Mission “Serve the Community” Carolyn Chrisman Executive Director of K-REDI Tell us more about your role and what it involves. K-REDI’s mission is to serve as an economic competitor providing family supporting jobs to the Kirksville region. We do this through business retention and expansion as well as business attraction in education, healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, and technology. The MREIC entity serves a 16-county region as a resource for tech entrepreneurs, emerging industries, and highgrowth jobs areas. Finally, our small business center counsels any entrepreneur from ideation stage to start-up to stage 2 clients. We assist with business counseling, executive coaching, financial planning and projections, marketing, and more! What is themost rewarding part about it? The roles of all these positions coalesce around building a thriving rural economy in our community and region and making sure our businesses and citizens have access to quality counseling and programs so they can operate and stay competitive. The aspects of my specific role are multi-faceted. Because our entities each have a different stakeholder and funding source, I manage multiple budgets, funding streams, fiscal years, and reporting deadlines to make it work. K-REDI is a locally funded public-private partnership which exists to help local companies and grow the local economy. All funding is from locally associated We speak with Carolyn Chrisman - the Executive Director of the Kirksville Regional Economic Development, Inc (K-REDI) and Missouri Rural Enterprise and Innovation Center (MREIC), as well as the Center Director for the Kirksville Small Business Development Center. THE CEO INTERVIEW Q Q
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