today.

Greater Louisville, Inc.

The Louisville Chamber of Commerce announced Prosper 2030, a five year strategic plan to create new jobs and attract new people to the region.

It comes at a time when many local businesses are confused and even nervous over recent executive orders.

Our Kelsey Stark sat down with the president and CEO of Glee to find out more.

And tonight's business beat.

Sarah Wisdom is the president and CEO of Greater Louisville, Inc. And let's start with those executive orders.

What are what is the advice you are giving to businesses right now?

Well, the executive orders are leading to a lot of uncertainty, and that creates a lot of concern for business.

So we're trying to provide specific guidance where we can find it.

We've got resources from the US chamber, resources from legal partners that we have here locally to just guide businesses in each of the different areas where the executive orders are coming, whether that's an immigration funding, you know, a lot of the federal funding got froze for a period of time.

Spending is still, to a degree uncertain.

So we're getting experts in the field to try to help businesses, and we're asking businesses to contact us if they're experiencing any impacts from the different orders.

And we're hearing from a lot of those businesses.

Yeah.

What are you hearing from businesses right now?

Primarily, we're hearing concerns about what the immigration orders mean and what they can do to prepare, because there are a lot of uncertainties about the role of business and preparing for that.

And then we're also hearing quite a bit about the tariffs and the concern about that.

Right now.

Some of the tariffs are paused, but the Chinese tariffs are still in effect.

The Mexico and Canada tariffs may go into effect in just under 30 days.

And that's a that's a big problem for many of our businesses, because those are major trading relationships.

And some of the companies are obviously concerned about what that means for them and their bottom line and how they can can change that.

And finding a new supplier is something you can easily say.

But the time that it takes to find a new supplier and establish that relationship, it's time they could be spent doing something else, like innovating.

And are you able to help kind of manage those relationships or try to make those connections?

Well, unfortunately, the federal decisions are being made and that doesn't necessarily take into into account what we think.

But we are very concerned about the tariffs and what that means for our companies locally.

But hearing from the companies enables us to put a face on some of the the different things that are happening.

And when the tariffs went into effect, several years ago, we actually took a few business leaders to D.C. and communicated the impact.

And we want to use the voice that we have in order to make a difference where we can.

Well, speaking of listening to business, is this a strategic five year plan that you all are announcing?

PROSPER 2030 is comes from that, right.

You've reached out to a lot of businesses.

And what did you hear and what is the plan and how is it different from anything in the past?

Well, we spent a year now listening to businesses and taking their feedback about what they wanted to see change for the long term vision for our community and also short term gains.

Because it's important to note that this five year plan really sets us up for success in the next 25 years.

So if we want to be a stronger community by 2050, we really have to start that work now.

We have we do a five year plan every five years, and this sunsets our now Louisville plan.

And what we heard from our investors is they wanted to see us do continued work around regional economic development and growing the 15 county area, as well as continued work and talent attraction.

So we built out new tools to do that talent attraction and and put in several different initiatives that will relate to that.

Our investors also really wanted us to focus on public safety and enhancing downtown development and what we can do in those areas.

So we have built out several initiatives around each of those things.

So what are some of those initiatives that we're going to be seeing, and how are you working with state government to try to get that regional impact?

Some of the new initiatives revolve talent attraction revolve around talent, attraction and boomerangs.

We really want to go after former Louisville aliens and see if we can get them to move back to the area, remind them of what a great place it is to live here, and then also connect them with different job opportunities.

So we are launching a new website that focuses on opportunities to connect them with jobs.

We are also marketing to them directly and very targeted ways.

And then from a state standpoint, some of the priorities include competitive tax reform and what we can do to enhance that and make it easier to do business.

We are also working with the state on funding for talent attraction initiatives like the Boomerang Campaign.

We do a lot of campaigns locally for our companies to help them attract in-demand talent by pairing the employer marketing with the live in lieu marketing so that we remind people of what a great place it is to live here.

We can target certain geographies.

We have a lot of tools available.

We'll be looking forward to seeing how it all pans out.

Thank you for being here.

We appreciate it.

Back to you.

Thank you, Kelsey.

And as you heard, the new strategic plan also focuses on downtown development and a partnership with LMPD to improve public safety.

You can see the entire Prosper 2030 plan on Gilley's website.