Podcast: Center of Everywhere Podcast

Kathy Draeger, the statewide Director of the University of Minnesota Extension –  Regional Sustainable Development Partnership, wants rural communities to see their local grocery stores as the assets they are. Small town grocery stores have been facing an uphill battle against increasing competition from the big national chains. In this interview, Kathy and Julie will ...

So just what is the Association of Minnesota Counties? Our President and CEO, Julie Tesch, talks with AMC’s Executive Director, Julie Ring, about the association that supports and advocates for Minnesota’s 87 counties. This year of Covid has been especially challenging for county governments. Julie discusses the difficult issues counties have faced and are still ...

On this episode Julie Tesch and Marnie Werner talk about two topics that only come around every ten years, the Census and legislative redistricting. They discuss  why redistricting is so important but has been so troublesome in Minnesota history, the role of accurate census data and how a salamander became a symbol of democracy in ...

On today’s episode, we stay in-house to discuss our most recent research brief. Julie talks with our research intern Whitney Oachs and Director of Research Marnie Werner about volunteer drivers,  a little-known but essential program in rural Minnesota that helps the elderly and handicapped stay in their homes. We’ll discuss who these volunteer drivers are, ...

In this episode, we’ll be talking with Dave Unmacht, the executive director of the League of Minnesota Cities.  He’ll be sharing his thoughts on the challenges and opportunities facing Minnesota’s small towns, how uncertainty will be the defining characteristic of the next five years, and why getting involved in local government may just be the ...

We wanted to get to know more about the Citizens League, a Twin Cities nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank that has led discussions and developed solutions to policy questions in areas like transportation, education, and infrastructure for more than sixty years. Now they would like to expand their volunteer-based model for solving problems into rural Minnesota, too, ...

Tourism makes up a significant piece of rural Minnesota’s economic pie. Our guest on this episode is Cynthia Messer, the director of the Tourism Center at the University of Minnesota Extension. She talked with CRPD president Julie Tesch about the research they do at the Tourism Center, the role tourism spending plays in Greater MN, ...

One of the things people in rural areas talk a lot about is entrepreneurship and building a successful business. On this episode, our president and CEO Julie Tesch will be talking with Lucas and Alise Sjostrum, the owners of Redhead Creamery in Brooten, Minnesota, about their dream of cheese, how they got started in cheesemaking, ...

Neela Mollgaard has spent the last twenty years helping entrepreneurs in Greater Minnesota get their business ideas off the ground, first with Red Wing Ignite and now with LaunchMN, a new effort from the state to foster high-tech startups. We talk about what worked with Red Wing Ignite and now what LaunchMN is doing with ...