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. 

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.

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.

I'm glad to be here Matt, it's a great opportunity

to be part of your podcast.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

Well you know Blake, you also have a lot of experience in this

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.

region. And in the heartland, what made you interested in

joining heartland?

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.

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?

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.

Blake, of course, you've been engaged in

development work, you've been engaged in working for a

marketing firm, Mitchell.

Yes. Yes.

I would think those are complementary.

I would hope so, it's been my career, Matt. I've

liked it.

How are you bringing those experiences to

Heartland Forward?

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.

Ross, in your research and initiatives, what

have you identified as the key strengths and opportunities for

growth within the heartland region?

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.

And remember, one of your studies really showed

the importance of new business starts. I can't remember what

you titled

Young Firms.

Yeah, young firms, it was a key driver in some of

those studies.

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.

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?

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.

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

Oh, yeah, oh I know what he's gonna say.

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.

He wants the website to crash, so that's my

aspirational goal is like, we're gonna have our website crashed.

Because there's so many people accessing it.

Well using some of the new AI tools, we could

probably be able to do that.

We might be able to do that. Matt, you need to

help me. Let's figure that out.

Then she'll put it in her objectives and I'll have

to pay her for it.

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?

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.

Good point,

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.

It's a good point,

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.

So this is a really good this part of the

conversation really demonstrates the think and do.

Yes,

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.

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.

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?

What great stories, and to think, Heartland Forward

is so young, and you're already making it.

Here's my favorite one, though, Matt. Bear with me

for this one. So I for many years prior to COVID, and, you

Yes.

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

And this was one of those cases where because of

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

serendipity things got done quickly and there it was

but wasn't there to see it through.

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.

Well, thank you Matt for the opportunity to share the

work that the organization is doing.

Yeah. Thank you.

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

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