MATR Newsletter – March 13, 2023
The state with the best education wins!

Come Home Montana

• Experts: National Physician Shortage Will Hit Rural Areas Harder – What’s a WWAMI?

  A study showed that while the entire country is seeing dwindling numbers of physicians, rural areas remain drastically behind their urban counterparts. Paired with worse health outcomes, rural America risks a deepening healthcare crisis.

• The Trail Forward in Horsemanship Education Conference & Film Festival – 9/7-9 – UM Western, Dillon Montana

  Special Guest – Smoke Elser

  Smoke is a world renowned Montana outfitter and equine educator who has trained mules and horses for global clients, including the U.S. military from Afghanistan to the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

• Montana Career Opportunities – Production Associate, Fulfillment Associate – Botanie Soap

  Botanie Soap is located just outside of Missoula, MT. At core, we are a highly-motivated group who care about providing quality product, excellent customer service, and a work environment that…

Great Falls Development Authority

• Great Falls Economic Development Top 10 for 3-12-23

  Here is our Top 16 for this week celebrating work and successes to grow and strengthen the Great Falls regional economy — Montana’s Golden Triangle. And, sharing business resources and skill-building opportunities to empower your success.

• Big Sky Cheese defaults on loan but GFDA is working to help find a solution

  “We’re working very closely. It’s an amicable thing. The developer knew that that we had to do this,” says Doney.

Montana Business

• The résumé is dead. Here are 3 reasons why I never ask for one when hiring

  Résumés are becoming increasingly ineffective in today’s rapidly changing job market.

• The Food System Is Awful for the Climate. It Doesn’t Have to Be

  New modeling estimates that food production could add a degree Celsius to global warming. But it also points to powerful ways to make diets more sustainable.

• Tesla will use a magnetic engine to stop using rare earth elements

  Due to their difficulty in obtaining supplies and the fact that China accounts for the vast majority of global production, rare earth elements are a source of friction in the supply chains for EVs.

• US regulators say SVB customers will be made whole as second bank fails – The Bank was run by “Uncle Billie” (Greg Becker).

  SVB Financial CEO Greg Becker Sold $3.6 Million in Stock Nearly Two Weeks Ago

• With Heat From Heat Pumps, US Energy Requirements Could Plummet By 60%

  Electrification and heat pumps radically reduce the requirement to build new wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, and geothermal primary energy sources.

• Angela Zuba of Waters Edge Winery and Bistro shares story of creating wine in Montana

  March is Women’s History Month and MTN talked with a female winemaker about how historically, it is a male-dominated industry.

• United offers a training program to address the pilot shortage. Its first graduating class was 80% women or minorities.

  By some estimates, airlines worldwide could be 60,000 pilots short by the end of the decade. United Airlines anticipates that major U.S. carriers will have demand for 10,000 new pilots this year alone, but that only about 6,600 qualified candidates will be available.

• Why Great CEOs Are Actually Their Company’s ‘Chief Emotions Officer’

  Entrepreneur coach Chip Conley shared why emotional intelligence is a key ingredient for corporate leadership in a moving session at Inc. Founders House at SXSW in Austin.

• Missoula entrepreneur premieres on ‘Shark Tank’

  The key to FLATED’s success came when Guay moved back to Missoula in August 2020.

  “We’ve never left and we don’t plan on it,” he said.

• Corporate Boards Are Ramping Up These Sustainability Priorities

  It is tempting to chase a seemingly endless array of “sustainable” practices and buzz words. Identifying the areas that are most relevant and impactful for each business is the key to long-term success.

• An Investment in Board Diversity – Brad Feld

  We’ve made this an operating principle at Foundry. We encourage all our portfolio companies to add multiple independent directors and build diverse boards. I believe that boards with too many investors, without operator voices, are not what an early-stage or growth company needs.

• Missoula, Montana-based Cascadia plans growth in employment, clientele

  In the coming years, the firm would like to employ as many as 50 skilled workers in areas of human resources, payroll management, consulting and bookkeeping, among other jobs.

• Botanie Soap of Missoula lands big shampoo contract, plans to grow workforce – Career Opportunities

  “At the end of the day, we’re always relying on good people to do the work. We can do semi-automation, we can use tools and we can use equipment, but ultimately we need people to fix what we have in our facility, and we’re interested in expanding that.”

• BLDC’s Annual Dinner and Awards Ceremony – 5/4 – Fairmont Hot Springs

  Do you know of a person or a business who exemplifies excellence in the Butte community? Butte Local Development Corporation is now accepting nominations for awards in the following categories:

Next Generation Broadband in Montana

• TDS Fiber to serve Missoula, Butte, Great Falls, Helena and Helena Valley. You Can Reserve Your Service Now

  “It’s some of the fastest fiber internet in the nation,” said Petersen. TDS Fiber’s product is symmetrical, so uploads and downloads run at the same speed. Petersen said customers especially like TDS internet for streaming and gaming.

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte

• Study shows that changing how fires burn could help forests recover faster – Montana Governor Gianforte presses to extinguish all fires

  The report indicates that controlled burning, forest thinning and cultural burning done by Indigenous groups could all reduce the severity of future fires and improve the odds of forest recovery.

MEDA -Montana Economic Developers Association

• Q&A: Building Strong Local Governments Is a Rural and Urban Project – The Fight to Save the Town.

  Rural and urban governments experience many of the same challenges and understanding them as interconnected is one way to tackle those issues, argues Michelle Wilde Anderson in her book, The Fight to Save the Town.

Incubators and R&D

• VALL-E: Microsoft’s AI can translate your voice into foreign languages

  New AI tech will dissolve communication boundaries by translating in your voice.

21st Century Education Initiative – “You Should Care…”

• University of Montana Professor Monica Serban and Her Lab Supports Young Award Winning Scientist at Hellgate High

  At the recent Montana Tech Regional Science and Engineering Fair for high school students from Montana, Idaho, Utah and Nevada, McKay won the Division 1 Top Scoring 12th Grade Project, the Division 1 International Science and Engineering Fair Attendee First Place Grand Award and Blue Ribbon – Gold Medal, for her paper on veterinary applications for silk sutures. The paper is titled “Silk Fibroin-Coated Drug-Eluting Sutures”.

• Jaded with education, more Americans are skipping college

  “Why do I want to put in all the money to get a piece of paper that really isn’t going to help with what I’m doing right now?”

University Business Plan Competitions

• Applications open for Montana State’s $75K Venture Competition, set for April 20 

  The competition is open to all MSU and University of Montana undergraduate and graduate students, to faculty and staff at both universities and to MSU and UM alumni who graduated within the last 10 years.

Government News & Events

• We Can’t All Get Along: What’s Driving Modern Secession Movements
  Nearly a dozen counties in Oregon have voted to leave Salem behind and join Idaho. Local secession movements have sprung up in multiple states due to the urban-rural political divide.

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