The Wyoming Business Council (WBC) is looking to grow opportunities for community economic development that it started this year.
CEO Josh Dorrell said the goal of the council is to build resilient communities that can weather the booms and busts that Wyoming often experiences.
The WBC stood up the Wyoming Venture Capital fund, providing capital to entrepreneurs. Dorrell said the fund helped break a “chicken and egg” problem of not enough money to invest in businesses in the state or deal flow, or rate investors receive business proposals or investment offers.
“We went out and found a way to increase the amount of money to see if we could positively impact the deal flow,” he said. “We utilized a federal program that allowed us to do that. The indications right now is that by increasing the amount of investment in the state, we’re actually able to increase the deal flow.”
The WBC had several business-ready community projects that Dorrell said are creating opportunities in the state. Dorrell pointed out one project in Evansville, which “is going to bring an additional 250 engineering jobs and unlock a big parcel of land for future development.”
The WBC believes 2025 will be a great opportunity to make some changes in the state. Dorrell referred to the change in Washington, D.C. as helping some Wyoming industries grow.
Dorrell said the state needs to take a look at the fundamental challenges it faces in terms of its reliance on natural resources.
“How do we build the local capacity and understand what’s going on at the local level and then make the changes so that our small communities can exist well into the future,” he said.
He said they’re continuing this work in 2025 by understanding how ready Wyoming communities are for economic development.
“ We’re working with a firm right now that’s interviewing and going through a number of our communities to just understand how ready they are for economic development and what elements they might be lacking or need boosted a little bit to be much better at economic development,” said Dorrell. “What I’m excited about is really kind of taking a look in the mirror, understanding what we have in terms of our assets, but also looking at where there are some deficiencies, so that we could shore those up and make our communities ready for economic growth.”
Dorrell also mentioned the council is trying to address Wyoming’s brain drain by creating jobs and an economy that make young adults want to stay in the state.
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