All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 25, 2025 00:59-02:05 - CSPAN
01:05:55
Discussion on Challenges Facing Rural America
Participants
Main
t
tataboline enos
47:39
|

Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Guide contains bio and contact information for every House and Senate member of the 119th Congress.
Contact information on congressional committees, the President's Cabinet, federal agencies, and state governors.
The Congressional Directory costs $32.95 plus shipping and handling, and every purchase helps support C-SPAN's non-profit operations.
Scan the code on the right or go to c-spanshop.org to order your copy today.
Well, up next, to look at the challenges facing rural America with the founder and CEO of the Pennsylvania Wild Center for Entrepreneurship.
She was the featured speaker at an event hosted by the Brookings Institution.
It's about 90 minutes.
Okay.
Well, welcome everyone and thanks for joining us today.
This is the 10th in our series of Front Porch Conversations, co-sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution, where we engage with authors of recent research on rural America and explore the implications for public policy and well-being for our country.
I'm Tony Pippa.
I'm a senior fellow here in the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution.
I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and I lead an initiative here at Brookings where we study the effectiveness of federal policy in supporting rural community economic development across the U.S.
And I'm pleased to be joined as usual by my counter and partner and co-host for this series, Brent Arrell, who is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Not only are we collaborating on this series, but on July 1st, we launched a America's Rural Future, which is a bipartisan commission co-sponsored by Brookings and AEI, that's co-chaired by former North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp, former New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu.
And that commission will be visiting rural places over the next couple of years to develop a national rural strategy that will be published in 2027.
And so these on the front porch sessions take on added meaning because they become inputs for the work of the commission and the issues that it will be considering.
And we're both really excited to be joined here today by Ta Enos to talk about her recently published book, Proudly Made: The Story of Reinvention in the Big Woods and Small Towns of the Pennsylvania Wilds.
But before we jump in, just a few housekeeping notes before we get underway.
As I said, this is the 10th in the series of On the Front Porch.
You can find recordings of all of our conversations on the front porch on the Reimagining Rural Policy Initiative website.
Some are hosted by AEI, some are hosted by the Brookings Institution, but that site has all 10.
As those of you know who have joined us on the front porch before, we'd like to have an informal conversation amongst ourselves for a portion, and then we'll turn to you in the audience to invite you and ask questions and be part of the conversation.
If you're online, you can pose a question to events at brookings.edu.
So we're so excited to have Ta with us here today.
She's a writer, a mom, but founder and CEO of the Pennsylvania Wild Center for Entrepreneurship.
That's a regional nonprofit that's helping to revitalize the rural Pennsylvania Wilds region through intentional, place-based outdoor recreation development.
And that intent, that word intentional, is very important.
And we'll get to that.
I'm sure we'll talk a lot about it today.
She's a fourth-generation native of Orange County.
And before her work with PA Wilds, both helped her sister build an outdoor outfitting business in Pennsylvania and also worked as an award-winning reporter and editor.
Before we jump into the conversations, just want to set a little bit of context about why this is so important.
So, the outdoor recreation economy in the U.S. has become a really big economic driver in rural America.
Our friends at the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable show that in 2023, 1.2 trillion in economic output, like more than 2% of our GDP, has come from this economy.
You know, more than 5 million jobs.
And at the same time, it's not necessarily the case that this economy is always a positive thing for the people and places involved.
Like anything else, especially in rural America, these economies can often extract value and sometimes even place pressure on the natural assets that are making it attractive for people to come to these rural places.
Our colleagues at the Headwaters Regional Economics have even described an amenity trap where popular destinations work really well for people of means, but put enormous pressure on things like housing, business creation for local people.
I think PA Wilds has tried to be something really different altogether.
And so, really looking forward to you sharing that story and the experiences.
So, just to get underway, just tell us a little bit about why this book?
Why spend all the time and effort to put everything down on paper?
Why this book at this time?
And what are some of the key things that you wanted to hit on in the book that we should keep in mind as we jump into this conversation?
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
Sure.
Well, I really appreciate being here, Tony and Brent.
Thanks for having me.
So, a quick level set: the book is sort of what's it about.
I see it as sort of two stories of reinvention.
One is a memoir, so it's like my personal story of having a first career and getting to a crossroads with that career, living in a place, getting out of crossroads with that place, and saying, Okay, I'm thinking about moving back home to this rural place where I grew up.
I'm thinking about changing my career, and it's that journey of like doing that.
So, that's sort of happening in the background, and it leads me to entrepreneurship.
It leads me to this fledgling movement at the time, this is 20 years ago, that was unfolding in our rural landscape.
And it was about this idea of this, you know, it was a distressed rural region, 13 counties where the most the greatest concentration of public lands in the Commonwealth were here in the Pennsylvania Wilds region.
And it was, and it had, you know, all these very small communities, economic distress, population decline, many of the stack challenges you see in a lot of rural places.
And we had all this public land, and so it was this idea at the time by the state, launched by the state, to say, you know, there's all of these great natural assets there, and there's this economic distress, and this region is surrounded by all these major tourism markets, and really nobody knows it's here.
We have more public land than Yellowstone, and nobody really knows it's even there on the map, right?
The idea was: why don't we brand this region and start marketing it and work with communities to grow the outdoor recreation sector and tourism sector to help revitalize.
And so it was not like, let's replace something.
It was more, this is a real opportunity for this place based on these assets.
And 20 years ago, like there's a lot of communities now that are working on that.
20 years ago, this was very new, and it was certainly very new in the region that I come from and write about.
And so, you know, it was my story of moving back home to the place that I'm from and motherhood and like all of the things like a woman's journey and a professional woman's journey.
So that's sort of one story.
And then it's me running into this work and sort of discovering it and realizing like this is a really good idea for this place.
But if we're not careful, you know, we could really screw things up.
And so it was seeing the work that was happening and then realizing that I could have a role in it and being able to really step into that leadership.
That's sort of the personal journey part of it.
And then it's this story of reinvention of this region that sees this work and starts to lean into it and really rediscovers, I think, sort of an awakening and a realization of what they have and how they can activate it on their own terms and make it work for them.
And so it's those two stories combined, intertwined.
And it's really, you know, from my perspective of being in this work, it's really been a privilege to find this work and be part of it.
And so, you know, it was sort of why the book, why now?
It was really, you know, I'm a journalist at heart, right?
So I had moved home.
I really wasn't sure.
I love journalism, but I also was like, I can't do this for the rest of my life.
It's a little too dark and combative, and the pressure of it and all these things.
So I was like, I need to find a different avenue for what I'm, you know, some of the callings I have.
But I love that it was so purpose-driven and different things.
So I was looking for that purpose and I found this work.
And so it was really about leaning into that.
And it, you know, it came through, I had initially moved home to help my sister.
She had heard about, we were both, let me level set for a second.
We were both in Alaska and that's where I was a journalist.
And she had just gotten out of the Navy.
She was the air traffic controller in the Navy.
And she's like, you know, there's this thing back home called the Pennsylvania Wilds and the state is involved and it's like this new thing.
They're trying to grow nature tourism.
And, you know, I was just thinking at the time, I was like, and I read about this in my book, it's like, well, she's like, so I'm thinking about, you know, sort of ditching air traffic control and I'm going to go move home and buy this outfitting business on the National Wild and Scenic Allegheny River.
unidentified
As one does.
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
And I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Do you really want to like you spend a lot of time and energy on this career path?
And I was going through a very similar thing.
So I didn't put up too much of a fight.
But it was really about she moved home.
She was the braver one.
She moved home first, got this business.
And she had really, you know, her love of the outdoors and her understanding of the wild's work and what the potential was there and the way she connected people to nature.
And she grew over the couple of a year, a couple of years, her business from 1,200 paddlers to 12,000 paddlers a season.
And so it was through that experience of like doing that with her because I followed on her coattails and doing that with her.
And she had sort of said, you know, it wasn't just like her growth, it was the spark that she was in a small town.
You know, this PA Wilds thing that they're talking about, this could really work here.
Like you could, I, you know, like I lived it with her.
And so then there was this opening for the Pennsylvania Wilds for what they called a small business ombudsman.
We were talking about this earlier.
And it was, again, this very fledgling movement of the state trying to like activate, you know, partners around this work early on.
And the job description was, we need somebody to go around 13 counties and work with local entrepreneurs to help them understand this work and what can come of this work and how it can be used for revitalization.
And I was like, wait a minute, I've lived this experience and I have a communications background, so I could go do this.
So I applied for that job and really leaned into it.
And that's where I really started to understand the broader story of what was happening in this rural region where I grew up, all the significant parts of the Pennsylvania Wilds initiative and the approach that they were taking.
And in the book, I really try to call out the things that I feel like really set it apart and keep it from being extractive.
And I can go through sort of a list of those, but, you know, broad story of like why, what the book's about.
It's like these two stories of reinvention.
And then, and if there's a takeaway on the personal side, I think it's this idea that there's a place for everybody to lead in rural.
And you don't need to wait for permission.
You can lean into that, step into that, however you're comfortable.
It's always uncomfortable, like when you start doing it.
It certainly was for me.
It took me about two years to truly step into the leadership that I saw that I thought needed to happen and to finally ultimately do that.
So I just want to embolden people.
Step up.
If you feel a calling to do it, lean into that.
Because rural places need leaders, they need innovators, they need more, more than like, you know, the same four or five people in a small town wearing all the hats.
God bless them.
But it's like you just need more folks leaning in.
So that personal journey side.
And then the work itself is, you know, most of the book is about the work itself.
And I just felt like why now on the book, I just feel like it was somebody has to tell this story.
It was such a fantastic story to me as a journalist going across the region, working with all these entrepreneurs and state governments and local governments and nonprofits.
And they were all doing these little pieces of this big thing, all trying to work together to move it forward.
And I was like, somebody has got to tell this story.
Like, this is such a fantastic story.
Just of, you know, narratives about rural places are oftentimes told by somebody outside and they're very negative.
And, you know, it's through these certain lenses.
And this was a story.
And it's happening in like places all across Appalachia.
I mean, we're very involved in the Appalachian Peer Network.
And these stories are unfolding in a lot of different places.
And it's really a positive story, you know, about there are ways to do these things on your own terms as a community, as a region.
And it doesn't have to be this or that.
It doesn't have to be black or white.
It can be, okay, we want this, but we don't want that.
How can we figure out a way to move forward that isn't going to, you know, that is going to be with an end result that we care about.
So for the Wilds work, I think some of the things, you know, that really make it unique, like I said, in the beginning, it was state-led, and it was an initiative to, under a governor who brought it in and said, you know, we're going to try to, there's this opportunity, we want to have a rural initiative.
This is our big rural initiative.
So it was moving fast, right?
They were going to come in and brand this region.
So I would say on the rollout, there was definitely some things that were pretty rocky about that, you know, because it felt a little top-down as a rural region, like this thing coming in.
But the beauty, the beautiful thing that happened, and I taught, I have like a whole chapter, I think, where I sort of talk through this piece of it, is the locals kind of got together and people saw it.
They're like, you know, this is a good idea for us.
We do have all these natural assets.
Folks don't really know we're here.
We do have this economic distress.
And this is a mechanism for us that we can start with the assets that we have.
What we don't like is that it's too narrowly focused on marketing.
Like you can't just, you're not just going to market the heck out of a place and then send a bunch of people there without a state of readiness on the ground.
And so how do you get that state of readiness?
And so the communities are the ones that really started to push back against the state.
And this all happened like in the first year.
This is 20 years.
And so we're talking about the very first year, just to provide a little bit of a level set on it.
And, you know, the communities kind of pushed back and said, listen, we like these concepts, but we need a more holistic approach here.
We need real seats at the table.
We need to be able to shape this thing.
There has to be a community voice here, and there has to be a focus on entrepreneurship.
That was a huge part of it.
And to me, that is one of the things that is a differentiator is that focus very early on on local wealth building.
Don't do this in a way that you just bring in these big actors who stand up this stuff and then it's like a vacuum sucking wealth and agency and you know power out of communities, rural communities.
That's happened a million times.
And so what's the alternative to that is look across your region, see all these little entrepreneurs start investing in them so you've got this rooted local wealth that can't be exported.
And so that was the approach.
I mean, from the very earliest days, we did have those rocky moments right in the beginning, but I think those, you know, that approach of entrepreneurship.
The other one that I think is really important that they did, and so it, I'll finish this thought and then the next one.
The other thing that I thought was really important and I talk about in the book is around sense of place.
Like there is a sense of place in most of these rural communities you go to, there's a sense of charm and the look and feel of the buildings, not just the natural assets, but the built world, right?
And so there were tools that we have a group that was put together called a, it was an intergovernmental cooperative agreement, brought all 13 of our counties together around this work.
And they developed what was called the PA Wilds Design Guide for Community Character Stewardship.
It was a voluntary resource.
It was not an enforcement.
It was not a regulatory thing, but it was something that said, these are the themes of our region.
These are the characteristics that are really special to our communities.
Here's how you can build, have new development, but not lose those things.
And so it was a tool that was put out.
And the beauty of it is, you know, a tool like that in the years following, we were able to incentivize it.
We were able to use it to go after grant funds to bring into the region to then help communities with facade grants or welcome signage.
Or, you know, so it became a mechanism for an investment to bring dollars in on the terms that locals had sort of identified were important to them.
So it's sort of like pieces like that that were put in place early on, I think, are really have been really important to just doing it differently and helped it be a differentiator.
A couple other things on the brand, I felt like they really, the brand was before my time, so the Pennsylvania Wilds brand.
And They very early on, during some of those early Rocky years, they developed what was called the brand principles.
And for as rocky of a period as those earliest years were, they just really nailed those brand principles.
It's a document today, even thinking about it, I get chills, that I'm like, you know, they really captured what this place is about and why people care about it.
And to this day, that document now, like it still guides our branding 16 years later, but it also is like a document that we, as the nonprofit now housing all this work, it's the document we include in all our application packages.
So when somebody's applying for a job with our nonprofit, we include that in there.
And you'd be surprised how many people, when they apply for that, and they're just like, this document, this meant so much to me.
Like, I've never heard somebody talk about our place in this way.
And so just that staying part of the time to really put in place things that are really locally informed, even at a moment in time that you can then take and have it frame the work for many years following, I think has been really important piece.
unidentified
So you gave us a lot there that we're going to be able to dive into.
Before we dive into that, just tell us right now, like, what does the Pennsylvania Wild Center for Entrepreneurship do?
Like, what is your role and responsibility right now?
What is it that you're doing?
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
Yes, so I am the founder and CEO of the Pennsylvania Wild Center and in Proudly Made.
You'll see that part of my personal journey was getting this work to a point that you realize, okay, it was state-led under one administration.
We got into another administration and we partners, all of the partners sort of like were looking around going, you know, we really need to get all this stuff under one organizational umbrella and a nonprofit umbrella to carry it forward beyond like the administration it was launched under.
And we need to, you know, and for long-term sustainability of all of the stuff, you know, the brand, the websites, there's a lot of infrastructure that goes along with infrastructure as in digital infrastructure, intellectual property, and real infrastructure that goes along with outdoorc and tourism economies.
And so needing a nonprofit that does that.
And so part of my journey, you'll read about in the book, is about the journey of realizing, oh my gosh, somebody's got to like launch a nonprofit and house this stuff.
To carry this on, this is generational work, right?
Like it's got to outlast me.
It's got to outlast everybody, all the current leadership that's involved with it today or was yesterday.
And the way you do that, of course, is through an organizational structure.
And so it was part of my journey in the book is realizing somebody needs to do this.
And for a while, I'm looking around going, why aren't you doing it?
Why aren't you doing it?
Why aren't you doing it?
unidentified
And then it's like, oh, wait, I got to do it.
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
It's like, look in the mirror.
You know, what we call it in the friend of mine in the wilds, they talked about their town and how it was really distressed.
And then a group of folks in the town said, you know what?
We're going to stop being the person that's like, they should do this, they should do that, they should do this.
And we're going to be the they.
And so that's what we call it in the wilds.
It's like, be the they, be the one that's going to like step up and like do the thing that needs to get done.
So yes, so I am, to answer your question, the long way, the founder and CEO of a nonprofit called the Pennsylvania Wild Center for Entrepreneurship.
And one of the journeys that the work went on is we all got to a point.
It started, let me back up, the work started, the Pennsylvania Wilds work started, that there were all these pieces.
There was like an artisan development piece, and there was the design guide piece I mentioned, and there was the infrastructure piece, and there was the brand and the marketing.
And so there were all these different pieces.
And they were housed, you know.
We did it the scrappy rural way.
Like, okay, all these partners around the table, you take this, I'll take that.
You know, and so everybody was working all these things.
And then, based on capacity or leadership or funding or whatever it was, every couple of years, it's like you throw it all up and it comes down, it's all in different places again.
And so, on the public side, you know, out in the public square, like the work was really working.
Like, what we started to see was our numbers were going up.
People really were having, you know, being able, businesses were starting visitors, visitation was increasing.
It was reaching some of our most rural places.
But if you looked on the back end, it was like, oh my gosh, this is very disorganized on the back end.
And so, how do we?
It was a moment for the work to go through this facilitation to say, okay, who's going to be the lead?
And all these pieces of this work need to get under one organizational umbrella.
And so, at that time, we had founded the center, we sort of saw this coming, we had founded the center, and so our partners, both state and local, had identified that we should be the organizational umbrella that carries this backbone nonprofit, is kind of how we think of it, that carries all these pieces forward.
And so, that's our role.
We have a marketing, you know, there's a piece we do around marketing in the region, there's a huge piece that we do working with local entrepreneurs and a whole entrepreneurial ecosystem.
There's regional planning and partnerships piece to it.
So, all of the components, you know, we're a coordinator, we help line up investment, bring investment in the region, and then push it out into communities, both through programs, services, contracts, like all the different ways that you can do that.
And that, so that's our that's my role at the nonprofit.
unidentified
Do you want to?
Sure, thank you.
Really, really interesting story.
My wife is from Martinsburg, Pennsylvania, which is near Altoona.
It's not north, yeah, yeah, it's not in the wild, but it those are wonderful towns that dot that entire region.
Um, I've I've got one question, and then I'm going to reserve follow-up to this question before you interrupt me again, Tony.
Gotcha.
Good.
Okay.
Um, uh, so I'm really curious because this is an issue that we're going to be grappling with in the commission about the way that public policies sometimes help but oftentimes hurt.
And I'm really curious as to whether it's federal or state or even county-level stuff.
Like what was helpful, and what were the policy obstacles, if there were any, to what you were trying to do?
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, so I don't know if I could speak to policy because I truly come at this from the practitioner level.
unidentified
I can tell you where did the where did government drip you up?
That's what I'm relating to.
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, so I would say we've had a fantastic relationship with state government.
They've done some really, I think, innovative things in this space, particular to our region.
I think they were figuring it out as we were figuring it out.
So I can speak to the wins probably better than where I see gaps.
But the other space is around the funding space, you know, because so much of this we're trying to line up investment for it.
And so I think where, you know, the metrics that are tracked for rural as compared to urban, you're never going to get the same kind of scale.
And so I think that's one of the biggest hang-ups is when an application comes through with rural, like, do they really see it?
Do they understand the difference?
Do they understand the difference of, you know, trust building and partnerships are so critical to this kind of work, to really any work in rural, I think.
And, you know, when it takes four hours to get from one side of the region to another, like there is a commitment of time.
If you need to meet face to face, if and in the beginning, you always need to make face to face if you want to build any trust.
There's a it's the time and resource intensiveness of doing this kind of work or any kind of like regional coalition around stuff is, you know, being able to find those resources and it's not gonna.
How do you articulate that into how many jobs is that going to create?
Like it's, it doesn't.
The mashup doesn't happen there, you know.
So, understanding it on a sort of local design for stuff that they think can, can move the needle on it right, and I would say outdoor rec in particular, runs into this.
It's like you know, if you do a long distance trail asset, it's going to bring in a certain number of of visitors and and be this attraction.
But when you take that in as an infrastructure project and it's, they're talking about job.
It it's like, and the other part of it is and this is the important, I think the most important thing to think about with with tourism and outdoor recreation.
One of the most important things is it's a job and wealth generator, like anything else, any other industry, but in addition to it, it has these like multipliers if you're doing it intentionally, these huge multipliers for rural places, because it addresses these stack challenges that so many of us are facing.
So it addresses quality of life and workforce retention, and like everybody wants to live in a place with a nice trail and a broove pub and a good bookstore and a restaurant, and you know like that's the 21st century workforce, you know so that, and that's what the major employers in your town need, and so tourism becomes this way to like.
Start addressing these other stack challenges.
It's not the, it's not the panacea or anything, but it's something that can um, do those things.
So um, address those those challenges.
So back to your original question, because I think I went down a rabbit hole there.
unidentified
Okay policy yeah, so the, the follow-up, that's a very positive story.
Yes, that's really good.
Um, so the follow-up question is, you know, i'm from AEI, American Enterprise Institute FREE Markets FREE, People FREE.
We want.
We want people to have freedom in their own lives, communities to have freedom and in their shared life, so that they can build what they need to build and what their vision is.
I was really struck by your comments on purpose, because I think that that's the, that's the absolute foundation of, of something like this.
Okay, so one of the big critiques that conservatives have traditionally lodged is that government owns too much.
It owns too much land it, and in that ownership, Ownership, it obstructs development because the public owns it, you can't build on it, you can't capitalize the way that you might be able to if it were privately held.
So, I'm curious to get your perspective on that.
Like, would things have been different in that community if I assume these are state lands, not federal lands, but if the state had backed out of ownership and sold it off, sold off some of the land to entrepreneurs who wanted to invest in your community?
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
Sure.
So, in the wilds, we have 29 state parks, eight state forests, 50 state game lands, and one national forest.
So, there is federal land there as well.
And I would say, you know, the public lands are the basis for all of the 1.9 billion in economic activity that's happening in tourism and outdoor recreation in our region.
They are, you know, I think there's, I guess, a couple of things.
One, I think the public lands have this inherent value as public lands and public spaces where Americans are really attached to, right?
They need spaces where they can go outdoors and enjoy nature and all its forms.
Our region is almost all of our public land is multi-use.
It's working forests.
It's not, you know, so there are multiple industries that are active.
There's oil and gas, there's sustainable timber, there's outdoor recreation.
So, all of those industries, you know, that land is activated economically in those ways.
So, I wouldn't want to diminish at all.
Like, just because it is public land doesn't mean that there isn't economic value coming off of it, in addition to the other values that are happening around it through people being connected to nature and connected to the outdoors, which I think is so important.
So, I think, in addition to that, I would say outdoor rec in particular and tourism in particular, I feel like is having this moment of, and conservation, of this moment of like awakening.
And it really happened a while ago, but it's you're seeing it manifest in the outdoor recreation space around this idea that conserved lands are the foundation for that can be activated for outdoor recreation and tourism, right?
So, that, I mean, we're, and our DCR, our PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, you know, they saw this a long time ago is at the beginning of the wilds work, and it was a very different way of thinking.
I feel like, and I talk some about this in my book, it was a very different way of thinking about their properties that they manage.
Instead of it ending at sort of like the border of their park or forest, it was like, how are you working with the communities outside your park or forest?
And so, that's really the basis of their entire conservation landscape program.
And it's this idea of like, how do we work together on shared goals?
You can have good conservation goals and good economic development goals.
You know, it's not always easy, but it can be done.
And that's a quote from Meredith Hill.
She's been a champion in this work.
And it's true.
And I feel like the wilds is that story, right, of these things getting married up in a way that can work and can have this economic benefit, can build true rooted local wealth.
The other thing I would say about tourism and outdoor recreation are, you know, having any place that is like based on just one single industry is, I don't know, in my mind, that's like a terrible idea, whether no matter what industry it is, right?
Like if you just have one thing, all your eggs are in one basket.
I feel like tourism in Attorak are most powerful when they're paired with these other things, right?
So we're really fortunate in the wilds that we do still have a manufacturing base.
We do have a robust timber industry.
We have these other things happening.
And so this is another one.
And I'm not saying there aren't some frictions sometimes around this or that, but you work through it.
But those are some great partners at the table.
And I just think that there's a lot of activation work that can be done that folks are waking up to now.
That there's a lot of, like we did with all these public lands to say as a region, like, oh my gosh, we really have, like, that is a lot of public land and we could really be a destination for that.
And folks could come in on our term, you know, sort of on our terms in a way that really drives local wealth building and local small businesses, driving them to those places.
So that's been our approach.
unidentified
Thank you.
And I want to continue actually along these lines.
I know that you felt like you didn't answer directly that question about policy, but I actually think you talked a lot about policy, frankly, when you were talking about that.
And I want to start also even at the beginning, because as you put out, there were these natural assets, but there was also a lot of economic distress.
I mean, I grew up directly south of the area that you're talking about.
I used to go up to some of those state parks.
It's where we went after prom and, you know, and just incredibly beautiful.
But like, it was hard for even us to know about them, let alone people who weren't from the region.
And there's a lot of economic distress.
It could have been very easy for the state to sort of say, open for business and let, like, try to package this to outside investors and come in.
Yet what ended up happening is almost more bottom-up economic development.
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
100%.
unidentified
And when that occurs, you know, Brent and I have, we've been visiting a lot of rural places and talking to a lot of practitioners.
One, even having, even for the people who are local to believe that that can happen can be hard.
Like there's, when you're in economic distress, there's sometimes a self-perpetuating narrative that there's not going to be opportunity here.
Yeah.
And two, for policymakers, they really do look for quick wins.
Like they're looking to make things happen fast.
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
Right.
unidentified
Right.
And bottom-up economic development in a place where they feel like there's not a lot of opportunity, it seems like the easiest thing to do is sort of throw the doors open and let's let, you know, let's let folks who have a lot of investment and can make something of it, like do something.
So what was the combination of like elements here where the state listens when local people push back, for example, and says, wait a second, we want this on our own terms.
But even for the people themselves and the leaders in those communities to believe and want to protect what they even had, even if economically they weren't doing well, they obviously believed in their place.
They loved their place in a particular way.
And they thought that protecting the integrity of their place was going to be important too.
Just share a little bit of the, like, how did that odd mix all come together and what were some of the important things out of that, do you think?
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, and I think it, I've tried to parse that apart like a hundred times.
Like, how it was just one of these, I call them sort of magic moments, right?
Where it's like the intersection of like the right people and the right market forces and the right ideas, and they all sort of like mesh up.
And it becomes this like very real conversation.
I think there were just a lot of very genuine people that were there.
There were some big thinkers and big actors, and there was obviously resources behind it and things like that.
This was a tidal wave of investment on this rural region that had not seen really any attention in a very long time.
And it was in the form of we're going to come and we're going to, because the state managed so much of the public land, they said, you know, we're going to make these investments in these signature attractions.
And they said, you know, they did all these studies about outdoor recreation and where it was headed and said, you know, this region, here's the assets that it has.
Here's how at our facilities, if we want to make this an outdoor recreation destination, what do we need to do at our places, right, as the state?
And so they looked at that.
They looked at that in detail.
And it was big, there was a big investment that happened in that.
So there were real resources.
And I want to undercut that importance of it.
But there were also just some really thoughtful thinkers about this stuff who really understood rural and understood these places and had those trust networks and could have real conversations with people.
When I look back on it, I feel like that genuineness is what carried the day in the end.
You know, it took ideas that might have been a little too flashy and maybe moving too fast and got them to like hit pause for a second.
Let's have a more robust conversation and like rework this a little bit.
So to some of those early leaders, and I was, this was all before my time.
I had to sort of piece this together as I walked in as the ombudsman, I was like, what is going on here?
Like, who are all these actors?
And how do, you know, sometimes you'd feel a little tension over here, over here.
So you're trying to figure out like, what is the backstory here?
So I did a lot of backstory interviews of trying to understand things.
But, you know, I think in the end, genuine, being genuine in rural is genuine in your pros, transparent in your approach, and truly listening.
Like people know when they're being listened to or when you're just like checking the box that you've like done your conference or whatever, that you're getting their inputs.
But they know when they've truly been listened to.
And I feel like there was just some true listening that happened and that made a huge difference.
There were some, you know, speaking to policy and some things that were done.
You know, the region was established as a tourism region.
We have 11 of them in Pennsylvania.
So I think that was an important underpinning.
There was the establishment of the Conservation Landscape Program at our DCNR.
That is a sort of a funding mechanism and a partnership mechanism that's institutionalized now that helps support the work in a way.
I think that our DCNR has grant programs for community-led projects.
You know, communities can have outdoor recreation projects that they care about, their local trailhead, you know, there, and they can take those to DCNR, to our DCNR for funding.
So I think those mechanisms were really important.
And then to have DCNR at the strategy level with us, I think the marriage between our DCNR and our Department of Community and Economic Development.
So one had like all the public lands, which are our major assets as a tourism region.
And the other one, and they have like a real presence because they manage so many facilities that their people live in the region, in the region.
They work there.
They know this place because they're in it, right?
And then there's DCD, a little bit less of a presence on the ground, but they have the Main Street programs and the business development programs and the tourism office.
And so at the state level, there was this marriage of these two sister agencies kind of had a policy conversation of like, how do we work with these communities on this big regional initiative?
And that's been bipartisan over, I think we're on like fifth administration now.
So it's a beauty of the outdoors, I think, that it is a place where you can find both sides and bring them to the table.
And that there's real wins.
And that it's worked, it's just such an important initiative, I feel like, for rural places.
less because of the economics of it and more because it addresses those stack challenges.
I mean, the job and wealth creation is important.
I'm not saying that it's not.
It is a job and wealth generator.
And for us, like I said, it's $1.9 billion a year.
But on the other side, to me, at the end of the day, our defining issue in rural Pennsylvania is population decline.
It's not creating more jobs.
It's trying to retain the people that we have, retain our next generation of people, make our communities more livable.
And so how do you use all of this kind of work as a mechanism to get to that?
That's where my head's at around it.
That's where our leadership has been around it and my whole team.
So doing it with community first in mind.
unidentified
What about the amount of time it's taken?
You're talking about, like this has been 20 years now for PA Wilds itself.
But doing something where you are helping people in local communities incubate their own businesses and the trust building that you even talked about through the conversations both with the state but even within the network.
All that takes a long time.
Did you find a lot of, like, was there impatience at the state's, like on the state's perspective?
Like, how do we get people to be patient to allow this stuff to build as well?
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, so that's a great question.
And there is, of course, in the political realm, I think, whether it doesn't matter which side it is, like everybody wants the win on their watch, right?
So trying to be mindful of that.
And, you know, you try to give them as many wins as you can and certainly invite them to all of those.
But it is a long game.
And we just try to frame it that way, that this is generational work.
I really try with any investor, whether you're asking them to invest their time or their dollars, whatever the investment is, their partner network, it's really trying to figure out what are they trying to accomplish?
What are we trying to accomplish?
Where's the overlap?
What can we get done within the timeframe that makes sense here?
And really try to pursue that, right?
And so it's, you know, and then it gets to a point of like, it's got longevity on its side.
And that really helps too, because folks realize like this is not a one and done.
This is, but I think controlling those expectations early on and framing it in the right way that this is generational work.
That's how we talk about it.
And that's how we build.
It's how we built the whole nonprofit.
You know, from the day we founded it, we said we're going to build this nonprofit with the exit of all current leadership in mind.
Like, how do you build something you can hand off?
It's much like building a business so that you have an exit strategy and you can sell it one day.
Only in the nonprofit world, you don't, of course, sell it.
You just hand it off to the next generation of leaders.
But it's a very intentional way to go in to things.
And it's really about looking at, you know, the Wilds work, so much of it is about systems level change.
And I feel like some of the things that I feel like are hardest about it is sometimes you can be working on a new system behind the scenes in a way that does, that is really critical and important to scaling the work in the future.
But out there in the public space, you don't really see it, right?
It's like a back-end system.
Even founding a nonprofit, right?
That's a whole thing, right?
And to carry work forward, you know, every time you go to do something, you're like, oh, we need that policy.
Now we need to do this.
Like, it's like working on an old farmhouse, right?
You go to change a light bulb and you realize all the wiring needs redone.
And, you know, it's just a much bigger, longer process than you realized when you started.
But trying to balance that of wanting to keep the momentum going to your external stakeholders and partners and visitors, of course, are an investor in a way.
Like they're coming to your place, right?
You want them to have a good experience with sort of the back end side of things of like really working on those systems that allow for scale and allow for, I mean, how do you serve a region that is the size of Massachusetts with a staff of three people?
Like that's where we started.
We actually started with a staff of one.
So how do you do that, right?
And that's the big question mark.
And so, you know, there's steps we took to try to do that.
And as you grow a little bit, you evolve like your approach.
But a lot of that is like systems and stuff on the back end of how do you build a way for an entrepreneur anywhere in the wilds to now plug into this brand and this marketing and these things and benefit in their specific business.
So it's tech.
I mean, it's things that people don't think about when they think of tourism and outdoor recreation, probably.
It's like it's a lot of systems development.
unidentified
So I'm curious about this is sort of flipping my initial, one of my initial questions around looking at it from another, the other side, which is, how did you did, did you have any instances, I should say, of this group, company, whatever it is, wants in, they want to come in, but we are,
we're getting a bad vibe here about this.
And then what did you do?
If that happened, what did you do about it?
I don't think it's sort of a bad vibe.
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
There's definitely been places where it's like, is this a fit?
And where we had to examine it.
And even if it was like a group saying we could bring this money in, you know, and we have these initiatives.
And it really just sort of checking that with, you know, our goals and the culture of the place, the temperature of the, you know, political landscape, like all of the things.
And you say, like, while that new resource might be nice, here's going to be like the things that could come from it.
You know, it comes at the, it could come at this cost.
And, you know, sometimes that balance is, it's not worth it, even though those dollars would be, you know, as a rural place, you're like, you're so capital starved, right?
Like, so somebody puts up some dollars and you're like, oh my gosh, that would be great for me.
So it's how do you, you know, bring these, you do have to make sure it's the right fit.
And I'm particularly, I would say in a rural place, in our place, I do think that there is a sense of like outside actors coming in that people are very sensitive to, not because of the wilds work, but just because of some experiences of our region of extraction.
And so that's very much on my mind when I'm looking at opportunities is, you know, if somebody in one of my communities, there's a lot of accountability, right, when you're doing this work in small towns, because whoever it is, you're going to see them at the grocery store, right?
So if I run into so-and-so at the grocery store, what are they going to think about this investment?
If I have to go to my local Rotary or Chamber or, you know, so those things help because we're there and you're so invested in your communities as a place that you live and work.
Those things are always on my mind of how would this settle in our communities?
Would they be proud of this or would they sort of like raise an eyebrow?
Like, oh, you sold out or something like that.
And so if it's ever anything like that, you know, the answer is no, because it's just not worth it.
The money's not worth it for that sort of headache.
And the work is so special.
You know, it's very different kind of work.
It's work that a lot, you know, like literally hundreds of people have contributed to.
And so you feel this like responsibility to steward it in the right way that has been entrusted to our organization to steward it.
And so I'm not saying you never screw up, but you try your best to like go with the culture of the place, the culture of, you know, a lot of it's been laid out in some of these brand principles and the design guide.
I mean, it captures a lot of this stuff.
You really get a feel for it.
So I think being true to that, true to our true north of what we're trying to do and how we're trying to get there, those are all things that are on my mind.
The other thing I would say is you also try to be open-minded not to be too much the other way, right?
Like, so say maybe there's a big chain that is going to come in and we're all about like local.
Like how do you support local, right?
And so, you know, is there a way, but there can be great informed corporate leadership, outside leadership, consolidation.
Sometimes those things can be a positive.
I'm not at all saying like everything has to be local and there cannot be any of these other things.
And travelers like it too, right?
Like there's certain amenities that travelers like to know that they depend on and they're comfortable with.
So you want the mix, right?
And that local ownership I think is so critical in rural.
But sometimes, you know, there are these opportunities that come through sort of like outside corporate investments coming in.
And I think then it's like, how do we shape it?
How do we get them to give to the work in some way or to the local communities in some way?
And so really trying to get to them early on as a regional actor to try to shape their investments and give them examples of other investors that have come in from the outside and did it well.
And here's how they went about it.
And here's why it resonated with communities.
When the best investments, the West Penn Fund, they put some investments in the Wilds region and just their approach, you know, their whole approach, they come in, they talk about what they're thinking about, and they meet with local communities.
They source locally.
Just all the different touches that they make on making an investment.
And in the end, it pays these huge rewards because the social capital in rural places, right, is like it's gold.
And you need somebody to say, like, you should talk to Tony.
He knows what he's talking about, you know, and give him a chance to, you know, he wants to talk to you about these things.
And I know you might be a little close down to that, but, you know, he's a good person and I'll vouch for him.
And that sort of social capital behind the scenes that that stuff can make projects really go, you know, in a place.
And if you come in as a developer or something and you sort of act like, oh, I'm coming here and you're all lucky that I'm here and I'm bringing this flashy money and I'm going to build this thing.
And I mean, that's not going to go over well.
You know, why would it?
unidentified
Let me go back to our policy conversation because you talk about this in the book.
Recount the experience that you had with the Build Back Better Regional Challenge, right?
You all were finalists for that.
Now, this was a competition run by the Economic Development Administration out of $1 billion from the American Rescue Plan to help regions sort of coming out of COVID, but to basically reignite and revitalize economic activity.
So you go into that competition and you make it past the first stage, right?
You become a finalist.
And yet, in the end, you were not successful, right?
You were not one of the final grantees.
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
Spoiler alert on my book.
unidentified
So talk about that experience then from a from a policy, because from a policy perspective, this is, you know, what does it mean to, I'm sure it was a lot of work, right?
Maybe not even work that you had planned for.
You don't have a large staff.
You've got a large expanse with a big mandate of what you're already trying to accomplish.
What were the positives of that experience?
Were there negatives of that experience?
How would you characterize what that meant to you as an organization and some of the work that you were doing?
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, so I guess a couple of things.
One, I thought that these regional approaches, and that's just one that I've seen where they're letting regions sort of self-identify and put together coalitions to really advance things that make sense for their place.
I think that's like the smartest, it's such a smart approach.
And you see it in a number of other programs that have since rolled out.
But I think that, you know, that approach, and I feel like when we first saw that, it was about placemaking and it was about, you know, creating your own destiny within a region and doubling down on who you are and investing in that, right?
So it was this idea of like, oh my gosh, we've been doing this for 20 years.
This is a no-brainer for us.
We have to go in for it.
And we already had, like, I felt really bad for regions that were trying to put together a whole suite of things that hadn't existed before because ours ran so deep and so wide already that one of the beauties of applying for it, and I'll get to some of the hardships of applying for it, was one of the beauties of applying for it was we already had what we needed.
It was all there.
It was just about like reactivating and saying, okay, in the shape of a grant application that's $100 million, we could get done in five years what could take 20 years to get done.
Let's all work on this together.
And so it was this moment of reinvigorating a lot of people that had been at the table for a long time.
unidentified
So it was a catalyst in that way.
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, yeah, in that way.
And they were all already contributing, but it was sort of like, wow, we've created these opportunities for ourselves, you know, 10 years in.
unidentified
And even allowing you to dream bigger, it sounds like.
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, and even bigger, yes, about what could we do.
And so, and our thought going into it was, you know, we're going to try this.
And even if it doesn't work, like, I've worked on enough projects and enough small businesses that I know that if you put a plan to paper and to detail that is that detail, because you really need to like, to put these budgets together, like you got to be in it, right?
You got to think like through all of the mechanics of, okay, if we win, this is what's going to happen.
Here's who we're going to hire.
This is going to like, you got to think through, I mean, and it was a lot to think through.
But you can't put that level of detail together.
And then if you don't get it, just be like, okay, well, I guess that's gone.
What you're going to do is you're going to say, okay, well, those are a bunch of good ideas.
Like, let's break this, take off all these little pieces and start running them through things like we do with everything else.
Like, one by one, we'll get these projects done because they're really great projects.
So, we knew that there was going to be value from a planning process, from a partner engagement process, all of those we had huge value in.
And so, for that piece alone, I think it was, you know, it was very worthwhile for us.
There's a lot that came out of it that we are still using, and we have gotten a lot of those projects funded.
So, in that way, it worked.
In the way that, you know, of course, nobody wants to get the email that, like, you didn't win.
So, to be able to.
unidentified
I can tell you that there's only one thing worse than not winning, and that's winning.
Because people who yeah, because I mean, you're you articulated it beautifully, which is you had you went through all of that work.
None of that work is going to be wasted, right?
You've you're breaking it apart, you're doing all these different projects.
If you were locked in the warm embrace of the federal government, that has many, many downsides, and people frequently have their regrets.
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
So, anyway, it's yeah, I've um I appreciate that.
Uh, so for us, it was, you know, it was an important thing to do to think about the work in this way.
It was also like looking back and evaluating, and there was real power in that because you do that, but you're moving at this pace in trying to do rural development that is there just is not a lot of time for sort of the reflection, right?
Is you're just constantly trying to figure out the stuff right in front of you and the things you're trying to do going forward.
And so, when you look back and you see the track record and you see the return on investment and you see, and you're like, man, this was a really good idea.
And like, it really worked.
And it's like, how do we, how do we now scale it in a way?
And so, the power that came from like owning that backstory more, I think, was really important too.
And then, because you get told no a lot, right, as a rural place, like you go in for funding, and people are like, no, like, this doesn't fit for whatever reason.
And you still have to like wake up the next day and not let that change how you value what you're trying to do, right?
And you can say that, like, oh, yeah, I could do that, that's easy, but on the 20th, no, are you still going to do it?
Are you going to say, is there something wrong with what I'm trying to do, right?
And so, I think rural places have been locked out of investment for so long that there is this feeling of like, why even try in some places, you know, of, and so you got to be like really scrappy to, you know, and almost belligerent in what you're trying to, like in your true north.
Like, this is what our communities have identified.
This is the approaches we've put in place.
And, and we're not going to stop trying to trying to create that future for ourselves, right?
And so, tell us no, like however many times it happens.
And, and then, you know, and then eventually you start to make wins, and you have wins and a couple of wins, and then they build on each other, and then the momentum builds.
But it's, you know, it's a lot to try to.
unidentified
Have you had outreach from other places in the country saying, come teach us, or tell us how you did this?
tataboline enos ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, so that's a great question.
It's sort of, there is an awesome peer network of rural places that are trying to do this kind of work.
And we get, folks, knock on our door quite a bit.
And with our visibility after Build Back Better, that was another thing that happened: our visibility as like the only outdoor rec cluster that like made it to the final round.
I think our visibility went up.
I think with the book, the visibility goes up.
And so, you know, then it becomes, and it's not so much that we're doing it better, it's just that we started earlier than a lot of places.
And so we've done a lot of test-filled, correct, test-filled, correct, test-filled, correct.
That we're like, here's how we finally hit pay dirt to make something go.
Because there's like the theory of how something should go, and then there's like trying to implement that in a rural place where you have all these stack challenges.
And so, like, what's really going to work on the ground.
And even it happens to us, like, you put a grant together that like outlines or an investment together that outlines like, here's how we're going to go about something.
And then you start on it.
You're like, oh, yeah, we just got schooled on this thing.
We need to adjust a little bit.
So it's a very entrepreneurial approach you have to take to the work.
It's very organic.
It grows in new directions all the time.
And, but it's also really exciting, you know.
unidentified
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. to across the country.
Coming up Monday morning, we'll talk about the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war with McCain Institute Executive Director Evelyn Farkas.
And then Politico White House reporter Maya Ward previews the week ahead at the White House and other news of the day.
And we'll discuss President Trump's claims about mail-in voting and election security with Michael Morley, an election law expert at Florida State University's College of Law.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal.
Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern Monday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org.
This fall, C-SPAN invites you on a powerful journey through the stories that define a nation.
From the halls of our nation's most iconic libraries comes America's Book Club, a bold, original series where ideas, history, and democracy meet.
Hosted by renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein, each week features in-depth conversations with the thinkers shaping our national story.
Among this season's remarkable guests, John Grisham, master storyteller of the American justice system, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, exploring the Constitution, the court, and the role of law in American life.
Famed chef and global relief entrepreneur Jose Andres, reimagining food.
Henry Louis Gates, chronicler of race, identity, and the American experience.
The books, the voices, the places that preserve our past and spark the ideas that will shape our future.
America's Book Club, premiering this fall only on C-SPAN.
There are many ways to listen to C-SPAN radio anytime, anywhere.
In the Washington, D.C. area, listen on 90.1 FM.
Use our free C-SPAN Now app or go online to c-span.org/slash radio on SiriusXM radio on channel 455, the TuneIn app, and on your smart speaker by simply saying play C-SPAN radio.
▲
Export Selection