After spending much of his career in public office, Todd Mielke moves into the private sector, but remains very much in the public spotlight. 

The 51-year-old Spokane native took over on Feb. 1 as president and CEO of Greater Spokane Incorporated, stepping down from his seat on the Spokane County Board of Commissioners to do so. He succeeds Steve Stevens, who moved back to Kentucky after a relatively short stint as the top executive in Spokane’s combined chamber of commerce and economic development council. 

Weeks into his new position, we sat down with Mielke to talk about the organization’s short-term needs and its vision for the future. 

Journal: As you come into this position, are there any immediate issues that need your attention?

Mielke: I think one of the first things you want to do is, you want to make sure the objectives of the organization are clearly defined. This is a nonprofit organization governed by a board of directors. It’s the question of, does the board have a clear direction of where it wants to go, and have we communicated that in such a way that’s it’s reflected in the org chart of the organization, that the staff understands what those objectives are, and that the staff is built around that? That’s the first thing I’m taking a look at as I come into an organization.

Do we have clearly defined objectives? In many cases, we do, but there are a couple that could be tightened down. And there are some things that just need to be updated. It’s time to update our strategic plan. Out of our strategic plan comes our organizational chart for staffing and our committee org chart. 

We’ll do an evaluation of all of the events we put on. We do more than 350 events a year, and the question is, do they support our core mission? It’s always hard to let go of something, but in the same sense, we need to make sure we’re good at what we do and are focused on that core mission. 

Journal: You mentioned your board. You have a pretty strong board. Talk to me about that. 

Mielke: It’s a very strong board. And a very large board. It’s 66-member board representing business and C-level executives. When you walk into a board meeting, you have a significant brain trust, if you will, of people who run complex organizations lending their time to this one. 

That’s one thing I do want to do, make sure we’re making the best possible use of their time. I do want to tweak the format of the meetings a little bit so we provide more opportunity to get feedback from board members.

Journal: What are some of the similarities and differences between reporting to a board like this and to a constituency, as you did in your previous job?

Mielke: First of all, in any position, you have to be sensitive about who you report to. I report to the executive committee of the board of Greater Spokane Incorporated. That’s where I get my marching orders, and I need to be sensitive to where they want to go and build an organization that takes us there. 

But I also have the whole membership of Greater Spokane Incorporated, more than 1,200 companies that expect us to advocate on their behalf, to be their voice.

I think the difference between my former position in the public sector and this one is that in the old job, very rarely is contact made with you from people who think everything is going really well. At Spokane County, I’d say 20 percent of the phone calls we get are people seeking information, and 80 percent are people calling with a complaint or a concern. Of that 80 percent, there are a number of those who aren’t going to be happy, no matter what you do. They don’t like the rule. They don’t like the state law that requires you to do what you have to do. It becomes very hard to make some of those constituents happy. 

With this organization—and this was a big attraction for me—you have to be an optimist to go into business. You have to have a dream. You have to have a desire to make it happen. You have to have a commitment to make it work. You have to think outside of the box to make it happen. 

While there’s this huge diversity of opinion on how to reach goals, there is a fundamental optimism of the members of Greater Spokane Incorporated. I think that was a big draw for me. 

Journal: You come into the position in the middle of a (state) legislative session, and one of the bigger services GSI provides is lobbying on its members’ behalf. How is this legislative session going?

Mielke: This is a short legislative session. It’s a good one to come in on.

Last year was an extremely long legislative session. They had extended session through extended session. You had legislators who were there from the beginning of the year through July. That’s very taxing for someone who goes in thinking we’re a part-time legislature. This year, my sense is a lot of legislators don’t want to be in Olympia this year. They gave at the blood bank last year, and they have nothing left to give. (laughs). 

I think there’s a huge fatigue factor. They are there for 60 days. The sentiment I’ve picked up from legislators is that they want to do the basics, and beyond that, they aren’t really in a mood to tackle new initiatives this year. That’s the mindset of the legislature.

The second thing is, the advocacy that GSI has done in the past really culminated last year with huge wins, everything from the transportation package and the North Spokane Corridor to the WSU medical school. Now, what we need to do on those is make sure we follow through. 

Journal: Does that mean that you preserve the project funding that you’ve secured?

Mielke: Right. Because if it’s not something that’s to be spent in the next 12 to 24 months, it’s always a target for someone to grab in the future. You have to follow through on these things. With the North Spokane Corridor, it’s 12 years into the future before there’s a connected link. You’ve got megaprojects around the state that are queued up prior to that one, and they can have cost overruns. You don’t want your project to become the target to fill their funding gap. 

We accomplished some great things last year. We turned the proverbial barge so it’s moving in the right direction, but we’re not at the dock yet. 

Journal: In my mind, there are two main things that GSI does, one is the lobbying piece that we just talked about. The other is economic development. Talk to me about the economic development piece and what you see as the organization’s role in economic development. 

Mielke: There’s the whole dialogue about, are you a chamber or are you an economic development corporation? Nine years ago, we merged the two, and there’s still dialogue in the community about whether it should be two separate organizations. 

Let me circle back around to that. I actually look at the organization as performing three basic functions. The first one is public policy, and we are probably one of the most active, robust public policy-focused chambers, more so than most chambers of commerce. At the federal level and the state level, we’ve done that very well, and we are ramping up to be a more consistent voice at the local level. 

The second thing we do—and these aren’t in any particular order—is, we’re a convener. We do better as a region when we have a unified voice and we have a unified vision. Who does that? Typically, if a particular city does it, another city doesn’t feel like that’s their vision necessarily. The county hasn’t really been in a spot to do that. Who’s left to do that? It’s a fundamental role of Greater Spokane Incorporated. We are a convener and a facilitator with the goal of creating a dialogue that leads to a unified community vision. 

The third one is economic development. There are some specific things we do in buckets of economic development. 

One is, we want people to be able to convert their idea into a business. That’s the startup piece of it. We have an effort called Startup Spokane. Some people haven’t affiliated that with GSI, but that’s really helping business with the first steps of starting a business.

The second part of it is retention. For the businesses that are here, we want to keep them here, and we want to do what it takes to do that. That’s a group that’s difficult to track, because you don’t always know when a business is in jeopardy. Sometimes, they’re having trouble with finding the right employees, and we try to help them find the right workforce. Sometimes, it’s a regulatory issue, and our public-policy people get involved. Retention is important. We want to keep the businesses we have here. 

Next is expansion. How do we go from one to five employees to 50 to 100 employees? How can we help a business move from that startup phase? 

Under expansion, we do international trade, trying to let people know how to import and export and grow their business in foreign markets. We also have a PTAC function, which is basically, how do you become a vendor for government? Those are all things we’re doing to expand businesses that are here. That’s a big piece. 

There’s also a piece where we look at areas where we think there is a market demand, but there isn’t anybody filling that market yet. Can an existing company ramp up operations to fill that void?

The fourth bucket is recruitment. That’s the one that gets a lot of attention. But my analogy on that is, is it sexier to build a new road or is it sexier to fix the potholes? You probably get more phone calls on the potholes, but historically, we focus on the new road. 

The refinement I see is, instead of dividing those buckets into silos within the organization, how do we take someone who specializes in manufacturing, for example, and say, I need your skills with the manufacturer we’re trying to recruit, with the manufacturer who’s trying to get started, with the manufacturer that’s in trouble, and with the manufacturer that’s trying to expand. It’s an alignment within the organization.

Journal: You brought up that some have talked about doing something with economic development, different from having GSI handle it. What’s your take on that? Nine years in, do you think GSI has been successful with economic development?

Mielke: I do. Nine years ago, we had an economic development council and a chamber of commerce.

Journal: Were you a county commissioner at that time?

Mielke: Yes. I was part of those discussions. What drove that merger were a couple of things. One is the logistics of running two organizations. You go to the same donors to support the organizations. Each organization hosts events. You seek out sponsors. You seek out members. 

I think some of the members who sponsored efforts on both the chamber side and the EDC side said, “Why can’t I just write one check? Why can’t I go to one set of meetings instead of two sets of meetings?” They have to figure out a balance of how much time they spend on their business and how time they spend on these organizations, as well as their family. That was one piece of that push. 

Another piece of that push was to recognize that the overlap between those two organizations is business climate. If you have a solid business climate, you set the stage for making sure your existing businesses can be successful. And if you’re trying to recruit a business here, that’s one of the first things they’re going to look at. 

This is kind of the politician in me coming out. In politics, I have to live based on the facts, but I also have to live based on the perception. And sometimes, perceptions are every bit as strong as the data. Do I have the resources to change the perception, or does it become a community norm that I have to live with? When we talk about business climate, it’s not just, what does the data show? It’s also the perception. If businesses’ perception is that it’s harder to be successful here, it’s going to put a damper on how aggressively they’re going to take risks and want to expand. 

That’s where the economic development side and chamber side merge. 

We did this nine years ago, and since that time, we have organizations throughout the West who are following suit. We are a trendsetter in that regard. Do I think we should go back? No, I don’t.