This week on Forward, economic development is fundamentally about creating the

conditions where companies want to invest their capital and people want to

raise their families. The reality is that you really have to treat the business

as the customer and go to the CEO and go to the HR department and say, you know,

what is your demand signal look like for workers? What skills do you need?

What kind of actually humans would you employ? Exactly. People want to have

their problem acknowledged and to be heard far more than they want that problem

to actually be solved.

It is my pleasure to welcome to the podcast, my fellow Forward National Board member,

President and CEO of Greater New Orleans, Inc. One of the best guys I know, and

that's saying something because I know a lot of people, Michael Hegt, welcome,

Michael. Thank you, Andrew. It is a fantastic to be here and it might just

speak to the quality of the people that you know, but I'll take it. Michael,

and anyone listening to this will see what I mean because Michael spent his

career helping create opportunity and vitality in New Orleans, a city that has

been in the news for, frankly, kind of sad reasons over the last decade or two

in terms of Katrina, which we'll talk about, Michael. But you did not grow up in

New Orleans. I think you're a New York product, right? New York educated by

way of New England and even the West Coast. Yeah, so you know, we actually spent

some time in the same kind of neck of the woods, but you know, my story is that

my family actually goes back to Louisiana. My maternal family goes back to a

little city called Donistonville in the 1830s. They were economic immigrants from

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