(uplifting music) - Hello, and welcome to "Prairie Pulse."

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll meet two pioneering women of medicine.

But first, joining me now is our guest, Cortnee Jensen, with the North Dakota Department of Commerce.

You're the director of strategy and transformation.

Well, before we get to what that is, I tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background maybe.

- Well, I grew up in Montana, and my family moved around a lot.

And actually ended up in the Fargo Morehead area, right at the end of my high school career just long enough for me to meet my husband.

And we then jetted off for him to go to medical school in Rochester, Minnesota.

So we lived in Rochester, moved around quite a bit in between, and ended up coming back to the Fargo Morehead area about 10 years ago for an opportunity.

He's a radiation oncologist at Sanford.

So we came back to the area for that.

I have to say, honestly, I expected it to be a short time.

And here we are, and we're raising our family 10 years later and have no plans to go anywhere.

- Great place to be.

Talk about what is your role with the Department of Commerce?

- So I'm the director of strategy and transformation.

And basically what that means is I have the opportunity to do something that a lot of people don't get to do in their life, which is to be a generalist.

To step back and to look at how the state is operating, to look at how the state is growing, how the state is creating wealth in our different agencies within commerce and try to create solutions that overarch all of those different things that we do, but also solutions that can keep up with the evolution, with the change that we're seeing in our economy that, as we all know, has been sped up considerably by COVID and the COVID reaction.

And so I have the opportunity to step back and say, okay, well, one of the biggest things facing North Dakota is workforce.

How are we going to work together as a team and solution around how we're going to bring in workforce, retain that workforce as a state?

So my job is very broad.

I get to do a little bit of everything.

And so when it comes to giving you exact statistics on something today, and I'm not necessarily the person to give you all the details, because I'm not that subject matter expert, but I have the opportunity to work with all the subject matter experts.

- Okay.

Well, it's my understanding there's four divisions of the Department of Commerce, - [Cortnee] Correct.

- Well, let's break it down and talk about each one individually, and let's start with economic development.

- Okay, and that's actually where I started my job in Commerce was in the economic development and finance.

So economic development finance is, like all of the agencies, tasked with growing the wealth of North Dakota, right?

It's our goal to grow that wealth, to retain that wealth, to diversify that wealth for the state so that we can have the quality of life that I just mentioned attracted me and kept me in North Dakota, right?

So that's the role.

So we're really looking at what are those primary sector industries, those industries that bring wealth in from the outside of the state and increase our wealth?

So we have economic development people who go and work with these industries to attract the industries to grow those industries in the state.

But then we also have the finance part of economic development and finance.

And what that is, is us capitalizing businesses in the state to grow and succeed.

Offering programs and services that they maybe couldn't get through a normal bank.

We work very closely, our economic development and finance team works very closely with all of the different funding options in the state.

We work with banks, we work with Bank of North Dakota and their programs, but then we also have our own program, which is the North Dakota Development Fund.

And that's capital and equity investment, both options for businesses to grow in this state, especially sometimes where there's not the opportunity to get that capital somewhere else.

We also have the LIFT program, which people talk a lot about.

The LIFT program is the program that's investing in the commercialization of new technologies.

They really want to bring new ideas to the marketplace with this money.

So it might be a new company that's very close to bringing something new to the market, or it might be an existing company that has new technology, new ideas, which we've seen a lot of that, right, post COVID or mid COVID of people pivoting and being able to get new products to the marketplace to meet a new demand.

And that money can help them move those projects over that hump of commercialization.

It's that last part that's the hardest part sometimes.

So that LIFT fund, in the 67th legislative session, we were given $15 million, and I believe we've allocated or given out $7.3 million of that to companies already to be able to move technology forward.

The state is in a great position right now as far as economic development goes.

We have a lot of opportunities.

- Okay.

Well, let's move on, again, you've got another division, workforce development.

- Yes.

Workforce development is probably the most important thing to talk about right now.

I think everybody has seen the signs on doors that say, you know, reduced hours due to workforce, closed due to workforce.

It's become a critical issue.

And our workforce division is tiny, four people, but very mighty.

And they do a number of different things.

They have the Technical Skills and Training grant that they've had that closes actually next month for that rescaling.

Some of that money came after COVID when we saw massive layoffs, right?

And so that money came in to help retrain our workforce.

And it's been a wonderful program.

And we're hoping to continue that program beyond the funds that we got from that.

But we also have our Project Intern, Operation Intern, apologies, and that internship money that's available is a match to businesses so they can bring young people in, get them the experience, and have the opportunity to hire them first.

And that's been a wonderful program for us.

We do all kinds of things with apprenticeships, work very closely with Jobs ND, and there's the Workforce Development Council.

And the Workforce Development Council has really become a critical piece for the state.

It's a group of professionals in our communities, geographically diverse, industry diverse who come together to talk about how do we solve our workforce crisis.

It's not one solution, it's gotta be many solutions.

So when you bring those people to the table to sit down and say, what has worked?

What might work?

What could work?

It's a really powerful group.

And our workforce division runs that as well.

- Well, I keep wanting to ask you how COVID has affected each one, but we'll come back to that.

Another division you have, Community Services.

- And community services exists to make the communities the communities we want to live in.

The communities we wanna build businesses in.

You know, we've talked a little bit about, again, already me saying that we moved here and we stayed here.

And we stayed here because we are in a vibrant community that we can see ourselves in, that we see people supported.

And so community services is the arm of commerce that really makes that happen, makes those communities vibrant, makes sure people have access to what they need in those communities, and also to help guide them through the process of getting those resources.

Because some of those grants and things, the federal grants, the HUD grants, they're complicated.

And so we wanna support our communities.

Our community service also actually has recently brought community development in under community services.

It used to be under economic development, but community development focuses more on our main streets.

It focuses more on the places that make our home our home.

Where we go to meet our friends, our retail establishments, our local businesses, as opposed to economic development that's looking at large scale industry level businesses.

So that move really made sense to put that into community services.

And we've been really excited.

We just had our Main Street Summit last month.

In the Main Street Summit we had a huge attendance that we did not expect.

We were really excited.

I believe we had 600 people, that might be low actually.

And don't hold me to it.

I told you, I'm not the specialist here.

But I was in that room and I got to see people sitting at their tables, interacting with each other, talking with each other, talking about what they can do to make their communities more attractive.

And the conversations I heard weren't the normal things people say, which is always can we have money?

They were, well, how did you do that?

Well, who did you partner with?

Well, where did that come from?

And so seeing that synergy and that energy was inspiring.

And having that focus on, we need to grow our communities because that's what attracts people.

Post-COVID, we keep talking about COVID, but post-COVID, people's opinion of what community is has changed.

People are recognizing after the pandemic, or if we can say after, but after the critical part of the pandemic that they don't wanna be in crowded places.

They don't wanna spend their life running around.

They don't wanna sit on a train every day for hours.

They wanna go to where there are less people, where life is simpler, where they can focus on their families, and North Dakota is a great place to do that.

And so, you know, part of that is we have to have the infrastructure so if they wanna have that digital work environment so they can live in a really small town, we need to make sure our communities have that.

So community development is also about identifying that.

Watford city is a great example.

All the work that they've done to put the digital infrastructure in.

People are going there because they can work as seamlessly there as they can in their building in New York City.

And it's impressive, right?

So community services, it's really about the vibrancy of the communities.

- It is.

And to round it out, the fourth division that's probably been affected as much as any, tourism.

- Tourism.

Tourism is one of those divisions that it sounds like it should just be the hotels and the attractions, right?

But tourism also encompasses our restaurants, our cafes, our coffee shops, our retail locations.

A lot of those community events that we talk about, a lot of those community businesses that I mentioned with Main Street, a lot of that is pulled into tourism.

And tourism, of course, saw a huge losses with everything closed down during the pandemic.

Huge numbers of restaurants closed in the state.

Huge numbers of major hotels had huge struggles.

We were fortunate to be able to pull federal money in to do some support, but no matter how much money we could pull in, it's pretty hard when the whole globe is going through the same thing at the same time to support everything.

- Well, with that, what impact did COVID have on business activity and businesses in the state?

I know it hurt a lot of businesses, but it also created opportunity.

- It did.

It's interesting that you said it that way because I think that North Dakota has had a digital revolution that we would not have had or needed had we not hit the pandemic, some of our businesses that never had to put anything online, never had to do different solutioning around how they get their product or service out.

We're able to grow in a way that's been really impressive.

And beyond that, I think people also really heard the messaging around shop local, and really came around their communities in a way that was unique.

And people talk about, oh, the big box retailers, everybody was going online and ordering.

There was some of that, but that's not what we saw.

We saw people rallying around their communities, around their businesses, and doing the best that they could to support.

I know groups of people who went out and bought gift cards.

Tons and tons of gift cards and are now living off of gift cards, but (laughs) but it was actually a beautiful thing.

And it created new opportunity as far as our industry goes, because now we need new solutions.

We need new solutions for air quality.

We needed new solutions for respirators.

Appareo right here in town was able to flip production and create respirators that went to the marketplace and was a critical response for the world, not just our nation.

And North Dakota really did have the opportunity to grow and to evolve.

It was hard, and to say it wasn't doesn't honor what everybody went through.

A lot of people struggled.

- How was your department able to help out the businesses financially?

- Well, most of what we did, we don't have our own funding, right?

We're a legislative agency, and so our funds are all very allocated.

But what we were able to do is we were able to bring the money that came in from the federal government.

So when that CARES Act money came through, Commerce became the grant agency.

Through the Economic Recovery grant that we did, through the hotels and hospitality.

We did multiple rounds of grants as we pulled that money in to get it out to the industries that needed it most.

And that was the main role, but then we also pivoted all of our services.

Most of Commerce changed what they were doing.

Instead of focusing on large scale industry, we turned inward and we broke the state into regions, and each of us took regions and worked one-on-one with businesses to help them identify what does the SBA have for loans that we can help you find?

What do we have for grants that we can help you find?

And really just walking the businesses through.

I actually think that was one of the most valuable things I've done in my life was that time, one-on-one working with incredible people in the state and helping them find resources.

Our regional councils were incredible.

I have so much respect for the professionals that exist in our state who prop up our businesses, support our businesses, and help them succeed.

It was incredible.

- What are you seeing now with businesses?

Are they bouncing back or not?

- Absolutely.

We are seeing incredible increases, again, in people going out to eat and people going and having experiences again, traveling within the state.

Other people from outside of the state coming to North Dakota because we're a little bit more spaced out here and it feels like a good place for people to go.

So those increases are definitely there, but then we've also seen increases beyond that.

We have 25 billion with a B dollars in new economic activity in the pipeline in North Dakota right now.

North Dakota has attracted a lot of attention on the global marketplace.

Some of that has been our response post-COVID.

Some of that has been really trying to get the message out about what we're doing in North Dakota, how innovative we are, what our farmers do that is innovative and unique and defines that cutting edge of ag technology.

And some of it has been truly the governor's statement that we want to be carbon neutral by 2030.

That's been a big driver of a lot of the projects that we've seen coming to the state.

And so, Mitsubishi is going to be building a blue hydrogen plant in Beulah.

We have another hydrogen project that's coming through.

I think 13 billion of those projects that we're talking about are all clean energy projects.

We have a big gas to liquids facility that our development fund just gave the $3 million to kick that project off.

Cerilon is coming, and so they're going to be coming and starting their project.

And the timing of North Dakota right now is so exciting.

There's so much happening.

We have so much opportunity.

And again, it's global attention.

Our biggest barrier is workforce.

- Well, there you go.

What's North Dakota's current unemployment rate and a lot of businesses struggling to find workers?

- So the last number I heard was 2.4% unemployment.

That's effectively zero.

And it's interesting because the rest of the country is dealing with a workforce shortage because people are not coming back after they got some federal funding, right?

That's not really what we're seeing here.

That's not what we're seeing.

We are seeing, yep, we had some people in the post-COVID go back home, stay with their children, make the decision that life doesn't need to be this busy.

We can live on less, but really have the people who want to work and can work, they are working.

And so we're in a position now with 2.4% unemployment that we really need to come up with some new strategies.

And some of that is retraining the workforce we have, but some of that is bringing new people in, attracting new talent, and attracting the kind of talent we want in our communities.

- What about the Canadian border being closed?

How much did that affect us?

- So the Canadian border has been a huge issue.

So the Canadian border has been closed basically throughout all of COVID.

It's been over a year, and it's actually been 18 months.

And we've lost 672,000 visits to North Dakota.

And that is a significant change.

That the Canadian border is, especially the Northern part of our state is where a lot of that economic activity comes from.

So we're excited because they are looking to reopen the border.

We're hoping within the next month, we'll see the border reopen.

Our Commerce tourism department has been fantastic and has been very thoughtful about this and doing advertising, not just in the summer times when they usually do, but really advertising to those Canadians, we want you back, welcome back, and really doing that over a long period of time.

So we're going to see quite a rush and quite a number of our Northern friends coming to visit us again soon.

- You know, what impact do you think the new Amazon plant in Fargo will have?

- It's interesting because having it here is fantastic.

It's wonderful for our community.

The timing is hard because of the jobs that are needed to operate that facility.

The timing is challenging.

And the wonderful thing about a name like Amazon is they can attract.

They're well-known.

So we're really hoping that we can work with them to utilize their name to attract people from outside to come in and help fill those jobs.

The last number I heard was that they were at 17% hire of what they need eventually for their entire project.

So we have a ways to go there.

The facility itself, I don't think is going to impact our shopping habits, right?

It's a fulfillment facility.

It's more what it will do to us with workforce.

- So what do you think the long-term economic outlook for the state is?

- It's fantastic.

When I say we have $25 billion of new projects in the pipeline, and we're looking at what, a $70 billion economy as a state?

That's almost doubling, and that's before we've done our trade mission that we're going on to Japan to meet with a lot of these companies in June of '22 that want to come and invest here.

That's before that.

And with energy projects we have with the caverns that we have naturally in North Dakota under us, we have space to store 500 years of North Dakota carbon production.

North Dakota produced carbon, 500 years, we can put an underground.

Sink it into cavern and store it.

- Yeah, that's fantastic.

If people want more information, where can they go?

Who can they contact?

- Oh, northdakota.gov.

Just go to the North Dakota website and visit us at Commerce.

Look at the different pages.

Look at all the different things that we have going on.

Everybody is welcome to reach out to me as well.

I told you, I'm a generalist.

Cortnee Jensen, Department of Commerce.

I'm not hard to find.

- Well, Cortnee, thanks so much for joining us today.

- Thank you for having me.

- Stay tuned for more.

(soft music) In this artifact spotlight, Emily Buermann of the Becker County History Museum in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota tells us the story of two pioneering women of medicine.

- My name is Emily Buermann from the Becker County Museum in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, and this is our artifact spotlight.

(soft music) Today, I'm gonna talk about Emma and Emma.

So first, Emma Ogden is the doctor in Detroit, Minnesota.

So Elma Ogden is born in 1840 in Pennsylvania.

And as she grows up and becomes a teenager, she becomes a nurse in the Civil War.

People are dying of infection and disease, and like 75% of all surgeries are just amputations.

And it's really brutal and really ugly to be in the medical profession in the Civil War.

So after the Civil War, Emma Ogden wanted to continue to be a nurse, but she also wanted to be a doctor.

She goes to the women's college in Philadelphia, and she graduates and becomes a doctor.

So she starts to look around, she's gonna open up her practice, and she's gonna practice medicine as a doctor on the east coast, and it's not going great because she's a woman and she's unmarried.

So she heads out west to the wild west of Detroit, Minnesota.

And a lot of what the 1880s doctors are doing is they're going and making house calls.

And she's going out here day and night, making these runs doing these house calls, but Emma Ogden is doing okay because she was a nurse in the Civil War and she has seen it all.

So Dr. Emma also is a proponent for using chemical medicines.

And so she's bringing in these medicines that the local folks haven't really caught onto yet and aren't really keen to use, but she is a good doctor and she's helping people.

And so little by little, people are starting to trust her to take these chemical medicines that she's bringing in.

So since she has to bring them in herself because there isn't already a druggist or a pharmacist in town, Dr. Emma opens her own pharmacy in her practice.

Meanwhile, Emma Combacker, she was born in 1858 in Wisconsin.

She's a smart gal.

She grows up, her family encourages her to go and get an education, and she's interested in medicine.

So she grows up, goes to the University of Michigan, and she graduates with a pharmacy degree.

And then, she makes her way to Detroit and joins the practice with Dr. Emma.

So we've got Dr. Emma is upstairs in the building, and pharmacist Emma is downstairs running the pharmacy.

So they become kind of a one stop shop, right?

You can come, you see the doctor.

On your way out, you grab your medicines, and away you go.

Everything's going fairly well for the two, though there's some whispers about Dr. Emma.

She is still unmarried.

She's still a woman, and she refuses to wear dresses, okay?

She's going around in shirts, coats, and pants.

Now keep in mind, she sometimes has to hop on the horse or hop on the wagon and run off.

And who's gonna do that in a skirt and cute boots, right?

Not Dr. Emma.

And pharmacist Emma is wearing dresses.

She's wearing hats to work every day.

She's in the library circle.

She's in the choir circles.

She's going around town doing all the lovely lady things that are expected of the ladies.

And then, Emma Combacker finds a husband here in Detroit.

She marries William Fagerberg, and they adopt a child and things are going wonderful for the two, Dr. Emma and pharmacist Emma.

They are doing well with their pharmacy.

They're helping people out.

Everything's going great.

The community has accepted Dr. Emma Ogden.

They even just call her The Doctor, which is kind of fun.

Emma and Emma are two pioneering medical ladies, blazing trails through the 1880s and the 1890s and the 1900s.

And they're coming to Detroit, and they're helping, and they're healing, and they're changing minds along the way.

(soft music) - Well, that's all we have this week on "Prairie Pulse."

And as always, thanks for watching.

(uplifting music) - [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

And by the members of Prairie Public.