President's Message

It’s my favorite season – FALL! I love sweatshirt weather, fall colors, pumpkin spice everything, volleyball, football, and of course the NREDA annual conference! Our annual conference is soon approaching in November. Please make sure to get registered and book your hotel room, they are going quickly. The cutoff date for early registration is October 17. Lisa Hurley and the conference committee have put together a great agenda. I look forward to reconnecting with many of you or meeting if we haven’t met before. Make sure to find me and introduce yourself at the conference, one of the best benefits of the conference is networking.

I mentioned enjoying volleyball and football seasons. I don’t know if I should claim to be an Iowa Hawkeyes fan after the start to the football season, hoping for better games in the weeks ahead. One of the reasons that I love to watch these team sports is it doesn’t come down to who is the best athlete to pull off those wins, it is so much more than this. Caitlin Clark can’t win games by herself, although she sure does try at times. It takes a team, plays, attitude, coaching, practice and so much more to pull off those wins.

Who is on your team? I’m proud to have a great team at Corn Belt Power, with our member cooperatives, our local economic developers in Iowa and the Iowa Area Development Group. We partner together to make projects happen. What plays have you put together for your economic development efforts? At Corn Belt Power we invest in industrial parks and speculative buildings partnering with our member cooperatives and the community to attract businesses. We also provide REDL&G and Revolving Loan Fund financing to assist businesses. Are you up to date on what is happening in the industry? Make sure you have your playbook ready to go and you have the latest education, which you can get help with from NREDA webinars, the regional summit and annual conference. These are all good questions and things to know as you try to attract and retain businesses to your area. The annual conference will help build your network to gather these ideas, attend educational sessions to assist and take tours to see projects in action.

Happy Fall and I hope to connect with you at the annual conference!