Marion County Development held a listening session called “Heartland Together” in Knoxville Thursday morning.  The session is a part of a series being held in several states. Chief Business Officer for the Kansas Leadership Center Damon Young spoke with KNIA/KRLS News about why these sessions are being held.

“We are working with the Kaufman Foundation as part of an outreach for the ”Heartland Together” Project. We are going to four states and 20 cities to learn from communities about what is going right in their entrepreneur ecosystems, and how we can be most helpful to help those ecosystems grow. 

Young tells us what he learned from the session in Knoxville.

“Knoxville is an amazing place. It’s full of very vibrant entrepreneurs, and like a lot of towns people are at the end of capacity. The ones that are doing the work are operating on a thin margin, and not just a financial margin but time. So I learned you have some amazing people who are doing great work and they are curious about how to get more people a part of the entrepreneurial community, and how to grow new businesses.

The Kaufman Foundation is working towards starting a pilot program to address the issues identified and to grow prosperity in rural America through entrepreneurship.