Wayne Tomorrow! Podcast

Wayne Tomorrow! Community Network Specialist and host Mikki Uzupes discusses the complexities of Workforce Development with Lucyann Vierling, executive director of the Wayne Pike Workforce Alliance. The two talk about overcoming the barriers to employment with the help of a new Workers Crisis Fund at the Wayne County Community Foundation and explore the importance of Recovery to Work efforts.

Host Mikki Uzupes continues to explore how the "Strengthening the Wayne County Economic & Community Development Ecosystem: An Assessment" in 2019 created an important framework to propel Wayne Tomorrow! into its next evolution. In this episode she talks with Assessment Co-Author Deborah Markley of Locus Impact Investing and Ryanne Jennings, president and CEO fo the Wayne County Community Foundation, about the critical role that community foundations and community philanthorphy can and should play in the process of moving Wayne County, its people, its culture and its economy into a vibrant future.

Host Mikki Uzupes talks with Erik Pages of EntreWorks Consulting and Kim Rickard, Wayne Tomorrow! Community Network Specialist, about Pages' 2018 study that looked at what Wayne County could do to strengthen its economic and community development ecosystem. We discuss the importance of planning, the value of collaboration and the role everyone can and should play in economic development.

Wayne Tomorrow! engages our community in a powerful network of people all pulling together toward a shared vision of prosperity and opportunity for everyone. A key part of that vision is closing the Digital Divide, and the first step toward doing that is fast, reliable and affordable broadband and cell phone services. Wayne County recently hired a broadband specialist to help improve service and to position us to best use state and federal money earmarked for broadband improvements in rural communities. The commissioners hired Mr. Kelly Lewis thanks to a generous donation form the William H. Chatlos Charitable Gift Fund, through the Wayne County Community Foundation. We will spend the next half an hour talking with Kelly Lewis about Accelerate Wayne – The Gigabit & Dead Cell Zone Project, which began this week with two surveys – one for employers and another for households.

In the last of five primer episodes, host Mikki Uzupes talks with Wayne Tomorrow! Task Force Co-Chairs Robert Muller Jr. and Jane Bollinger about how the agricultural sector can form a strong basis for economic growth and development and the way that helps protects and sustains our rural way of life.

In the fourth of five primer episodes, host Mikki Uzupes talks with Wayne County Commissioners Brian Smith, Joe Adams and Jocelyn Cramer about how the county and its departments work with Wayne Tomorrow! to improve the quality of life and opportunities for people in all sectors of the loca economy.

In this third of five primer episodes, host Mikki Uzupes talks with Wayne County Chief Financial Office Vicky Botjer and Wayne County Community Foundation Executive Director Ryanne Jennings about the way the two entities are working in tandem to build the financial capacity of the community to support Wayne Tomorrow! aligned projects.

In this second of five primer episodes, host Mikki Uzupes talks with Wayne Economic Development Corp. Executive Director Mary Beth Wood, about how a group of community-minded individuals identified common goals and, most importantly developed a structure that helps this broad network of collaborators support an ecosystem that empowers people and projects to succeed.

In this first of five primer episodes, host Mikki Uzupes talks with Wayne County Commissioner Chairman Brian Smith and Mike Uretsky, a retired professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, about their unlikely friendship, which helps to illustrate how the development of Wayne Tomorrow! tramsformed division and adversity to collaboration and advantage. In future episodes, we will explore the structure, operation and funding of this grass-roots, community development intiative.