-We turn to economic development now.

According to a 2024 report from the Center for Business and Economic Research at UNLV, Southern Nevada's economy remains much less diversified compared to other Mountain West metros.

It goes on to say that the lack of a diverse and resilient economy leaves the region and, by extension, the state of Nevada vulnerable to macroeconomic downturns.

It's the job of the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance, or LVGEA, to expand Southern Nevada's tourism-heavy economy.

And now the public-private partnership has a new leader.

She's the only out-of-market person to ever hold this position and joins us now.

Danielle Casey, President and CEO of the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance, welcome to Nevada Week.

(Danielle Casey) Thank you for having me.

-And that means by you being the only out-of-market person that you did not live and work here prior to getting this position.

-Correct.

Doesn't mean I haven't enjoyed Las Vegas and haven't been a huge fan of this community.

-Okay.

Well, do you want to tell us how?

-Little bit of family story there.

Because we're a military family, somehow my mother sorted out that the best place for a family reunion in a gathering had to be Las Vegas.

I think we started coming out here when I was about 13, annually as a family, and so many, many years after.

I've always had a fondness for it, but seeing it through a whole different lens and experiencing it is just absolutely incredible.

-Right.

Now you are somewhat responsible for the growth of the economy here.

And I wonder, is that something you had to overcome in the interview, that you are out of market, technically?

-I'm certain that they were considering all types of personalities and skill sets, but the experience in the interview made it very clear to me that the leaders that were selecting the next CEO wanted to make sure that they had somebody that was bringing the right skill set to lead a regional economic development organization.

A company that's coming in, in the most traditional sense, is looking at your market.

So anyone, even if we say gaming or high value ad manufacturing or cyber security, if they're looking to hire people in our market, they're not going to say, I only want someone who lives within the Las Vegas city limits.

I want someone who is willing to drive to the facility I'm locating in, and I'm choosing to locate in this market because of the many benefits or assets that that market has that fit my company in particular and I know I can be successful there.

So it's very much a team effort, but I believe in the criticality of a regional collaboration and partnership.

Because if a company goes to Henderson, we should celebrate that in North Las Vegas, because it's creating more economic impact for the whole market.

-And you are coming from the Albuquerque region.

What was economic development like in that region when you arrived, which was how long ago?

-Five years.

-Okay.

-So when I came to that organization, it actually had a different name.

It had been called Albuquerque Economic Development, Incorporated.

But they had been around 60 years, and their bylaws said that they served to the four county region, which were four distinct counties, all with municipalities within them.

And I found out very quickly that that wasn't necessarily how the communities understood the organization's work.

So we spent several years working on conversations around the impact and benefit of regional cooperation.

And so I'm very proud that after two years of being there, we not only had the City of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County, which is the centers of gravity--very similar to Las Vegas and Clark County here, just in terms of structure--that we had always worked with them, but then we had expanded that to bringing in Sandoval County to the north, which had the fastest growing community in all of New Mexico in it; Rio Rancho; as well as many communities to the south that were huge centers for facilities, like a major Meta facility, Amazon facilities, and a lot of logistics and manufacturing.

So it was similar, but we had to grow that in a very intentional way.

So I'm extremely proud of that, and they've had tremendous success.

-You have been on the job here about a month.

What have you come to understand about how well the region here collaborates economically?

-Yes.

Great question.

What's really wonderful coming here and one of the things that really, truly, and I've mentioned this before, enticed me to this role, our chamber of commerce and now my organization, LVGEA, it was very apparent to me in the interview process that they are true collaborators and partners.

That's amazing, because a lot of times you do see friction between chambers of commerce and economic development agencies, typically because of a lack of understanding either within the organizations, their leadership, or the community on who does what.

And the other beauty is we already have our local municipalities in the county very involved in LVGEA.

They serve on our board of directors.

Just this morning, I was able to convene a group of the economic developers in those communities to have my first discussion with them, share information about the work we're doing, our pipeline of business development activity, and upcoming events and programs and how we work together on those as well.

So I would say my initial impression is very good, but there is always upward opportunity.

-What about the consistent theme that the Las Vegas area is overreliant on tourism?

Where do you stand on that?

-Any market that has a much higher concentration of one industry and not diversity in others to see it through challenging times is something that we need to work to level set.

Having been a frequent visitor and being a huge fan, I would never in the world suggest that we should reduce our investment and our focus in our tourism.

And I spent several years as the economic development director for the city of Scottsdale, Arizona.

So while not to the scale we have here-- If anybody's familiar with Scottsdale, quite the visitor location, quite the destination, extremely well known nationally and globally.

And so I was able to work in tandem with our CVB there in lockstep, and we really understood that tourism is the gateway to your community, and it's how people learn about your community and get exposed to it.

That is a path often to then business locates that diversify your economy and talent.

How do you attract talent?

How do you bring them in as a tourist and show them this could be a place they could live and work in?

So it's just a matter of understanding that better and leveraging it hard so that we can bring more diverse industries to the market.

-Which industries stand out to you?

-Oh, goodness.

Well, there's a lot of research to be done, and I look forward to digging into this deeply.

And we're going to, by the way, do this rapidly, rapidly for LVGEA as a strategic planning exercise and then also rapidly in our leadership in a regional comprehensive economic development strategy, which we're going to be tasked with next year.

Very excited about that.

So a lot to unpack.

Don't want to get ahead of the data, but I think there are many things we're going to investigate much further.

There is a lot going on in national defense.

And as we know, we have two adjacent military bases with people that are coming out.

And even folks that are retiring out of those bases have very unique skill sets that if we can keep them here and capitalize on that and then use their their capabilities to attract companies that then create opportunities from touch labor all the way up to very sophisticated, high paid jobs, wouldn't that be wonderful?

So there's that.

There is cyber security, there is AI.

We've obviously been looking at sports entertainment and film.

I'm going to hone in on anything related to those industries that creates net new wealth in our community, which means whatever we're doing, we're finding a way to export more out of our state than we're importing or circulating around, because that's the net new wealth piece of base industries.

So that's our sweet spot that we focus on.

And the more we do of that, the more we'll create additional diversification so that we can complement one of our tremendous assets.

When you think about it, it's not-- while it is tourism, look at a city like Detroit.

I just came back from a conference in Detroit, an amazing story where they had a tremendous economic collapse and challenges and were able to build back up and diversify while still being the Motor City.

-Danielle Casey, new president of the LVGEA, we look forward to having you back on in the future.

Thank you for joining Nevada Week.

-Thank you.

My honor.