The Rapid City community is poised for some major growth over the next several years. How do we as business leaders and marketers step in and join the conversation? Stop advertising!
Wait. What? Stop advertising?
Join Tom Johnson, President & CEO of Elevate Rapid City, at the AAF-Black Hills November luncheon. You’ll hear Tom’s vision for Rapid City and why we need to stop advertising to be successful.
Tom Johnson is President and CEO of Elevate Rapid City. Previously, he was the Director of Community Engagement and Economic Development at Colorado State University (CSU) with community and economic development responsibilities for all of Colorado. At CSU, Johnson created several new initiatives and signature programs including The CSU Market Research Center, which specialized in helping decision-makers in industry, education, and government use data, including organizational network analysis, to make better decisions about policies that shape Colorado’s economic future. Johnson also helped employers and organizations use CSU’s online training resources to train and help upskill employees. Additionally, he managed the Family Leadership Training Institute (FLTI), a unique leadership training program that targeted leaders in underserved communities across Colorado.
Previous to his work at CSU, Johnson was the Chief Performance Officer (CPO) for Wyoming Business Council (WBC), where, where he created a system for measuring the financial and qualitative impacts of every economic and community development program for the State of Wyoming. Johnson led several initiatives on behalf of the state, including recruiting, business development, and community development. He specialized in recruiting to rural areas, incentive negotiation and tax modeling and was instrumental in bringing Weatherby Inc., one of the nation’s leading rifle manufacturers, to Sheridan, Wyoming from California. Johnson has significant experience in New Market Tax Credits, business valuation, workforce development, and entrepreneurship. Johnson also created the Economic Development Building Blocks model used by the Wyoming Economic Development Association (WEDA) to explain economic development to constituents, stakeholders, and elected officials
Johnson is a former planning commissioner and small business counselor with the Small Business Development Center (SBDC). He also served as an adjunct professor at the University of Wyoming (UW) in community and economic development and was on the advisory board for UW’s College of Business. He is a past board member for The Wyoming Humanities Council and is a 2016 Graduate of Leadership Wyoming.
Johnson regularly gives talks on economic and community development issues regionally and nationally and has spoken to numerous groups about placemaking and using social network analysis (SNA) to blaze new trails in economic development recruitment.
Johnson grew up in rural central Wyoming and is a former college baseball player. He received his bachelor’s in English literature from the University of Wyoming and his Master’s in Finance and Accounting from Regis University.
In his free time, Johnson is a published poet, with over two hundred poems published in the last decade in various literary journals and magazines.