behind
great leaders. You know that because we both worked for Doyle Williams, he was here
as the dean. And that was why that time here was so incredible, because it was such
a building moment. And when Ross and then also Buddy Philpot of the Walton family,
he had been the executive director for some time there approached me about this, it
was the idea of starting something that really could have an impact. And every time
I wake up in the morning and think about putting my feet on the side of the bed to
do something in life, I really want to know that it has a deep purpose. Is it serving
other people? So how could somebody not be passionate about such a mission? I've always
been in the heartland, I grew up in Texas. I've spent more time here in the state
of Arkansas, and I see the need, I see the need. So how can I help contribute to that?
Probably the primary reason, of course.
Matt Waller 8:47
You know, Ross, one thing that's really neat about you is you're a strong researcher,
you've spent a lot of your career doing research. But you're also a leader, you're
leading Heartland Forward now as CEO. And I know when you were at the Milken Institute,
you were head of research. So you were you had your hands in many different pots.
And I remember the first time before you were with Heartland Forward, but when I spent
some time with you, when you were with the Milken Institute, I could tell after a
day or two that you had a million different projects going on. I I don't know how
you kept it straight. What made you excited about coming and starting this initiative
here?
Ross DeVol 9:29
Well, it's a great question, Matt. You know, I was born and raised outside of Columbus,
Ohio, in a small town called Lancaster, Ohio. And I'd spent most spent my entire adult
career other than one stint in Omaha, Nebraska and my first job out of graduate school
with Union Pacific Railroad as an economic forecaster there, but on the East Coast,
principally Philadelphia, where I worked at Wharton Econometrics and Chase Manhattan
Bank. And I'd worked for CSX, both in Baltimore and Jacksonville, Florida. But then
I'd spent, you know, 20 years at the Milken Institute in LA, you know, embedded in
in the West Coast entrepreneurial ecosystem, Silicon Valley, and all that I'd been
studying this. And I'd always, in the studies I had done over the years, one was in
Arkansas back in the early 2000s. We've done work in Nebraska, Minnesota, Minneapolis,
in particular. And I always wanted to see what could happen if we applied some of
the principles that we've learned from what was happening on the coast, to convince
political leaders, business leaders, and other key stakeholders, the changes they
needed to make, to be able to grow per capita incomes, create high quality jobs. And
you can just see the disjointedness, of course, there were external factors at play.
When China entered the World Trade Organization, you saw the import penetration in
communities across the country, coming from China, in a direct association with what
that share was in the imports. And so there had been a great deal of dislocation in
the heartland. And I just thought it was such a great opportunity that members of
the Walton family were so passionate and dedicated to it that they were willing to
provide us with the seed capital to form Heartland Forward.
Matt Waller 11:34
Blake, of course, you've been engaged in development work, you've been engaged in
working for a marketing firm, Mitchell.
Blake Woolsey 11:42
Yes. Yes.
Matt Waller 11:43
I would think those are complementary.
Blake Woolsey 11:45
I would hope so, it's been my career, Matt. I've liked it.
Matt Waller 11:50
How are you bringing those experiences to Heartland Forward?
Blake Woolsey 11:55
Again, starting and building, it's been great to be able to have such a runway, and
to be able to think that every single time we come in contact with somebody they need
to know about us. And so, first and foremost, it's about amplifying our brand. And
so that's so important, but at the same time, it's telling the story that we are a
public charity, we are a 501c3, and explaining that even though the Walton family
as we know them are first mover's, we know how generous they are. And they will see
that there is a need, and they will move to help figure out what's the solution for
that. But at the same time, they know for our credibility, which is part of the story,
right, which is, that's when you begin to intersect that calm side of yes, but it
cannot just be us alone for the credibility of the work of trying to help accelerate
the economic performance in the middle of a country. That is all that's going to be
requiring everybody to put their hand in and say, This is how I can help. And this
is how we'd like to partner. So I'm hoping that my experience is helping amplify,
educate, inform, so that people do understand what the need is, and how we truly are
in just the three years that we have been in existence, that we are have so much momentum
and making such inroads that we're a good bet to invest in, because we are seeing
already some of our metrics being achieved, which is exciting, which was really exciting.
Matt Waller 13:22
Ross, in your research and initiatives, what have you identified as the key strengths
and opportunities for growth within the heartland region?
Ross DeVol 13:30
First of all, where we're sitting on a flagship university is a prime example. The
Heartland has some great public universities and some private ones as well. And on
the East and West Coast, those universities we think about MIT, you think about Stanford
on the West Coast, they've been heavily involved in building their entrepreneurial
ecosystems through commercialization of research, technology transfer, having new
firms started based on intellectual property that was created at those institutions.
And I just think there's so many more opportunities to engage in those activities
in the Heartland. And it's partly because some governors over the years have not been
as involved in understanding the importance of it. leadership amongst universities,
in many areas of the Heartland, I don't think have been attuned to how important their
role is in the modern knowledge based economy. And so partly, it's about explaining
these facts to leaders at the university level, at the business level, and at the
policy leader level at the government's level. So that's, that's a major area, I think,
also is reforming, adjusting the curriculums that are offered in many programs. So
in many cases, businesses speak a different language than the Academy does and they
don't know how to interact. I think also another area is career technical education,
which we my dad was involved in vocational education in the state of Ohio for many
years. And I remember him telling me when I was in undergraduate school, son, we made
vocational education a dirty word, and I pointed out dad, that's two words. But I
didn't, you had to know my dad. But anyhow, his point was well taken. And what he
meant is we told people, if your kids do not go into a college ready program, to go
to a four year degree, there's no future for them, basically. And so we told them,
you're kind of lost. Well, we have seen today that you can actually achieve a middle
class income, through career technical education, whether it's a two year associate
degree, whether that's certifications, but the curriculum seemed to be adjusted on
a regular basis to fit the needs of employers. And so there's been this large disconnect.
I would say those are some of the the major areas, both building human capital, the
involvement of universities, and overall, just engagement in entrepreneurship. A lot
of my studies have shown that and others have as well.
Matt Waller 16:21
And remember, one of your studies really showed the importance of new business starts.
I can't remember what you titled
Ross DeVol 16:30
Young Firms.
Matt Waller 16:31
Yeah, young firms, it was a key driver in some of those studies.
Ross DeVol 16:35
Yes, so we've done a lot of this gets a little bit to the more academic side. But
the federal government has a number of databases that are never linked together. And
so there hasn't been much research done on kind of business dynamics, looking at the
age of firms, their employment levels, and some characteristics of them. And so I've
long argued, in analyzing the data, yes, startups are great. But it's what you do
with a startups that really matter. So you need to be able to start new companies,
but also be able to scale them up. And that gets into access early stage risk capital,
which is another issue for the Heartland states compared to the coasts. And when you're
creating companies that create jobs, you're going to have more firms that achieve
kind of middle market status, where they scale up rapidly and go from employing 250
people to 2,500 people. And it's those communities that have the highest proportion
of those companies that are scaling up that are ones that are creating those high
quality jobs and opportunities for people. And so that is so essential that it happens
in the Heartland, but it's just not as frequent of occurrence here. And so a lot of
our efforts are geared towards building entrepreneurship at the earliest stages.
Matt Waller 17:55
You know, Blake, there's all kinds of great research that comes out of Heartland Forward,
like what what Ross was talking about. Who is your target market for those, those
research reports? And how do you market it?
Blake Woolsey 18:10
Right. Well, so as you can imagine, I am always trying to cultivate relationships
with our national business, economic, you know, those folks that have that beat. And
so oftentimes, we're not looking for them necessarily to say, oh, they just released
this report and this is what it says, it's really talking and knowing what they're
writing about, and how can the reports that we're producing inform their story so
that we are a resource for them. And they can say and Heartland Forward, says X, Y,
and Z when it comes to this point that they're trying to make in their story. So that's
been one huge lift for me, is to make sure we have really strong relationships. And
you know, how small newsrooms are right now. And it's hard sometimes to get their
attention. But I always say we want to be your Heartland economic resource, we want
you to be thinking about us whenever you have a question whether we can answer it
or not. Because if we can't answer it, we will refer you to another think tank who's
got that area of focus. But for the for the most part, that's where we begin. But
then we start even moving further down into who are the policymakers that need to
be aware of this, whether I'm reaching out to a chief of staff or a comms director
to a governor, or we're moving into even a layer of counties or cities, to where everybody
is, in chambers being aware, because we're trying to the point about entrepreneurship
is for people to understand that they don't need to just be chasing smokestacks, because
that is a 1 in a million shot like an Elon Musk going to the Austin Pflugerville area.
What you could be doing is really supporting your startups in a way and those existing
businesses to keep driving them forward to get access to the capital that they need
and the support that they need to really help your economy and so we really do look
at it as a myriad of stakeholders, which requires all different people making phone
calls and emails. I mean, we've got two interns who are helping us even in reaching
out just so that it gets the traction, some of these reports get the traction that
they need.
Ross DeVol 20:07
And so if Blake or a communications director does their job, you know, Blake just
attended the Milken Institute Global Conference with me and met Skip Reimer the former
head of communications there. And she learned that it's true that I used to evaluate
our
Blake Woolsey 20:23
Oh, yeah, oh I know what he's gonna say.
Ross DeVol 20:25
So one of the things I used to do was when we released the report that morning, if
the website went down, it was a success.
Blake Woolsey 20:32
He wants the website to crash, so that's my aspirational goal is like, we're gonna
have our website crashed.
Ross DeVol 20:38
Because there's so many people accessing it.
Matt Waller 20:40
Well using some of the new AI tools, we could probably be able to do that.
Blake Woolsey 20:45
We might be able to do that. Matt, you need to help me. Let's figure that out.
Ross DeVol 20:48
Then she'll put it in her objectives and I'll have to pay her for it.
Matt Waller 20:55
So you were talking about the opportunities. One thing I thought of too, is small
businesses, we've had a number. I mean, I've been a professor here for 29 years. And
I've seen a lot of our alumni start their own businesses, everything from, you know,
restaurants to technology companies that are not scalable, but they're small businesses,
and many, many other kinds of small businesses, construction, and I've seen some of
them do quite well. I mean, way more successful than I would have ever imagined 30
years ago when I was first meeting some of these people. I it seems like that's also
an important variable in this, is that right?
Ross DeVol 21:40
Oh, no, it, it clearly is. So in addition to starting software companies, other tech
companies, whether it's social media, whatever it might be, the digital economy, there
is a main street, as well. So that means it's not necessarily a business that's going
to reach kind of middle market status, but could employ you know family members, maybe
it employs 50 people. But the more of those you have, there's a high multiplier effect
as well across the economy. So you can't just think about technology driven entrepreneurship,
although it clearly has about a two to one, relationship, technology entrepreneurship
is twice as important as other forms of, of entrepreneurship in terms of their longer
term job creation impacts, but they are critical to the diversity. Because if you're
left one of the economy with two or three large employers without entrepreneurship
occurring, being seated that ecosystem around it, if some negative shock occurs in
those industries of those employers, there's large ones, you can take down a whole
area, just look to upstate New York, what happened to Kodak.
Matt Waller 23:01
Good point,
Ross DeVol 23:02
You look around, these were technology leaders in their fields. And, you know, they
didn't stay at the leading edge of technology, and somebody else came along and arbitraged
them away.
Matt Waller 23:14
It's a good point,
Blake Woolsey 23:15
I want to share at one of the programs, so we've talked about applied research and
young firms is a report, which continues to resonate with so many different people.
And it was one of the first one of the one of the first of few reports that Heartland
Forward has done. But on that applied research and informing our programmatic work,
we really look when we are think and do tank at the bootstraps on the ground. And
so we partner with an organization right now called Builders and Backers, led by Donna
Harris, she was in the Obama administration, she founded 1776. And she had done a
bunch of research to over what I think she thought was going to be a short period
of time, it ended up being three years of research to say, why do we not have as many
entrepreneurs, what is going on, to learn that it's everybody's got an idea. But it's
getting that idea off the sidelines because some people aren't banked to be able to
go get a loan. They they don't have family members who can loan them money. They don't
want to quit their job, they may be in school. And so we have started a program called
community growth program, where we go into communities within the Heartland, we usually
work with cohorts, somewhere between 10 and 20. The community has a vested interest
financially as well as us by providing the expertise and we take 90 days with the
applicants who we have chosen to take their ideas, teach them how to put those ideas
into practice to become a business. We give them a $5,000 non dilutive grant so there's
no strings attached for them to experiment on that idea to see if it's going to stick
and is this a business that I can actually take and scale or not.
Matt Waller 24:53
So this is a really good this part of the conversation really demonstrates the think
and do.
Blake Woolsey 25:02
Yes,
Matt Waller 25:03
Part. And that's that's a really neat innovation. Because you're right, so many think
tanks, they think, think think think. But they don't have any do piece. Here's an
example of how you're actually doing something with the results of the research.
Blake Woolsey 25:19
We want the policymakers and other leaders to be looking at saying what's happening
on the ground. I mean, you get it from this level, but you also get it from this level
for us to be that resource as well. What's happening? What are you seeing? What are
you? What are you hearing right now, because that's the kind of resource that we see
ourselves as.
Ross DeVol 25:37
It's right. And a great example, this was Jim Walton was in Birmingham, Alabama, working
on some K through 12 education reforms and meeting with the mayor of Birmingham. And
we have a community growth program cohort in Birmingham currently. And so he was there
meeting with the mayor. And the mayor was telling him what great things they have
achieved through our community growth program, training some of their younger people,
and even middle aged individuals, the basics of entrepreneurship, how to think like
an entrepreneur, and pointing out that their labor force participation rate of those
that did not graduate from high school was so much lower than the rest of the country.
And why was that? Well, part of the answer was, levels of entrepreneurship are much
lower. They had not been trained to see that as an option for them if they couldn't
necessarily find a job or want a job in an area that they were qualified for. And
so we've been working with the mayor's office there to help train some of these people
to think more entrepreneurially. And how to ideate. And envision is this a scalable
idea into a business?
Matt Waller 26:56
What great stories, and to think, Heartland Forward is so young, and you're already
making it.
Ross DeVol 27:03
Here's my favorite one, though, Matt. Bear with me for this one. So I for many years
prior to COVID, and, you know, the whole supply chain interruptions that resulted
from that was pointed out to people that the advantages of locating advanced manufacturing
in China were diminishing to the extent because of the wage differentials were narrowing.
And the productivity gaps were still large, productivity in America, in most cases,
still substantially higher than it is in China. And so it didn't make sense to keep
putting all these semiconductor plants and chip plants and other, you know, high end
technology manufacturing there. And it took COVID to really see that we've become
overly reliant on China in our supply chain. So Intel was then thinking about, maybe
we need to diversify our base as well. They'd never located a plant east of the Mississippi
River in the United States. And we did a report on reshoring manufacturing, can the
heartland lead the way, that was partially supported by Jobs Ohio, which is their
economic development arm. That was utilized to inform Intel's leadership and their
CEO Pat Gelsinger that they should be taking a look at the American Heartland. And
in fact, when it was announced at the White House, Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of Intel
said we put silicon in Silicon Valley and now we're putting silicon in the Heartland.
That computer chip plant, two initially, is being located 25, 25 miles north of where
I grew up in Lancaster, Ohio. That was the middle of a cornfield. It had a butchering
shop out in the front. It's a huge facility going in there. And I had the chance to
tour it just as they were breaking ground. So it was a remarkable kind of once in
a career opportunity, where many times you feel you've done work to help set the stage
for something but wasn't there to see it through.
Matt Waller 29:04
Yes.
Ross DeVol 29:04
And this was one of those cases where because of serendipity things got done quickly
and there it was
Matt Waller 29:10
Wow, that is what a story.
It happened.
Well, Ross and Blake, congratulations on the amazing success you already have and for the vision going forward. And thank you for what you're doing for the heartland.
Ross DeVol 29:26
Well, thank you Matt for the opportunity to share the work that the organization is
doing.
Blake Woolsey 29:34
Yeah. Thank you.
Matt Waller 29:35
On behalf of the Sam M. Walton College of Business, I want to thank everyone for spending
time with us for another engaging conversation. You can subscribe by going to your
favorite podcast service and searching Be Epic B.E. E.P.I.C.
