For our 20th episode, President & CCO Ethan Whitehill chats with Tim Cowden, President & CEO at Kansas City Area Development Council, about attracting businesses to the two-state metro, the future of our regional workforce, and the inspiration for his personal collection of KC icons in neon.
Ethan Whitehill: Hi everyone. I’m Ethan Whitehill, president and COO of Crux, the un-agency. Welcome, once again, to our podcast “To the Point.” Thanks for joining our conversations that get to the crux of it all to help businesses elevate their brands and amplify their missions.
Today’s guest is Tim Cowden. Tim serves as the President and CEO of the Kansas City Area Development Council. He has nearly three decades of experience in economic development and corporate recruitment through senior positions at the community and regional levels. He combines his experience with his background in frontline sales and customer service, marketing and business operations.
In his role with KCADC, he works with highly accomplished professionals and partners who are economic development game changers across Missouri and Kansas, covering 18 counties and more than 50 communities. Together, they work to grow the KC region by attracting companies and corporate headquarters with a focus on advanced manufacturing, bioscience, animal health, transportation, logistics, manufacturing and information technology. Tim, welcome to the podcast.
Tim Cowden: Ethan. Good to see you. Thanks for having me.
Ethan Whitehill: Let’s start here. For those who aren’t familiar, what is the KCADC and how is it different from organizations like the Greater Kansas City Chamber and the Economic Development Corporation of Kansas City?
Tim Cowden: Sure, that’s a great question. We’re asked that all the time because you have this almost alphabet soup of organizations across the region. What do they do? KCADC has been around now for about 50 years. To put it succinctly, what we do is act as the sales and marketing team for the Kansas City region, as you described. And then other organizations like the Kansas City Chamber have a regional purview, the EDC, which might be focused on a community like they are Kansas City, Missouri. But you have other economic development groups that represent communities across this 18-county area. We work with all of them, the Civic Council, and the like.
I like to structure it almost like a business would in the Kansas City region or a company or a holding company. For example, the Kansas City Area Development Council’s vertical would be sales and marketing. The Chamber’s vertical would be product development, legislative affairs and making Kansas City better for us to sell. The Civic Council’s looking out 10-15 years. What do we need to do now to be prepared to compete more effectively down the road? And then you have MARC, which is a great planning organization, and Visit KC Sports Commission. We’re all working on behalf of the same thing, which is a fantastic product: the Kansas City region.
Ethan Whitehill: That’s a great analogy, thanks. And it’s an impressive machine when you put it all together that way. Kansas City’s economy is unique, as you mentioned, because we span state lines and lots of counties. For those who aren’t familiar, what’s the One KC Initiative?
Tim Cowden: We call it a coalition of the willing. It’s all of Kansas City regionally. So,when I say Kansas City today, and you said it earlier, I’m talking about 18 counties across Missouri and Kansas, 50+ communities. And the reason that we’ve structured this organization over a long period of time and why it’s been so effective is that we mirror the needs of the customer. The customer has no idea when they come in, and the customer is a company that’s evaluating Kansas City and other markets across the country. Could be an individual – an executive talent that’s evaluating different marketplaces to move and start their life and career. What we do is take this highly nuanced and frankly complex product to market and put it in the most favorable position possible for either a company or an individual or a group to make a decision to come here. That’s what we do.
One KC is bringing all of these different entities from across the region together, because again, we’re all working on behalf of the same thing, which is the Kansas City region. We all have our verticals, our communities that we’ve got to take care of, our states, what have you. But at the end of the day, we’re all working on behalf of the same thing, which is the region because the customer is evaluating our region against others. At some point, they’ll start to really focus on communities or areas or neighborhoods or what have you. And that’s the beauty of Kansas City, Ethan, is that we give our customer a lot of choice.
Ethan Whitehill: You give them a lot of choice, but you also simplify that choice a little bit. Like any good marketer, you productize and package some of those offerings. And you know, when we think about the key initiatives in the region, you’ve branded some of those opportunities through KC SmartPort, the KC Animal Health Corridor team. Talk a little bit about that.
Tim Cowden: Yeah, and even global design, which is the newest initiative to come underneath the KCADC umbrella. If you take the whole holding company structure again, and you apply it to KCADC, you’ve got verticals that reflect strength in our economy. You mentioned KC SmartPort. Kansas City is really here because we’ve moved people, we’ve moved things, products and created services over a long period of time. The whole animal health industry was created here. It’s still a big part of our economy. And you look at global design engineering firms, construction firms, sports architecture, and the like. We know how important that industry is. It’s about a $24 billion industry that’s tied to companies that are headquartered in Kansas City. Team KC is all about talent. How can we help our companies here be more effective in recruiting talent so they can go out and bring the next executive or the next person right out of school? We want them to come to Kansas City. We help build a case for companies across the region to make Kansas City a more attractive option for that talent.
Ethan Whitehill: I love that strategy because you can’t get the companies if you don’t have the talent, and you can’t get the talent if you don’t have the company.
Tim Cowden: Now another part of what KCADC does – at our core, Ethan, we’re a B2B business. I mean we go after companies, but a big part of what we do and a growing part is, as you said, about talent. It’s B2C, so we created a whole initiative called KC Heartland, which is directed at individuals wherever they may be, who are thinking about where they want to go and continue their career or start a career or start a life. We want to position Kansas City as an option for them because there are so many cool things that are happening in Kansas City. We all know that. And it’s only getting better.
Ethan Whitehill: I know you don’t do that by accident. You watch a lot of data, you follow the trends. Each year, Team KC releases its scouting report for talent trends. And this year’s report included some really great statistics on the growing role of AI and HR, the focus on belonging in the workplace, and the importance of employer branding. In fact, nine out of 10 companies are focusing on building or maintaining a strong employer brand in 2024. The insight that struck me in the report, though, was how many people are relocating to KC from other major markets: Dallas, LA, Denver, DC, New York. And I imagine that isn’t by accident to everything you were saying. What do you attribute the influx of talent?
Tim Cowden: Kansas City’s brand, our regional brand, is really rising. You think about the things, the events that are happening, I mean, just looking back over the last year with the NFL Draft and being named a World Cup host city – these are huge things. People will evaluate a market and say, you know, that’s a cool place. There’s a lot going on there. Then you think about the brands that have selected Kansas City to invest billions of dollars. Panasonic selecting our region about a year and a half ago, $4 billion worth of investment, 4,000 jobs, they’re growing. There’s actually going to be about 5,500 jobs and even more investment than they had committed to. That’s a global brand that now is tied to our rising brand.
Google just last week making a billion dollar investment announcement into Kansas City, Missouri. That’s huge. I could go on and on. Meta a couple of years ago. What Oracle is doing with Cerner here. Obviously, there’s some economies being realized, but having a brand like Oracle in the technology sector, because one in every 10 workers in Kansas City is tied to a tech company. About 86,000 people go to work in technology, strictly high tech type occupations in Kansas City.
So, when you think about growth, Kansas City is growing faster and has been over the course of the last couple years than any other market in the Midwest. We’re really starting to get that momentum going. People are moving here; they’re intrigued by what’s happening here. It’s an exciting place to be from the arts. I mean, what a vibrant arts community that we have here. Music, food – all these things – sports. It all comes together. And what I love about Kansas City is I believe we’re just the right size. We’re not so big like a market like Houston or Dallas where you can kind of get lost. Or it may be too small where you don’t have the big league options that we have here. It’s just right. Call it the Goldilocks principle.
Ethan Whitehill: I love that. And speaking of the major sports teams, obviously they’re vital to our region’s reputation between back to back World Champions the Chiefs, being named a host city for the 2026 World Cup, Kansas City is certainly on the rise. I’d love to get your perspective in general on what is the relationship between sports brands and city brands?
Tim Cowden: I think they’re so closely linked because there’s pride you have in your sports teams, and we have a tremendous amount of pride in Kansas City. I’ve heard people say that we’re really the only people or populace in the country that dresses like a tourist. Because when you walk around Kansas City, everybody’s wearing all the KC gear. I mean, where else does that happen? And I always look for the KC heart shirts, the Charlie Hussle shirts, the Chief shirts, the Royals, the KC Current, what have you, when I’m at the airport somewhere because if I find a couple, I’m following them to the Kansas City flight gate. There’s so many people who wear their pride on their sleeves and how closely linked they are with the Royals, the Chiefs, the KC Current, Sporting KC. I can go on. Our college teams: KU, Mizzou, K-State. It all comes together here.
And I think that in a way, Kansas City has a bit of a chip on our shoulder. We have to. we work a little bit harder. We want people to know who we are. We’re out in the middle of the country. Some people would have branded us as flyover country. We work harder to say, you know what, there’s more here than what you think. And we call it the epiphany of the visit. Because when somebody comes here, maybe its a client family member that hasn’t been here before, or maybe it’s been a while since they’ve been here, and they come to Kansas City and they say, “I had no idea Kansas City was like this. This is a beautiful place. It’s urban; it’s cosmopolitan. Trees, hills, all the arts, beautiful architecture.” Getting them here is really critical, and that’s a big part of what we’re doing now, is bringing our clients into Kansas City for 24 hours.
We’ve got this wonderful new asset at Kansas City International Airport that gives the first and, most importantly, lasting impression of our region that we didn’t have before. Now we do. It’s time to reset opinions on Kansas City with our customer base. We’re bringing them in.
For example, we hope to hear the word on this really soon, but we’ve invited a high powered location advisory firm to bring all of their consultants from around the world here. We did this last year with Deloitte in May, another firm we’ve invited to bring in about 30 or 35 individuals that haven’t been to Kansas City in a while, or maybe never, and reset opinions or create favorable opinions about what we’re all about. You have to get them here. You just can’t do it through digital platforms. That’s helpful, and it gets us to a point, but nothing is like bringing someone in – boots on the ground, tasting it, hearing it, feeling what Kansas City’s all about.
Ethan Whitehill: There’s a psychologist who came up with this theory around fandom called BIRGing and it stands for Basking In Reflected Glory. It is that kind of expression of kind of belonging with a team that energizes people, you know? And that creates a sort of movement and there’s the synergy among folks. I think you feel that in Kansas City now more than ever, and it’s not just because of our sports teams. They’re doing it. They’re BIRGing for Kansas City. They’re proud of Kansas City, and they’re proud to talk about it. You can feel it. I imagine that makes an impression on folks – the landscape, so to speak.
Tim Cowden: Oh, it does. Yeah. You’re right on.
Ethan Whitehill: Talking about strengthening our region. Your team does a lot behind the scenes to do this. I don’t know if people realize the number of stories you place, but landing on lists like the Wall Street Journal’s 10 Best Places to Visit in the World, the New York Times list of 52 Places to Go in 2024, that doesn’t happen by accident.
Tim Cowden: Thank you for recognizing that. We have a highly adept team at placing stories led by Jonathan Connect and Jessica Palm and Laura Phillips. And we have a tremendous team that’s working every day to place positive stories, but realistic stories too about Kansas City: why Kansas City is the place where someone should consider relocating their business, creating a business, creating an opportunity, a career, whatever it might be. For example, I just spoke to a reporter from the Wall Street Journal last week about what’s happening with data centers. Our team pitched it and was working tirelessly to find opportunities for us.
Ethan Whitehill: When you look back on the last 25 years, how would you describe the change in Kansas City’s economy? Then, as you look forward 25 years, what would you project is ahead of us?
Tim Cowden: I think to be quite candid, sometimes people will say, “Cowden’s just pumping sunshine.” There have been some challenges in our economy, let me start there. When you think about the companies that were here 25 years ago that were headquartered here, the evolution of an economy, not just in Kansas City, but across the country and around the world – it really can negatively impact companies.
You think about now T-Mobile had acquired Sprint, thankfully they did. But Oracle has acquired Cerner. Cerner was headquartered here. Think about all the individuals, all the billions of dollars of wealth that were created by the founders of Cerner who had an idea, sat down at Loose Park, scribbled out on a napkin a business plan. And here we are years later, billions and billions and billions of dollars. And now those individuals that came through Cerner, created Cerner, are now working in other companies across our region, sometimes outside of our region.
When you think about YRC, those are all examples of things that haven’t worked out, but think about companies that have come here that weren’t here. Netsmart, for example. I just met with the executives from, WellSky, this whole health tech space, digital health, is amazing. I see our economy moving in that direction much more around technology. I mentioned global design. Look at the sports architecture firms that are based here in the work that they’re doing. What they design on a computer here in Kansas City has global impact. The engineering firms. Burns and McDonald is adding thousands of people Black and Veatch. I could go on and on.
There are so many really bright spots about our economy, but I also want to be realistic because we’ve got to do a really good job, the best job that we possibly can about creating an environment for entrepreneurs to create companies here. Most jobs in any economy are going to be created by entrepreneurs. So, really you’ve got the three-legged stool concept. You’ve got entrepreneurs creating the majority of jobs, you’ve got to take care of your existing companies so that they want to expand here. Most of your jobs, or a lot of your jobs with entrepreneurs are going to be created that way.
Companies that are here like Burns and Mac, they’re adding thousands of jobs over time, but then you’ve got to have a sales team out on the streets, Ethan, because you need new blood coming in. And that’s where we fall into. Now sometimes, when you bring in a Panasonic, it’s like a huge show. We’ve got to win those. And for quite a while, we weren’t winning those big deals.
But going back to alignment – how we all came together – everyone, this coalition of the willing leadership by the state of Kansas, the impact that Panasonic is going to make on our region, the benefit to the Missouri side, all that Missouri is providing to that in terms of workforce and the like, is absolutely critical. We’ve got to bring new in. You’ve got to take care of your own. You’ve got to create the environment. Entrepreneurs like you and Melea are gonna do your thing here. It’s all got to work together.
Ethan Whitehill: And we love doing it here.
Tim Cowden: That’s right, and thank you.
Ethan Whitehill: We’ve definitely felt it, and we’ve seen the difference that your work and all the other organizations that you mentioned before are doing to impact our city and we feel fortunate to be in this place.
Tim Cowden: Yeah, like the chamber. I saw that you were one of the top small businesses. Congratulations. And again, the Kansas City Chamber and all the chambers across the region, work to support small business. That’s great. Again, we’re all working on behalf of the same thing, which is the Kansas City region. Kansas, they’re doing their job. We’re doing our job. The other entities, organizations across our region, are doing theirs in alignment. It’s kind of a flowery description, but it is a coalition of the willing. That’s what makes it work.
Ethan Whitehill: Now I wanna zoom in a bit on Tim.
Tim Cowden: This will get really boring quick.
Ethan Whitehill: Before you were doing your thing here, you were doing it in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Wichita Falls, Texas. How did you even get started in this field?
Tim Cowden: Well, that’s a long story, and I don’t want to bore your listeners, those that are left now that we’re talking about me. But I’ve always had a real passion for place. Cities, obviously states, real estate development. As a kid, and I even have the letters because my mom saved them, I would write to the economic development offices, the governor’s offices. This is back in 1972-73, asking for the stuff that now our team creates to put on our website maps and information about the city or the state. I’ve always had a real interest. The term “living the dream” – I really am living my dream. And I would encourage everyone to go pursue what is going to make you happy.
I grew up in Oklahoma. I really thought that I would stay and work and do this in Oklahoma. It didn’t work out for that, and thankfully, it didn’t because I was able to go to Texas for college. And I worked in a community and learned a lot. I learned a lot about failure there. The community at the time, this was in the mid 1980s, a lot of economic challenges. I learned that – hey, communities can fail. How do you learn from that? How do you take that forward?
As I moved into Utah some years later, after spending some time in the private sector – which I believe gave me a great perspective because that’s what I grew up in with my dad’s business – going to Utah and having tremendous success as a state, as a region, as an organization. And then that parlayed my opportunity that came about to come to Kansas City. And I moved to Kansas City, my wife and I, and our two kids at the time, in the late 1990s.
So, I’ve been here now almost 26 years. Candidly, I thought I’d be here about seven years because in our world, my world of economic development, you’re usually in a place for five to seven or eight years, then you move on. And I’m so appreciative that Kansas City welcomed me and welcomed my family and gave me an opportunity that I took, leveraged and taken advantage of. I can’t think of a better place, candidly, honestly, as sincerely as I can say it – a better place to do economic development in the world than right here. And some might say, oh, he is just saying that. No, this is a fantastic place. We all have chances to move on, go to other places. I love it here, and I love what we’re doing and we’re not just getting started, we’re getting it rolling.
Ethan Whitehill: I have to say, I imagine that passion and the continuity of that passion over almost 26 years is what’s contributed to where we are today.
Tim Cowden: Well, I think what we have is a great team, and I’m not just talking about KCADC team. Obviously, I love the people I work with and the work that they do and the skillsets that they bring to the table every day. But throughout the region, this is a highly nuanced and complex place. There are various, many many many shades of gray. But on the edges you’ve got hard and fast, black and white lines that you can’t get out of. And what we do is try to navigate within a highly complex marketplace with two states, multiple communities, counties, different operating environments. That makes it fun.
I can’t think of a more challenging place to do economic development than Kansas City. I mean, think about it, 50% of our GDP is created on the Missouri side, 50% on the Kansas side, roughly a lot of multi-state regions. It’s like heavy on one side or another. St. Louis, for example, probably 85% of the GDP is on the Missouri side, 15% on the Illinois side. It’s about Missouri over there. It’s not truly a by-state here. It’s truly a by-state marketplace, and our job is to make those lines go away as an organization and make it easier for our customer to navigate through.
Depending upon what their market needs are, they choose a location within that 18 county footprint. It doesn’t matter to us if it’s downtown Johnson County, Lee’s Summit, Liberty, Lawrence, Topeka. It doesn’t matter. Come in and locate in our region because all of us are going to benefit. I guarantee nobody’s going to benefit if they locate in Dallas or they locate in Denver. Nobody in Kansas City is, but they will if it’s somewhere within our region. And that’s what people buy into and they believe it.
Ethan Whitehill: You mentioned you love that sense of place. You also love something else I found out. Before we started our conversation here, we were talking about neon and it sounds like you’ve created a little sense of place in your own basement here.
Tim Cowden: Yeah, I’ve got a little neon museum. I know that neon museum is being developed and opened here pretty soon in the Crossroads. So, going back in time, my dad was an entrepreneur, he was in the convenience store business. When I was a kid, he would bring me home different beer neons. I had a Coors neon sign in my room, Budweiser. That’s before I started drinking beer. I just grew to just love neons. Recently, it started during Covid when we were locked down, I was spending a lot of time at the house. I said, now’s the time to really do some good work in our basement. I call it my arena. So, I found a gentleman, a neon warrior here in town. He’s a fantastic neon artist. Name’s Tom. His gallery is down on Truman Road.
And over the last four or five years, he has created for me all sorts of special neon lights and signs that are now down in my basement. My wife is thrilled [laughs]. I have a KC heart. I have an Arrowhead sign. I have Royals neons that he and I designed. There are no other neon like this anywhere. And it’s really cool when I turn off all the lights and just turn the neon lights on. I just love the feeling and what it casts I guess.
Ethan Whitehill: What I think is cool about neon is it’s nostalgia, but it also feels like the future too anytime you see it. Kind of like Kansas City, right?
Tim Cowden: Right. And you talk about nostalgia. It does make me think of my childhood and growing up working in my dad’s company and all the things that that I learned from him about business. And I try to apply those every day. The good that I learned and then certainly some of the mistakes that he made, because we all make mistakes.
Ethan Whitehill: Yeah, so those entrepreneurial roots. Absolutely. I have a challenge for you then. So, you’ve got a small KC heart in your basement it sounds like. What if we built the world’s largest neon sign that was a giant KC heart?
Tim Cowden: Are we going to put it on the top of my house? My wife would love it [laughs].
Ethan Whitehill: No, we’ll find some developers. We’ll have some conversation.
Tim Cowden: We’ve had a bit of the conversation around the Parade of Hearts. Yeah, that’d be pretty doing that. And I know that they’re about ready to unveil the next round of those coming up. I got an invitation. I mean, again, just think about everything that’s happened just in the last handful of years, but to be able to incorporate this heart – this KC heart that goes back 100+ years and wore on the sleeve of the Monarchs jersey in ‘42 – and what it means to Kansas City. I love how people have really embraced it. Our organization did.
We went to Chase McAnulty and his team six years ago and said, hey, we’d like to use this KC heart that we see on all these t-shirts everywhere. We’d like to incorporate that as a regional brand and our organization can take it to market. And Chase looked at us. I didn’t know Chase at the time, and he could have reacted like, oh yeah, it’s going to cost you this or I’m going to need a licensing fee. He looked at us and he said, “What’s taken you so long? We’ve been waiting on somebody to come in here and ask us. Absolutely.”
Chase and Greg and their entire team over there are fantastic supporters of the region, and yeah, they got to sell more gear. I hope they do. But think about all the makers that have tied into that. I mean, the Made in KC store. There’s so much goodness that’s being built off of the platform that is Kansas City and that’s unique anywhere in the world.
Ethan Whitehill: Absolutely. Well, it is now time for my mystery question.
Tim Cowden: Oh, here we go.
Ethan Whitehill: And if you’ve listened, you know what’s coming. I’ve got a 20-set die and I’m going to roll it and whatever comes up is what I’m going to ask. I rolled a 10. What’s your favorite karaoke song?
Tim Cowden: Karaoke song? It’d have to be something country western because I can hold a tune. Some of the old, outlawed country like with Waylon Jennings. Certainly, I can’t sing like him or Willie Nelson, but Luckenbach Texas, for example. Something like that. I love to sing – not in karaoke bars because I’m not that good, but I do sing around the house. You can ask my kids and ask my wife, but it’s usually outlaw country.
Ethan Whitehill: I can see you in your basement now with the neon glow on your face singing karaoke
Tim Cowden: It goes back to those Oklahoma roots.
Ethan Whitehill: Tim, thank you for your time. This is great. This has been a wonderful conversation. If our listeners want to connect with you, what’s the best way to do that?
Tim Cowden: Just go to thinkkc.com. You can find me on LinkedIn. Just come directly to Tim Cowden and I’ll send you to the right person within our team.
Hosted by Ethan Whitehill
Ethan has made a career out of building agencies and growing brands. He founded the firm Two West in 1997, running it as an independent shop for nearly 20 years before combining his firm with an AdAge Top 100 Agency, where he served as CMO. As an agency founder and entrepreneur, Ethan brings a business owner’s mindset to marketing, working on a host of diverse brands, from packaged goods and professional services to hospitality and healthcare.
