Tom Burns, executive director of the Nevada Governor's Office of Economic Development (GOED), joins us for the inaugural episode of "Diversify Nevada" to discuss how his agency fosters business, workforce, and community development in the state.
Speaker 1 (00:01)
Welcome, you're listening to Diversify Nevada, a podcast produced by the Governor's Office of Economic Development. Diversify Nevada provides insightful discussions and expert analysis on the driving forces behind our state's economic, workforce, and community development. I'm Tom Burns, the Executive Director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development.
Speaker 3 (00:21)
We're your host, Carli Smith.
Speaker 2 (00:23)
and Evan Haddad. We're joined today by GOED's Executive Director, Tom Burns. As a Nevada native and proud UNR grad, Tom has decades of experience as a leader in the local business community. He spent many years as an insurance executive in Southern Nevada, and he's served on many professional boards, including charitable organizations and government-appointed committees. In January 2023, Tom was appointed Executive Director of GOED by Governor Joe Lombardo. Tom Burns, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (00:49)
Hey, thanks for having me guys. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:51)
Welcome. Absolutely. You've been involved in Nevada's business community in one way or another for decades. How have all these experiences shaped your view of economic development?
Speaker 1 (01:02)
Yeah, thanks Carli. So, you know, I grew up in Southern Nevada and had most of my professional career there, but have had a home in Northern Nevada for 18 years. I married a Carson City girl, right? Woohoo, go Carson City. There you go. And I've heard they're pretty good ladies. ⁓ So anyway, ⁓ and then have had opportunity to serve, ⁓ as you said, with various other boards throughout the state that have given me a lot of exposure to rural Nevada.
I think those experiences have given me some sensibilities about how our state operates and how it looks, ⁓ what its strengths are, and how they contrast with each other. there are portions of the state that are different. They're not better or worse, by the way. They're just different. They have their own sensibilities. They have their own desires and the way they want to do things. And the ability to respect where people are at and what their goals are, I think, is really important to defining what their economic development and diversity looks like.
Speaker 2 (02:00)
Can you dig into that a little bit more about unique characteristics of individual areas?
Speaker 1 (02:04)
My experience in Nevada has been very unique in that, you know, Nevada has three distinct environments or cultures within the state of Nevada. So certainly there's the culture that exists in Southern Nevada, ⁓ very hospitality-centric and ⁓ fast-moving, fast-paced. You know, clearly, again, having grown up in Las Vegas and seeing this expansive, fast growth that happened there and the community that's there, because it's a great community, but it's not what you see on TV, right?
But so you can have a sense of what we're looking to do there and the pace that people expect you to do it at and kind of the different interest groups that rely there. And then you have Northern Nevada, which has done a great job of diversifying its economy in the last 20 years or so and certainly has a different pace, but one that's an awful lot of fun to live in. Having spent the time up in Northern Nevada,
and having a sense of what that vision is that they'd like to be, like what our community would like to look here. Talking with leaders, I'm involved heavily in the university up here and having exposure to that, I think helps out a lot about what the vision for Northern Nevada looks like. And then you have rural Nevada, which has its own great sensibilities and how they do things. And then respecting the fact that people in rural Nevada have picked a lifestyle and is something they're proud of and something they're comfortable with.
They've picked it on purpose. They're not trapped there. They could go anywhere they want. And they pick that lifestyle because it fits their sensibilities and where they want to be. Respecting that and knowing where they want to be is also an important part of serving those parts of the state of Nevada. And so having that view of how our state operates has given me a great lens into how I think we can better the economic development for the state of Nevada.
Speaker 3 (03:47)
Fantastic answer. Love that.
Speaker 2 (03:49)
So, diving deeper into that, can you just talk about what GOED does for Nevada? Like going beyond the acronyms and abbreviations that a lot of people are maybe unfamiliar with. What do we do on the human level and why is it so important?
Speaker 1 (04:03)
So we're really good at acronyms. Yes, we are. Just at the state as a whole, we're really good at acronyms. Well, you know, we're involved in community development and really through some of our rural programs, the Main Street program, which helps beautify downtowns and has done some in urban areas as well. was very involved in the Jackson Street program in Las Vegas and has done great things in Ely and Eureka as well.
⁓ And then we have, think, tax incentives everybody's pretty familiar with about their ability to try to attract businesses to Nevada that help diversify our employment opportunities and our tax base within the state. And those really just are kind of me-too events. In other words, all the states that we compete against have something like that too. In fact, in many cases, more robust than ours. But those are necessary for us to get to the table, to have conversations with companies we want to have see to move to Nevada.
And then of course we have, we work deeply with ⁓ your community, the one you live in, right? So there are RDAs, Regional Development Authorities, ⁓ eight throughout the state of Nevada, and we work closely with them because they're boots on the ground and part of the community that they're in, they understand the sensibilities of what's going on and have some keen idea of the kind of business that they'd like to attract in their community.
Speaker 2 (05:21)
Because Nevada is kind of ⁓ unique in that sense where we have two, we have a north and a south economic hub and then so much of the state is rural and you know, it's not that urban area. obviously those RDAs play a big role.
Speaker 1 (05:36)
Absolutely, and each community has their own sensibilities, right? So if you've been in rural Nevada, you know they're very proud of it. They like the way of life they live. They're there intentionally, right? Because they like the way of life that's there. So we don't want to go in and ⁓ impart something upon them that really changes their entire way of life and the sense of ⁓ community that they've developed. So we work closely with those RDAs to make sure that what we bring fits to what they want.
Speaker 2 (06:05)
Can we talk a bit more about innovation and the role of innovation? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:08)
small businesses too
like some of the rules that we play in the small business.
Speaker 1 (06:12)
So something that's pretty important that we do here is is we probably have more resources for small business than we do for large business Large business stuff hits the paper a little more It's a little sexier, right? but our day-to-day blocking and tackling on the things that we can do for small business is pretty significant APEX is a program that's partially funded by the federal government that teaches businesses how to do business with local state and federal government You know when you're operating a small business
It's a daunting task. just, I use this example quite a bit. You know, somebody tells you you make the best cake they've ever had. And every time you take a cake to the church bake sale, it's the first one that's gone. And people encourage you to sell your cakes all the time. So you go into business and you realize that only 10 % of what you're doing is baking cakes, that there's just a lot more to business than putting the product out there. And one of those things that's daunting is trying to figure out who at the federal government buys cakes, right?
getting into that. Well, APEX will find the cake buyer for you and at least get you in line so that you know what resources are being used and how to access those programs and how to be a part of it. And so we've had tremendous success in Nevada in that program, helping people to work with Creech and Nellis and the Naval Air Station. We have a seminar with NASA every year where they come in and teach how to do business with NASA. So we've had tremendous...
some success in that space. We also have a number of financing programs for small business. Getting access to capital oftentimes as a small business to get things started is difficult. So we have through SSBCI, State Small Business Initiative, so State Small Credit Initiative.
Speaker 3 (07:58)
one of those acronyms.
Speaker 1 (08:08)
We are able to loan money that maybe, ⁓ that might not make it out to small businesses as they get started. We also have the ability to invest in those small businesses through a venture capital arm as well. So the things we're able to do that are pretty significant. One of the great programs we have is Individual Career Mapping. And it allows us to take... ⁓
simulated real life programs out into the rural areas and just underserved areas in general. So maybe underserved areas in Clark County or in Washoe County as well. And through the library system, we give them some real life training, virtual training with the goggles on and it gives people a lot of great experience about maybe programs they want to pursue going in the future.
Speaker 3 (08:56)
And they use virtual reality too. they're very, yeah, they're very for thinking.
Speaker 2 (09:01)
Have you tried that time? You have donned the headset? ⁓ I have, you have
Speaker 1 (09:04)
I've done it a couple of times. But it really proved is that I'm in the job I should be in and not the other job. ⁓
Speaker 2 (09:07)
I found like the spatial awareness is so off. mean, it's you're, you're absolutely transported to, say if you're training for phlebotomy, I mean, you're right there, it's three dimensional, but it's kind of disorienting at first because it's like, I'm stepping into another world, but you can totally see the effectiveness for workforce training, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (09:32)
Yeah, that's one of my favorite things about GOED is we're very innovative. We're trying to be with the times instead of so far back. And it actually makes working here a lot of fun. You bet. So you've been executive director of GOED for about two years now. What are some of the big wins that you're really proud of?
Speaker 1 (09:49)
And we've done some pretty significant things in the last couple of years. I will say that, you know, the thing that I'm probably most proud of is the people that I work with and the quality of product that they want to deliver to the citizens of the state of Nevada. I underestimated that before I took this job, and it's been very heartwarming to see. You know, we've deployed $10 million in workforce development here in the state of Nevada. So that's training Nevadans up to be able to do the jobs that are coming into our state.
We were instrumental in helping ⁓ UNLV get awarded an NSF engine in coordination with Desert Research Institute and the University of Utah in Arizona State. $180 million over eight years to study resiliency in that geographic area. And we were also significantly involved in the awarding of the Tech Hub Award to the University of Nevada, Reno, that'll study the lithium loop for the state of Nevada.
Speaker 3 (10:46)
Yeah, those are big deals here too.
Speaker 2 (10:47)
Could you just for listeners who don't know what the NSF engine is and the tech cups, could you just dive into that a little bit more? Like what are those and sure.
Speaker 1 (10:55)
They're federal programs, ⁓ NSF is National Science Foundation. That was an acronym I learned when I took this job. And they historically had really awarded money in a very academic field ⁓ to study for the sake of studying, and maybe there's a place for that. What they did in this last round, the last couple of years, is they awarded money out to have a real significant real-life impact on the people that they're serving. So in this case, we're studying the resiliency of the climate.
in the triangle that exists between Las Vegas, Phoenix and Salt Lake, how the economy can thrive in that space given the resources that are available. And ⁓ I think that's significant. And then the Tech Hub ⁓ is an award that was from the Department of Commerce and it gives us the ability to study the significance of lithium and how it's gonna move forward in our economy. with the rich... ⁓
discovery of lithium that we have in the state of Nevada I think really is going to be significant moving us forward.
Speaker 2 (11:58)
I've heard you talk about lithium and how it's our Comstock moment. ⁓ Could you, what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1 (12:04)
Sure. ⁓ You probably had to listen to a lot of my stories more than once, Evan. The last time, in my personal opinion, the last time that Nevada had a natural resource discovery like the one we have now was during the Comstock load. That silver was discovered in Virginia City. Most of that wealth went over the Sierras and helped build San Francisco.
And we were a fledgling state. Actually, we were a territory and then a fledgling state. I'm not sure what we could have done differently. And honestly, that silver went to finance the union in the Civil War and help keep the United States united. So maybe that would have never turned out differently. But now we have the opportunity with this natural resource discovery to keep some affluence and wealth among the people of the state of Nevada.
I'm really not even talking about big mansions for everybody, but I am talking about a stable economy where people have the access to really well-paying jobs that ⁓ create a better Nevada.
Speaker 2 (13:12)
Yeah, that's a perfect segue to my next question. Another thing I've heard you talk about is your commitment to bringing high quality jobs to the state. That's something you're always talking about rather than, you know, because GO-IT is probably known best for its tax incentives ⁓ for right or wrong. And you're always talking about high quality jobs and why that's important.
Speaker 1 (13:33)
That's really what our charge is, right? I I'm glad when companies come to the state of Nevada, I hope they're really successful. I really do because I want them to tell all their friends how successful they are and have my other friends want to come to the state of Nevada too. But really what it is about is bringing great paying jobs to the state of Nevada and for the citizens of the state of Nevada. In an ideal situation, if a company say had 400 employees, they're going to want to bring their key managers from wherever they're moving from to here.
So they may bring 20 or 30 of their most key managers from wherever they're relocating to Nevada. Somebody has to know how to make the secret sauce, right? And so they're going to come here. But I really want those other 360 or 70 jobs to be Nevadans that are here and the ability to upscale them and to get them into jobs that are really well-paying, that make a difference in their family's life and their sense of living.
Speaker 3 (14:29)
lot of the WIND program, the Workforce Innovation for a New Nevada program, does that. It helps training people to get into those jobs that we're bringing here. So it's really important.
Speaker 1 (14:38)
You Carly, you've heard this before too, so I apologize. But when I took this job, the reason I took it was because I really thought we could make a difference in the lives of Nevadans here. You know, when you take a Nevadan and you change them from a job that pays $18 or $19 an hour, and there's nothing wrong with those jobs, those are hardworking people, I respect what they do. But if you're able to up-train them into a job that pays $40 an hour or $45 an hour,
That's a life-changing event. That's life-changing money. And more than money, it changes the amount of self-pride that a family has about themselves. And so the ability to put a warm jacket on your kids' back, or meal on the table, and a roof over their head really changes the self-esteem of a family. And if you can change the self-esteem of the family, it'll change a couple generations. If we can change, you know, there are 10,000 jobs out at Tesla.
So if you can do that 10,000 times, you're going to change your community and we're all going to live in a much better place.
Speaker 3 (15:41)
I love that. forward to the second half of the decade, where do you think Nevada is headed? What role will Go Ed play in the future?
Speaker 1 (15:49)
We have a really
great opportunity to be the leaders in green and alternative energy. And I'm not of the belief that ⁓ we're going to stop ⁓ drilling for oil today. But the fact is we're not producing any more dinosaurs anymore, right? And we're probably using fossil fuels at a pace greater than we're creating that resource. And so the ability to lean on alternative resources as a complement to what we already have going is really important. And so with Nevada's
lithium loop with our ability to generate solar energy and other forms of energy. We're just getting into hydrogen. I think Nevada stands a great chance to be a leader in alternative energy solutions for our entire nation.
Speaker 3 (16:31)
And who would have thought, you know, Nevada, the desert state, who would have thought we'd be a leading place to be for this kind of research and development? It's really exciting things.
Speaker 2 (16:41)
Why do you care about economic workforce and community development? Why is this something that is obviously a core belief, something you're deeply passionate about? Why do you care so much?
Speaker 1 (16:51)
You know, state of Nevada was very good to me and my family. We've been very fortunate. And the ability to bring opportunity to others, at some point you have to, you know, I can bring opportunity, but people are going to have to figure it out and get their hands dirty and take advantage of it. But the ability to bring opportunity to the state of Nevadans and to Nevadans to better their life really is at the core of what I want to be doing at this part of my life.
I think we stand a great chance to raise our entire state up and see people ⁓ live ⁓ a more prestigious and proud life.
Speaker 2 (17:29)
Tom, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1 (17:32)
You bet. It's been my, I've had a great time here on the first podcast. So excited about things to come. I know we're getting, have exciting guests planned for the future and truly my honor to serve the people listening in Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (17:36)
Let's go.
and we will have you back soon.
Thank you.
And that's all for this episode of Diversify Nevada. This podcast was created by the Governor's Office of Economic Development with the help of our sound editor, Michelle Rubble-Eddy. If you'd to learn more about our agency, can visit our website at goed.nv.gov. And if you'd like to share feedback about the show or suggest a topic you'd us to cover, send us an email to goed at goed.nv.gov. Thanks for joining us and we'll be back soon.